KoopCast
Coach Jason Koop covers training, nutrition and recent happenings in the ultramarathon world.
KoopCast
Elite Athlete Contracts with Kelly Newlon #236
Curious about the secrets behind elite athlete contract negotiations? Get ready to master the art of securing powerful deals as we sit down with Kelly Newland, an expert who has transitioned from catering to top athletes to advising them on contract strategies. Inspired by her popular Instagram series, Kelly shares invaluable tips and tactics for athletes preparing to reCoach Jason Koop sits down with Kelly Newlon to discuss the state of elite ultramarathon contracts and best practices for athletes when negotiating.
Kelly's IG and pro tips
https://www.instagram.com/radboulder/
Ultrarunning Magazine-What do Professional Trail and Ultrarunners Earn?
https://ultrarunning.com/featured/what-do-professional-trail-and-ultrarunners-earn/
SUBSCRIBE to Research Essentials for Ultrarunning
Additional resources:
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Information on coaching-
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Koop’s Social Media
Twitter/Instagram- @jasonkoop
Trail and ultra runners. What is going on? Welcome to another episode of the coop cast. As always, I am your humble host, coach jason coop, and this episode of the podcast is a little bit of a deviation from our normal content, which is all around training, philosophy, physiology, coaching aspects and things like that, and I wanted to take the time to shine the spotlight on something a little bit different, and that is elite athlete contract renegotiations. The reason that this caught my eye is one of my good friends and colleagues, kelly Newland, who's going to come on the podcast today, recently produced a series of Instagram posts all about tips that athletes should think about and the things that they should be doing as we are entering into this renegotiation season, and I wanted to take that as an opportunity to produce an entire podcast around this particular content.
Speaker 1:A lot of you in the community will recognize Kelly as being one of the food service providers, somebody who cooks for a lot of the elite athletes.
Speaker 1:However, as of the last several years, she has also become a confidant, so to speak, with a lot of athletes as they start to negotiate new contracts, and it is a niche that she has carved out for herself, as we discussed at the very onset of this podcast, I'm going to leave a link in my show notes to Kelly's Instagram handle and if you want to check out each one of those tips individually, I would encourage you to check that out as well, but I had a lot of fun with this conversation.
Speaker 1:Like I said, it's a little bit off the beaten path for this particular podcast, but I do think that, regardless if you if you are an elite athlete or or you're just curious about how this happens, this is the time of year where we start to see all the all of the athletes and all the brands start to set the table for what is to come. It's absolutely fascinating to me and I hope that you guys find it informative as well. All right, with that as a backdrop, I am getting right out of the way. Here's my conversation with Kelly Newland all about what to do and what not to do when you are negotiating a new contract for an elite athlete.
Speaker 2:First off, thanks, athlete first off, thanks you, bet, thank you this is gonna be fun.
Speaker 1:A little bit of a deviation from my normal podcast topics, which are training and physiology related, but I don't know if you listened. Last week we talked a little bit about I had ajw and neil palace on the podcast and we talked about this.
Speaker 1:We talked about dnfing, and part of that backdrop not the entirety of it part of that backdrop was what happened at utb most recently it seems to happen every year where there's a large contingent of elite athletes that drop out of the race, and I'm sure that there's going to be some kind of flavor of that context or that of the dialogue that you and I talk about with with relevance to some of these elite athlete contracts. But before we jump the gun cause we can't jump the gun we got to set the table a little bit for the listeners on who you are, how we know each other, what you do for your day job, a lot of other stuff, and then we'll dive into the meaty stuff. So, kelly, first off, you tell the listeners a story. How do we know each other? Just you and I personally Go for it.
Speaker 2:Gosh, I was thinking about this yesterday and I actually remember the first conversation we had I don't know if you do, it was probably close to a decade ago but I called you on the phone to chat with you about an athlete that you had just taken on, and it was an athlete who had also reached out to me to work with them at the time for individual meals. And that was the first yeah, that was the first contact that I recall having with you, and then that just sort of organically grew to you reaching out a short time later to see if I could feed one of your ultra camps. Does that sound right? Yep, and then you know you spend a week with someone.
Speaker 1:Can you either love or hate them up to that point right.
Speaker 2:And then we just became friends and then you coached me and then we've just always had our love of NBA, our frenemy rivalry with teams. But yeah, I think that what I appreciate about my relationship with you, Coop, is it's sort of all-encompassing it's you as a coach, you as what you bring to the community, me working with your athletes, and then our friendship.
Speaker 1:I'll throw a compliment right back at you. It's been awesome to see you develop as a professional and your business develop, because simultaneously when you and I first encountered each other, your husband Morgan took of absence, as is at his normal job, to help you get your business up and off the ground, and I thought that that was a really cool dynamic. He worked at ultimate direction as a. What was his role there?
Speaker 1:He was the sales director so pretty high level position there completely abandoned that to help you get that off the ground. I totally appreciated that and to see you as a professional honestly like take off like a rocket ship to where now? I mean no, kelly, I mean you're working with the best of the best across a multitude of sports. I mean you're literally working with the former NBA world champion, denver Nuggets, beating them and I always say that doesn't happen by accident, that happens that you're just really good at what you do. You're highly sought after and you're a consummate professional and it's been neat to see that grow from you making burritos and delivering them in a cooler all over Boulder, colorado, to endurance athletes. It's been a cool journey to see.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I appreciate that when you say that you know it took off like a rocket ship when it's. I suspect it looked like that from the outside, but it sure did not feel like it. Yeah, anyway, I appreciate that. Thank you, and it's absolutely yeah. And shout out to Morgan Like I could never have so many people have asked me like well how did you all?
Speaker 2:of a sudden. I just started hearing about your company out of nowhere and you were everywhere and that was absolutely due to Morgan managing my calendar back in the day and it was bananas, so yeah.
Speaker 1:So for anybody out there that can get on Kelly's highly sought after calendar for any events, consider yourself lucky. But if you can't consider yourself the rest of the pack because it gets booked up quite quickly and I think NBA stuff starts for you next week or later this week, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what right now. You know, my normal day job is Brad, so professional chef and I feed endurance athletes. That's my jam and where my heart is. And then, outside of that of the endurance sports community, the NBA comes in and that, as you said, is starting very quickly here. So I had this really short window that's kind of like August, september, where that also just happens to be contract season that I get inundated with the topic we're about to jump into, but so I kind of have these sort of three things going on, but they all fall under and are due to my work with Rad.
Speaker 1:So let's that's actually my next transition point so many people out there. We just had this big dialogue. You're a professional chef, I'm a professional coach and we're going to start talking about athlete contracts and how athletes can kind of better navigate them. How did you get involved in that Level? Said that for the audiences as well, because it's seemingly not related, but it really is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's such a good question and I do always appreciate when someone asks, otherwise they're just sort of left mystified by what has happened. So it was very organic. Because of the nature of my business, I spend my days either with the professional athlete or the athlete. Manager for brand is traditionally who hires me for anything, so I'm either with this group or I'm with that group, and so my company is a decade old now and throughout the years, due to the time I spend with these two groups, I often just find myself in, you know, again organic conversations with people that have.
Speaker 2:This conversation has come up where it's like, hey, and at this point you know, if I'm spending again, I'll travel with a team and I'm at a VRBO with them for two weeks. You know, you become friends with people after a while and you know human nature, so they trust me and I trust them. And you know, hey, I'm navigating these two contracts. What do you think this one has these things, this one has this. So it just kind of started that way just innocent conversations, and then that, just that. Then the next time that person's contract was up, they'd be like, hey, I have another one, what do you think of this, and by the next time that first year rolled around, I had I don't know a dozen athletes ask me these same conversations, these same questions. So the same conversation would take place and because of that I would hear about different brands, different contracts, and it was all just stuck in my head so that I had this beta that I could share with me. Like, hey, you know what I don't know about that one. Maybe you should ask this so that those sort of things happened.
Speaker 2:And then, on the other side of the coin, the athlete managers again, who are the ones who hire me for events or team training camps and whatnot, would say, hey, we're looking for an athlete that fits, checks these boxes. Or hey, we're looking at this athlete so and so, fill in the blank name. What do you know about them? So I and then I also became privy to the conversations on both sides like I'm having a hard time with the brands that I work with aren't providing A, b and C. And then I would hear the athlete managers say we'm having a hard time with the brands that I work with. Um aren't providing a, b and c. And then I would hear the athlete managers say we're having a really hard time. I wish these athletes would a, b and c I'm like this is bananas so I have this whole full circle from both sides.
Speaker 2:and then over the years, that just grew and grew to the point where I think last year I was just telling someone the other day I had just under a hundred athletes reach out to me. Jesus, really, it's completely not sustainable because I have a. You know, I'm traveling, or you know, I just spent five weeks in France with one of your athletes and then I was like, okay, I have to somehow, to somehow manage this. I can't, I don't want to turn someone away, but at the same time I really value my time and that I was like you know, this has been building, I really enjoy the work. And now I'm at the point where, just a couple months ago, I was like, okay, I'm going to announce that I'm now officially moving into or adding this sort of athlete agent or athlete manager space to where I'm at.
Speaker 1:So it started out as like an informal advisory role and now and this is actually news to me, kelly you're breaking the news to me even despite our friendship. I can't believe you didn't tell me before. You told everybody on air. It's been a while since we've actually spoken, but you're turning this into part of your business portfolio, essentially, where you're an agent for athletes. Am I understanding that correctly?
Speaker 2:That is correct.
Speaker 1:Wow. Well, athletes need more advisors and counsel in their corner in this area. So this is how we're going to talk about it. So, level, set my perspective right and kind of why I reached out to you. It's actually a lot different to where I'm always an advocate for the athletes. That's my role as a coach. They're my constituents. Those are the people that I serve. And, yeah, I have to play nice with the brands and I know the brand managers and things like that. I'm kind of on a level that you do, but they're, and I know the brand managers and things like that. I'm kind of on a level that you do, but they're, they are not my constituents at all. I'm very, I'm very clear about that.
Speaker 1:And so my role in helping athletes kind of navigate this is more on the athlete side and helping them understand what they're getting themselves into, mainly through the lens of what their goals are. Does this set up, help your goals as you're expressing them to me as an athlete and I'm your coach, and how can we help navigate that?
Speaker 1:it's never a perfect 100 alignment right, because that's just part of, you know, part of the deal that we'll get into. But my kind of like role in this and the reason that I reach out to you so frequently for counsel is to help me navigate that, mainly on the behalf of the athletes. So I want the listeners to remember that whenever I'm kind of like coming in with some sort of epiphany or opinion or whatever it is, that's usually my angle is how do I help my particular constituents out? Not necessarily how do I help the brands out, although I love them and I realize that we've got to. You know, we have a whole ecosystem that we have to, that we have to support. Here I'm very clear that my, my, my peeps are the athletes and I want to look after them. So, with that as a so, with that as a little bit of a table set, the next part of this just to, before we start to dive into the dialogue and how we've kind of structured the dialogue is, I think it's important to the listeners to know what is the scope of economy and timeframe that we're looking at here.
Speaker 1:You know you've started to see these contracts roll in and most people don't know crap about crap, right, they just don't. They just kind of don't know. They see these things on from the league sports right Cause that's all public information when they negotiate it for your beloved Denver Nuggets or my beloved Dallas Mavericks or Dallas Cowboys. We see all these contracts kind of play out in real time. It's all publicly available. But what we don't see in the endurance sports typically is how that plays out because of a number of different factors that we might get into. But can you give some like an overall umbrella within trail and ultra running, of what that actually looks like in terms of the economy of scale and the timeframes that most of these contracts are actually being negotiated over?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think I've already mentioned a couple of times the phrase like contract season, so that will usually fall. No one really wants to be bothered like. Reaching out to an athlete manager in the middle of july is just like a gnat there's other things going on.
Speaker 2:People are racing yeah, they're racing and then everyone's traveling and there's a lot going on and they're focused, as they should be, on the team that they have at hand, uh, which is really where all the energy should be anyway. Uh, and the athlete themselves, like that's, their focus is racing. So I'll start to hear kind of rumblings around august, but not generally until right about the week before utmb, as far as our sport is considered, and then often this year I saw a lot of athlete managers at UTMB who were reaching out to athletes who were in France, in Chamonix, during that time, whether they were racing or just there. They were setting up meetings to go over contracts that had been sent the previous week. So maybe contracts were were sent, let's say, beginning of August. So August, september, really that's when things are picking up and everyone is wanting to have that conversation because everyone thinks contract season starts in October and I will absolutely tell you, if you're waiting until October 1st, you've probably waited too long. So there might be some shifting around, but for the most part I always advise people like, get your ducks in a row in August, so mid to end of August you can send whatever you need to.
Speaker 2:So August, september, october, things are kind of. There's a lot of back and and forth whether it's in person or on the phone or zoom, and negotiating, hopefully within the contract, and then I would say end of October, beginning of November is when brands want to have contracts signed, so that process will take a few weeks to get going and then they are. Often there's a few brands right now that are really waiting for a couple big athletes to sign and they haven't. So due to something like that, a brand might be like you know what? We can't chat with you right now. We're going to circle back in a couple weeks because they're waiting to see what their budget is if they're able to pick this athlete up.
Speaker 2:So august, september, october, signing in october, november. There's a couple brands that really dragged their feet and the athlete is committed and signed their contract and sent it back to the brand. There's a couple brands that don't sign until, even though they're like great, this is awesome, they don't sign that commitment on the contract until December or beginning of January, which is nerve wracking if you're with one of those brands. But yeah, so does that answer your question?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Let me kind of address the elephant in the room that I think people are that's rumbling in the back of people's minds. With this timeframe, it naturally falls, as you mentioned, right around UTMB week, and the heavier parts of the negotiation usually happen after UTMB week. Is that because you have these two things kind of coalescing at the same timeframe? First off are the races themselves that have the biggest spotlight on them, which are the UTMB races, and they're after Western States, which has the other big spotlight on it, and the athletes and brands are using those as part of the decision-making process, whether it's a piece of leverage or a chip that they can negotiate, or they're using it as a proving ground for the athlete. There's a whole host of different things.
Speaker 1:That's thing number one that's happening at the same time. And thing number two that's happening at a similar timeframe not the same timeframe, but similar timeframe is brands are starting to get their budgets in place. Most people are running off annual budgets. They have some semblance of that annual budget in the third or fourth quarter, depending upon the operations of business. That then gives directive to the athlete managers on how much they can spend. They then take that budget and start to deploy it out and out into the field. Is that my understanding that correctly? From a timeframe perspective, that's really what we're seeing here. Is this phenomenon of those two things kind of coming together at the same time.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, and as you said.
Speaker 2:So the budget for those that aren't aware of the budget for the athletes that are sponsored absolutely falls into the marketing budget and it's not until that quarter. That's and that's why it's October's that people are like you should wait until October, but they'll kind of have an idea of who they're going to at least keep on and move over so they'll know how many spots they have. But they can't make a move until that budget comes through, which is not until that same timeframe, and then that's when they find out their marketing budget. So, and absolutely what you said about the races, they're watching how their athletes are doing. They're watching any other athletes that were like, oh you know, like of interest or an athlete that they had no idea. That was all of a sudden, a surprise on the podium at like three different big races, which is great and it's also great for the athlete, like it's another kind of reason I usually like I love to see an athlete wait until after if they're racing Western States and UTMB Wait, don't negotiate before that, because what if?
Speaker 1:It's a bet on yourself strategy, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's a cool thing I'll have to put a pin in Remind me to chat with you about rollover bonuses for contracts, which absolutely affect the next year's budget. Because if you have an athlete that has, you know, won Western States or podiumed on Western States and Hard Rock and UTMB, and each of those races receives, you know, tens of thousands of dollars for each race and the brand, so they've got the bonus for the races. And then they also, if they have a rollover clause in their contract, what if they made 20 let's say 20 60 000 in bonuses? That now is added to their salary for?
Speaker 1:the next year.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, it's a lot of of money.
Speaker 1:So let's not dance around this.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I'm getting around. No, it's okay.
Speaker 1:It's okay. No, we're this podcast. Listeners of this podcast are used to things going off the rails when I get involved. Let's not beat around the bush here. I do think that it's important to at least put in a bread box the economy that we're talking about. I mentioned that when we go to the pro sports, we know it. We know how much Patrick Mahomes gets made or makes, because when his contract gets renegotiated it's all over ESPN and things like that. And then all the other quarterbacks in the league can look at that and say, oh okay, well, if Patrick's getting paid this, I'm better or worse than Patrick or I'm on a better team. They kind of use that as a chip, so to speak.
Speaker 1:So the athletes may or may not have a scope of this, but the public certainly does, not Just Joe Schmo public that's listening to this podcast. That's not in the elite athlete. They probably have no clue. If you were to ask them to guess, they're going to be 10x under or one-tenth, something kind of outside that timeframe. I know we can't divulge any individual athletes because now you're working with them, you're kind of confidentiality bound, now that I know that. But also the athletes are more likely than not and maybe exclusively. You can render an opinion on this under NDAs not to disclose all or parts of their contract. But can we at least kind of put it in a bread box, so to speak, like what are we talking about here when these people are negotiating contracts?
Speaker 2:Sure, and just to clarify, you're asking for like dollar signs for like different tiers. Yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Like is it 10 grand or is it a hundred grand or is it 10 million? Like let's just try to like, just to make sure that everybody knows how much bread we're pushing around.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the first question I always ask an athlete that wants to, like, go pro is why do you want to be sponsored? And they tell me all their stuff, their hopes and dreams and I'm like, all right, I just want you to know before you get started because of where you are as an athlete like you're a strong runner, you're great, strong runner, you're great these things, whatever social media but the average that you're probably going to make entry-level annual salary is $4,000.
Speaker 1:And then, where does it graduate from there? Because that's going to be their next question, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know they're like well, you know, I want to get you know. Or someone will say, well, I'm sponsored by so-and-so and I'm like what does that mean? They're like well, I get gear. And this, I'm like I get gear, I got so much free gear. So you're really not sponsored. You're an ambassador unless you're getting money. So then there's you know the things they want you to do and within is likely not going to get the bonus schedule that a mid to top tier athlete is getting within that same brand, so they might not even get offered bonus because of where they might fall. There's so many exceptional athletes. One of the hardest things about conversations that I have is finding a compassionate, creative way to tell someone look, you're a stout athlete, but you're a dime, a dozen.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is a tough conversation to have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, and it doesn't mean that they're not an exceptional person or a strong athlete, but especially, let's say, the front range of Colorado, there are a hundred versions of the same level of skill that this person might have, versions of the same level of skill that this person might have, man or woman. So to get signed is one hard Two, not what you think. So let's say that first sort of entry into the sport, let's say four to six, depending on the brand. And then as you go up, let's say all of a sudden you're like I'm one Quad Rock and I was, I don't know, top 20 at Western States and top 10 at High Lonesome. So your contract is up, they're going to renegotiate. They're like you know you're doing really well and you prove to them that you're moving up. Let's say that person is now like at 10 grand and then they might see a bonus schedule. Then so what does that look like? That means like top tier races. They will get. Let's say, someone like that would probably get like seven thousand dollars if they won western states. Or now everyone listening to this, that's actually top tier athlete is like holy smokes, I get a lot more. Yes, you do, absolutely so.
Speaker 2:Then let's say that person that they re-sign but they just do a one-year contract. Actually, top tier athlete is like holy smokes, I get a lot more. Yes, you do, absolutely. So then let's say that person that they re-sign but they just do a one-year contract because they're really like you know what I'm doing, but I'm really getting stronger and at this point they're I don't know, 25 years old. So then the next year they are I don't know, they win a couple races. They are, I don't know, they win a couple races. They're top I don't know five at Javelina and they're top 10 at Western States. Then they sign probably with a new brand who's been watching them, or if they're a smart athlete that's really gone after a brand, then they'll probably re-sign with a new footwear company that, let's say, gives them 15 to 20 grand.
Speaker 1:So let me pull some data into this and this is a couple of years old. It's a survey that ultra running magazine, or an article about the survey, was written in ultra running magazine a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1:So. So the values are going to be a little bit dated because these are always moving and thankfully for the athletes they're moving up, meaning they're kind, meaning they're generally escalating in terms of the amount of contract value. I'll leave a link to this article in the show notes. There's one graph in here in particular that I think is quite telling to the question that I was asking, which is generally how much everybody makes. So let me just pull out a couple of highlights of it.
Speaker 1:So, kelly, to your point where you're starting around four grand, six grand, somewhere around there, let me set up the survey again. So they asked 200 elite athletes a whole series of questions who's your main sponsor? Do you get more from prize money or from a base salary? How much is it? Blah, blah, blah. It was anonymous survey and so the athletes were kind of free to share whatever they, you know, whatever they could, without breaking, without breaking any sort of their any piece of the NDA parts of their contract. It was also some total 50% of the athletes that responded make less than $10,000 annually. That's both from their contract value as well as from as well as from prize money.
Speaker 1:The way that gets distributed is uneven. So to your point of how the escalation happens in an uneven fashion, and what I mean by that is the people who are making. Zero to 5,000 is 34% and five to 10,000 is 14%, but if you sum total all of those, half of the people that responded, half of the 200 elite athletes that responded to this, make less than $10,000 annually. If you go up to the upper end of the kind of echelon, so to speak, two and a half percent make above a hundred thousand, and the cap that they kind of put on this, which is weird, is a quarter million dollars a year. So, just to set the scale, we're from thousands and tens of thousands of dollars to a few people that make over a hundred K a year, and then maybe there's some very few that are even higher than that. But in terms of the entirety of the scale, nobody's making Packer Holmes money to my earlier or Nicola Jokic money.
Speaker 1:We'll use Kelly's favorite basketball player. Nobody's making it. Yeah, nobody's making that. Yeah, you wish, cause you're an agent now, so you're going to play a part of this economy, so anyway, okay, so with that as a table set, right, the context of this conversation was inspiration that Kelly's delivering to the universe currently, and we don't know when the end of this inspiration is. So we're recording this podcast. It's done.
Speaker 1:It's done. Okay, it is officially done, so we're recording. Okay, there we go. We're recording this. It's done at 10,. Right, I didn't. I haven't checked Instagram lately.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're recording this podcast on September 25th. If you are not following boulder, there'll be a link in the show notes on Instagram. You can find these 10 pro tips that Kelly's posted on Instagram that we're going to use this framework for this conversation Maybe not in order, Maybe it'll be a little bit more chaotic than that, Maybe we'll only get through seven of them and we'll spend a lot of time on one, who knows? But that's the framework for it and for the elite athletes that are out there that are trying to navigate. This is a great place to start your own internal framework for how to work through these things and for the people that are curious about it. I think that this also gives good background content for what the athletes are actually, what the athletes are actually going through.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Okay. So we're going to start number one. I'm going to give you, I'm going to give the pro tip, and then you're going to expand on it and then we'll bat it back and forth a little bit, great. So number one one sheets plus cover letters are in multiple slide decks are out of date and inefficient, and I'll add mine anything under 20 point font nobody will read. That's my addition to that. I just designed a presentation and I was reminded of that rule. So, kelly, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that point too, coop, because it has to be easy and that just encompasses this entire statement. So this is number one, because before you reach out to anyone, if you send that initial email without any sort of attachments on who you are, you're immediately missing the boat and no one has time nor wants to read a 20 page deck from some. If you can't tell your story in one to two slides, don't do your slide. There are very few things, instances where you would need a slide or a deck. Let's see if you're a fitness model instead of being sponsored, which is a whole other episode.
Speaker 2:One sheet is one sheet and that's exactly what it means. It's called that for a reason. So put your best photo up there, pick your best photo, give a list of like who you are, your top things and, the great thing, you know it's 2024. So what I love about a one sheet is you can put an electronic link in there to podcasts. You've been on to YouTube something or others to. If you're featured in, you know, ultra running magazine, put that in, but tighten it up, right? You've got one chance to make that impression.
Speaker 1:What are the categories that are going on that one sheet? Because a lot of people will think, oh, it's just performance, I'm going to put my Palmares on there. Right sheet, because a lot of people will think, oh, it's just performance, I'm going to put my Palmares on there right. I won this race. I got fourth in this. We just went through that. But what else should be encapsulated in this one pager?
Speaker 2:Right, let's see I'm trying to think, but say I'll use you as an example.
Speaker 2:So, Jason Koob. Here's some bullet points of your race resume over the past two years, three years tops. I don't care where you went to high school. No one needs to know that you have run. I ran 27 or was on 18 podcasts like. You don't need that. Just hold on bullet like your top three races per each year.
Speaker 2:Now if you're someone who won like a maze I don't know utmb, hard rock, western states and tdg, obviously those should go on there. But um, two to three years tops, three to four races on each year and then underneath that it's any podcast you were on any media that you did. If you were ultra runner of the year, things like that, right, anything else. Let's say, um coop, if you were um on the board at Western States, that would be on their board. Member at whatever. If you sit on a panel for the PTRA, that's great to have on there.
Speaker 2:Anything that shows your level of commitment to the community. How you give back something. That is who you are, that, like you are instrumental for the the incline board like. Is back something that is who you are, that, like you are instrumental for the the incline board Like. Is that something that you would be on, that you would put on there, right? Everyone loves to do the incline. It's a huge part of our culture and community where you live and you are like a kingpin for keeping that thing tight. Like that should be up there, right.
Speaker 1:Founding member of the incline board, by the way.
Speaker 2:Oh see, there you go so things like that need to be on there and as far as information like, you don't need to put your address. You could put jason cooke, colorado, springs, colorado, but no one needs to know where your address is, put your phone number, your email, and like instagram or something on there, and I'm happy to. If anyone wants to reach out to me and send me a message, to send them an example of what a one sheet looks like, I can. I have a few that I can send.
Speaker 1:How do you advise people describe or promote the social side of things? Do you advocate for them to focus on followers, engagements, a specific post or examples of what their content actually like, actually looks like? Like? How do you advise athletes manage that piece of it when they're pitching themselves?
Speaker 2:I don't know honestly, because the athlete manager is going to look at your instagram themselves. They're going to be like here it is, it's on the one sheet. They'll figure it out. Everyone's different. You know, something like rob muki from Adidas. What he wants to see is different than what someone else wants to see, and it's yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean that's interesting because a lot of people would default to think, hey, listen, if I've got 200,000 Instagram followers, I'm definitely putting that as like one of my assets that I'm bringing to the table.
Speaker 2:And what you're saying is, the athlete managers are going to do that anyway, so you're telling them information that they're doing due diligence on someone like Billy Yang who's constantly producing content in a way that you know, like video and YouTube, like that's a different kind of story, but the athlete manager is going to find you anyway on Instagram, so they'll find out themselves what's important.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Okay, let's move on to number two. Upon receiving the terms which everybody's doing right now, we just went through the timeframe too. Upon receiving the terms which everybody's doing right now we just went through the time frame Be sure to ask. I'm emphasizing that word. Be sure to ask if there's a clock on the offer.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So what this means is right. When you get an email from whoever you know, the athlete manager, and they send you like this is what we want to be, like great, thank you so much. This is is confirmation. I've received the terms. Is there a clock on this offer? If not, I can get back to you. I don't know what's today, wednesday, I'll get back to you on Friday or I'll get back to you by end of day, monday.
Speaker 2:But there needs to be some sort of communication. And the reason this is because I have a laundry list of examples of athletes who have literally lost an offer because they waited weeks to respond to this while they were trying to filter through other offers or go out of town. Or you're on a race and you're, or they just dragged you. Some people are just lazy and just drag their feet. They don't understand the gold mine. So I have, unfortunately, like examples of athletes that circle back like a month later. They don't respond for like a month and they're like hey, I'd love to chat with you about this and the brand is like I'm sorry, the offer's longer available.
Speaker 1:We've moved on as they should have. They got budgets to run. They got a department to run at that point. So the point is well taken.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Okay, number three Do your own homework. Research a brand from the inside out. Remove the romantic goggles keeping you focused on the outside view yeah, I feel that this is aimed at like one specific brand it's so funny.
Speaker 2:when I posted this, a half a dozen athletes sent me a message. Was this me, was this I'm like? No, that's how many?
Speaker 2:people that's how many people I've had this conversation with. They're like oh, this is the sponsor I want to go with. They're so amazing. I'm like, just hold on a minute. When you do your research, contact people that are with them With this brand, contact people who used to be with the brand, ask them pros and cons, ask them if there was anything that you were like, hey, I really thought this was going to happen, but it didn't. But all the things that are important to you as an athlete if you get an offer from that dream sponsor, ask people who are with them or who have been with them the very specific questions about the things that are important to you and see what their response is.
Speaker 1:The peer research on this. I'm happy to see that become more a part of the fabric of this entire thing that people are trying to work through, because I felt that several years ago athletes kind of felt like it was taboo because you're talking about money and what you're worth and am I worth more than you and all this kind of stuff that you know can the people just view as sensitive. But I think now, not that it's unit, not that it's a universal sentiment, but people are just getting more and more used to just asking their peers hey, what does your contract look like? Do you like it? Do you like this brand? What are you not Just like just what you went through in people for the most part not everybody.
Speaker 1:Some people want to keep it private and that's their own prerogative, but for the most part people want to help each other out. That's part of the fabric of our community as well as they want to uplift every everybody else and from a from from. I think that from a selfish standpoint the athletes can are also starting to realize what's good for the goose is good for the gander, meaning if they can help lift somebody else up and kind of help them, you know get a better kind of, get a better deal that's going to work out in their favor, because the entire you know tide is right. It's been you know rising, so to speak. So I've been really happy with seeing that kind of like play out in the space, that so many people are open about it and willing to kind of give each other counsel on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's perfectly okay to do. You're not sitting there showing them. I'm not saying show them your contract show them your offer, Like that's just unprofessional. But ask them conversationally just what's going on. That's perfectly okay to do and what you should be doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interestingly enough, I always describe this.
Speaker 1:I've seen and you've probably seen this as well five or six versions of the rotation where all the athletes on brand X love their stuff and they hate it on brand Y, and then, two years later, all the people on brand Y love their stuff and they hate it on brand X, and then brand A comes into the mix and then everybody loves them and they hate brand Y again.
Speaker 1:Then it just goes round and round and round. I think part of helping athletes navigate that is keeping in touch with that entire system, both the people that are in the brand that they're potentially courting, but also people who are not in that brand. That just have scope of what are the other things going on. Honestly I'm going to give you a plug here, kelly, for your new venture just have scope of what are the other things going on and honestly, that's the one of the I'm going to give you a plug here, kelly, for your new venture. That's one of the primary advantages of having an agent is you have that scope over the entirety of the sphere and not just this really narrow view of this. Is what my experience has been like with this one or two contract cycles. However, you know however many times the athlete has actually been through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, quick side note, I there's one brand in particular right now and another one creeping up on it where I have seen in the past month eight just me alone eight athletes have come to me and had offers from brand a and all of them declines the offer because they have heard such negative things they've heard such negative things, so you know it's going to get people talk. It's human nature.
Speaker 1:It's going to catch up with a brand if that's what's going on and that once again, and that's good for everybody because it keeps people on their toes, it makes the offers fair. People know that's going to happen, so they're doing their best thing. Transparency I say this in coaching all the time too. Transparency is good for the entire community. If service providers I'll broaden it out from coaching If service providers, similarly, are transparent about kind of every which way that their service and business operates, it's better for everybody because you're forced to deliver better service, you kind of know what equivalent price points are, what equivalent value propositions are and things like that, and just everybody benefits. So I'm not going to beat a dead horse on that.
Speaker 1:Let's go on to number. What are we on now? Five here we go. Ask any potential spot. Four I just went through four, right? Oh no, sorry, I skipped four. No, you're right, I told you we were going to go off the rails, kelly. Four is important. I'm glad you brought me back to reality. Number four advocate for yourself during the negotiation process. Bidding on yourself is always worth it. We already touched on a little bit of this theme.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so these were all in different orders and I shuffled them all around. When I around, when I read, you were like hey, feel free to shuffle these around. It was like I really needed to.
Speaker 2:So the reason this is in the order that it is because at this point you've got your one sheet, your cover letter, you've already reached out, you've got your offer term, someone's speaking to you and then you've done your research. So now it's time for you to go back and negotiate and discuss with the athlete manager about your offer. So this is a really good, just level set of like you're here to navigate, like to advocate for yourself as you navigate this contract. So keep that front of mind. I wish there was a magic pill that I could give to people that would give them the confidence or adjust our mindset to the realization that this is a business decision, if you can remove that personal attachment to all of this, which is really.
Speaker 2:It's hard to remove that emotional attachment when you are an emotionally driven person and a lot of athletes are and because of that we don't advocate for ourselves as strongly as we should. So it doesn't mean going, you know, with boxing gloves on, but it goes in. It means going in negotiating as if you were buying a house. Going, you know, with boxing gloves on, but it goes in. It means going in negotiating as if you were buying a house right, like you know, working with that offer and going up and down. So I equate it to that. Or if you want to buy a car, you know something that you would be like I'm going in. Think of it that way.
Speaker 1:I'm going in and I know my stuff. I mean, once again, it goes back to Exactly you. I'm going in and I know my stuff. I mean, once again, it goes back to you know your worth, you know your worth. You get that through networking with your peers, having a little bit of experience, asking friends and mentors, and things like that, and then you're not so blindsided by, like, what is actually going on. Here's the thing, though, that I'm sure you've wrestled with this that a lot of athletes that are listening to this are thinking when I do that, do I run the risk of losing out on the offer that's on the table? So, if I go in, I think that I'm worth X and the brand is coming back with Y, and I, you know, put on my boxing gloves, or I'd put on my MMA sparring gloves. We'll go for the lighter version of the sports analogy there. If I do that, do I run the? Do I run the risk of screwing the whole thing up?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. That's always the big fear, right? It's very few and far between that. I have seen that happen and it's only been just in my own experience. It's only been when the athlete went in like I'm worth 20 grand more than you're offering me.
Speaker 2:Big deltas and it was so full of just bravado that it was bound to fail. So what you can do, let's say, if your um annual offer is for 25 and you're like I'd really love to get just 30 out of this, or 35, there's other parts of the contract that you can negotiate to get that like see if they'll increase your travel budget. See if they'll increase your travel budget. See if they'll increase your budget for race entries. See if they'll increase your budget for body work and coaching and PT and we can touch on that more later. So it's a little bit of a softer approach in working around things and it shows that you wanna have a conversation and you're not just like this is ridiculous Because, let's face it, if you show up to a contract that is offering you 20K a year and you think you're worth 40, you shouldn't be entertaining them with a meeting anyway.
Speaker 2:If they're that far off of where you think you should be, or maybe where you truly are, then you absolutely shouldn't be talking to them anyway.
Speaker 1:And you're probably getting courted from elsewhere in addition to that, if that's really what your value is. Yes, Okay, now we'll move on to number five, if I can get my ordering correct here, ask any potential sponsor what they expect from the athlete they partner with. What is the one thing your most effective team members do outside of the podium that makes them stand stand out above the rest?
Speaker 2:yeah, this is a really good thing to ask again before you sign the contract. But so you know what you're getting into and there is no gray area and you don't sign. And then you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't read any of this part of the like. The contract didn't make sense to me or I didn't read it, which you know.
Speaker 2:Contracts are long and most of us don't read the entire thing, but you likely, if you're confused afterwards, you likely signed off on something that you were not aware of. So asking this question again sort of level sets and allows them to, in layman's terms, tell you what they want. And you know, if it's a, I'm not signing with a brand unless I really believe in them and want to stay with them. And if that's the case, I want to do the best that I can for them because it's my job and because that's just who I am. So you know, as a pleaser and most athletes are pleasers you want to ask, like, what is the best thing I can do for you? What do you wish the athletes that you had did you? What do you wish the athletes that you had did?
Speaker 2:And this kind of goes back, around this other side of the coin, to conversations I have with athlete managers who are like, oh my gosh, we're pulling our hair out because we wish the athletes would do this and this and it's in their contract. But it's like pulling teeth, like why does it have to be so hard to? It's like wrangling cats, you know. So I know that's what athlete managers want. When you have an athlete that actually takes the minute to ask a manager this, it's sort of a breath of fresh air and they're going to like you from the get go even more and then you have even more wiggle room about your contract because now they like you, because you took a moment to actually acknowledge that this is a business.
Speaker 1:So let me give you my perspective. You know exactly where I'm going to go with this on where that conflict comes into play the most. You know exactly where I'm going to go with this on where that conflict comes into play the most. It's when the brand usually what, usually one component of a contract is there X amount of activations that you have to be at shoe launch, go to the store and give a talk, things like that. That's a little bit of an ambiguous category which most of the athletes don't have a problem with it, until the race rolls around and the activation just happens to be two or three days in advance of the race.
Speaker 1:That's when the conflict really kind of comes into play, where these components of the contract start to conflict with what the athlete wants to do from a performance perspective. And that's where I get in, that's where I get involved and I'm just and I tell them the same advice that you just told the athletes is advocate for yourself and just say no, figure out a solution that is later down the road that doesn't interfere with the months of training that you've just done. Once again, my constituents are athletes at the brand. So I can say this to the athlete and you know the brands. Can, you know, hate me for it or whatever for that piece of advocacy? But in my experience, where that particular component comes arise, where those two things start to come into conflict the proximity of the race and then whatever the ask actually is, it's usually some sort of, you know, personal or physical appearance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the meet and greet. That's the day before you're going to go run a hundred miles and you're trying to stay off your feet and rest before you're going to go run a hundred miles and you're trying to stay off your feet and rest and everybody's got COVID and you know, yeah, and you know just, I super agree with this, and my response when athlete managers mentioned this is hey, like, this is where they're at right now.
Speaker 2:This is where their focus should be. You can't expect them to perform this well and end up here on the podium if you're also like tying them down with cement bricks by asking them to do three meet and greets in a 48 hour period. So, but you mentioned something. Coop was something to the effect of find a solution that works. Hey, we need you to do these two store appearances and these are the times. I would say something to the effect of, or recommend, like a communication that is like, hey, I can't do the whole thing, but I can do this. This is what I can do. I can't do this, but I will do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'll add to that, especially because the pattern is predictable Western States comes around, utmb comes around, all the brands start putting their activation things in place and then they start asking the athletes in for UTMB, at least July and the beginning of August. Hey, can you come do this? Hey, can you come and do that? What I've actually started to do in advance is using my coaching scope and saying this is how I want the last 10 days to look at, look like even when we're eight weeks. Saying this is how I want the last 10 days to look at, look like even when we're eight weeks out. This is what I want the last 10 days to look like. This is what I want the taper to look like.
Speaker 1:Go to your sponsors now and ask them what they want from you and if their answer is I don't know, get an answer out of them or tell them the answer is going to be no, because we're going to script out these last 10 days. That's what I've started to do more and more with the athletes that I work with, just so it doesn't get foobarred. One, so they don't have to do it, but two, this is the this is actually another thing, so they don't have to deal with like the consternation of thinking about it. I know I have these gestures on zoom and they keep foring everything so they don't have to think about oh I'm, you know I'm skipping out on one of my sponsor obligations and that's going to cause some undue duress. They can kind of get rid of all of that several weeks out in advance of the race and just really clear their mind and calendar for those last remaining 10 or 14 days I I love that One.
Speaker 2:Thank you for doing that and it's a really important pattern and it's a pro pattern. It's sadly something that people don't start doing until they've gone through all the yuck before.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And I'll also add this you know, bring someone with you to an appearance that is like your gatekeeper, and it's like, all right, the time's done. I'm getting you out of here. I've done that for a few athletes before I'm like they're done. Party's over.
Speaker 1:Yep, super smart, super smart.
Speaker 2:It's a good convo.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's move on. This starts to get into the payment piece of it, which causes just as much consternation. We're on six, right yeah? We're on six. I'm going to have to help you keep me accountable here. Add a late payment to your contract. If the sponsor pays late, there is a fee added. I feel like this is like my credit card company that's going to charge me a late fee or whatever.
Speaker 2:I had. This is probably this might be the one on the list that I got the most messages about. Seriously, people saying I had one athlete say to me my athlete or my sponsor hasn't paid me on time in three years. What? Yeah, wow, yeah. So, first, if the sponsor does not pay you on time, that's breach of contract. So you can get out of your contract at any time, as long as you have documentation that they didn't pay and as long as your contract has either dates where they're supposed to pay you or what I often see is like during these months, you'll be paid. So if you're over it, that's a really easy out because they breached the contract.
Speaker 2:Like I spoke with someone again totally different athlete the other day who was like they have breached my contract nine times in two years. So he's like, would this be helpful? I was like, absolutely, we'll get you out of here in five minutes. So, just like anything, if you're late on the mortgage, there's a late fee or it looks your credit is crap. So if your sponsor is not paying you on time, therefore you're late on your bill. So now you're paying late payments. It's just not a good look and it's absolutely unprofessional.
Speaker 1:Well, and once again going back to the peer to peer piece, I do think that stories like that start to get around. The whole ecosystem of athletes is not that big.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And they start to figure that out pretty quickly. Brands are in the position to where they can course correct that fairly readily Right, and sometimes there's there's like legitimate accounting things that have to happen. I don't have a lot of tolerance for that, but I can understand when the one-off things are the case. But when it's a pattern, breaching your contract nine times over two years or three years or whatever the timeframe is that's not a one-off instance, that's a pattern and that's something that absolutely needs to be reconciled.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I'll come at this from a little bit of a coaching standpoint. So I've been in this position before where something like that has caused a lot of undue stress in the athlete's life because they literally can't make ends meet.
Speaker 2:So their training suffers.
Speaker 1:That's bad for their race performance. That's bad for the brand as well, their race performance, that's bad for the brand as well. And somehow or another this comes into the coaching, into the training, into the architecture side of things that I'm trying to manage because it's a stress just like anything else. So I think if everybody could realize that's also part of the dialogue here, I just think it helps keep people on their toes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's on the list for a reason because it happens enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, number seven negotiate extras into your contract, ask for additional budget to use to give back to your community via the brand and in 7A this is our outline, nobody's going to find this on your part of it or for support services rate support, coaching, physical therapy, et cetera. So you've got the base salary. This is in addition to that specifically allocated for things as otherwise specified.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I loved your note, by the way, before I address that. The reason that I put this in here is because I always counsel athletes on before you sign a contract. If you're like, this is great, I think I really want to do this. If you have a passion project or something you're really into, again I'll just use you. Pretend you're a 30 year old coop and you're signing a contract and you're not on the board for the incline yet, but you want to be in your part of their whatever. That's when it would be really wise to be like to ask your sponsor. Hey, I would love to add another 2K to this that I can use to hold an event once a quarter for trail maintenance day for the incline, sponsored by fill in the blank brand.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of athletes that do that with like camps and things like that that they run. So they know that they're going to have you know three or four camps that they're either organizing themselves or they're a part of and they kind of like loop that into part of the negotiating part of the contract.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really smart. I've always appreciated it. Um last, sometime last year I asked an athlete about this women's speaking series that she was giving and it was sponsored by her brand, and I said how did you do that? And she said because you told me I should do it.
Speaker 1:See, Kelly, you're already having an influence on people.
Speaker 2:I was so excited for her that she actually did it and it came to fruition and she holds these monthly women's speaking series sponsored by her brand in the town that she lives in and they support it all and it's it's a really important thing for this athlete.
Speaker 2:So it made me really happy that she had this very individual thing and it really personalized her contract. And then to your question I took some notes, so you had a hey, but also ask for monies for body work or or travel. So just in the past month, the average that I've seen on contracts from eight different brands and this is great for travel so between $7,000 and $10,000 in addition to their annual salary for PT, body work or coaching is the average is four to eight grand, depending on low end to high end athlete. And when I ask athlete managers hey, how long have you been doing that or why did you start doing that? They said because so many athletes have started asking about it, which is such a cool and you know, proof is in the pudding right. Like the athletes that asked this in the years prior are the ones that set the table for this to now be part of a boilerplate contract within our community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's been your point. That it's been a more recent phenomenon is really well taken, because I do know that from the brand manager side of things, they're not having to do this as much. But one of the things that they did have to contend with is the ones that originally had that in there. So we're paying an athlete 20 grand a year, 40 grand a year, whatever, and we're going to set aside $10,000 that you can use. If you show to us I'm emphasizing that intentionally If you show to us that you're getting coaching, you're getting body work, you're getting physical therapy, you got to submit a receipt and we have some clearinghouse for the providers and for the services that you're delivering.
Speaker 1:There's some checks and balances there. The pushback that they were getting sometimes from the athletes is well just of dollars to come from. That has some checks and balances on it. I think balance is both both the needs from the brand's perspective to make sure that the athletes are kind of vested in performing at races and things like that, but also what you mentioned, something that the athletes have already started to command.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, manned, absolutely, and I'll I'll kind of go to the side of the athlete manager and brand on this, you know, because over the years the conversations I've had with the athletes are well gosh. You know, they're hardly paying me anything and they would say to the sponsor if you just gave me this much more and I could use it for body work and physical therapy if I got injured right, or I'm less likely to get injured if I have these things or if I have a coach. So they were the ones that specifically used those conversations to get the money. So it shouldn't be a problem if the brand is, then like that's great, here it is, but we need to see that. So I'm definitely like devil's advocate with that. If that's what you're going to use the money for anyway, it shouldn't be a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, internally I can say that we've been gradually changing our elite athlete kind of like business model, so to speak. So for years when I would work with elite athletes, my deal with them was is I'll coach you for free, you don't owe me anything in return. Just go out and run your heart out and do good, and we'll figure out how the ROI comes back to me in arrears. I'm okay. I'm okay with that. You go out and perform. I'm pretty sure the universe will kind of work that out.
Speaker 1:We're gradually shifting that more towards and recognizing this contract shift is a big part of that. We're gradually shifting that more towards. Listen, the athlete's got to pay If this is part of their contract. This is part of what it takes to be an elite athlete. They're a small business. They've got to kind of reinvest in their business. This is a part of the way, just like having an agent. This is part of the way that they reinvest in themselves and reinvest in their business. Now, I'm not going to say that's like turned on a dime or that it's gone from zero to a thousand all of the sudden, like 0% to a thousand percent all of a sudden, like 0% to 1,000% all of a sudden, but we're gradually being able to titrate that up to where there's a reasonable amount of an economy involved in coaching these athletes, so much so that we kind of have a not kind of we do. We have a specific product where we can kind of like wrap a team around them, and it's more than reasonable across all different fronts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's smart.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to move on to number eight. Before signing a multi-year contract, implement a clause to reevaluate compensation annually. This is protective for both the brand and the athlete.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I've seen this on a few contracts and so one I'm going to start with like a nutrition sponsor. If you're starting with a multi-year contract like a nutrition sponsor, if you're starting with a multi-year contract with a nutrition sponsor and this is the first time you're signing with them, it's really difficult to see how that product works with you during a race, if you're, if you've only tried it during like a couple of training runs. So then you sign like three-year contract with them and you're like after you know six months, you're like this is not the product for me. It's nice to have a little bit of an out where you can re-evaluate things over the year for the product anyway. Or the shoe, let's say you sign with a very specific type of shoe that is, uh, unique, uh, and I've seen a few athletes seen or like I just can't race in these shoes. I can't, it's not gonna work, and also and also just to reset.
Speaker 2:So it's a good, it's a good thing for the sponsors to give kind of feedback on like where we've been this past, like this first year, especially if it's a new athlete to see. These are the things we'd love to see you work on. They are in your contract, by the way. But we just want to kind of circle back to see if we can tighten up on some things, or if the athlete has. If that same contract, let's say, does not have a, it has a weak bonus structure and all of a sudden this athlete's blowing up and winning everything under the sun. I love that.
Speaker 1:Revisiting it once a year to see if you can adjust that yeah, because, let's face it, that can happen on a dime and sometimes out of nowhere, like we see these performances all the time. Vincent Bullyard is probably a great example of that, although he's not like really looking to turn pro, or at least that's what he's been indicating, indicating in public. Those performances can have a night and day difference where all of a sudden you've never heard to somebody and then all of a sudden they're the hottest thing on the planet 12, 12 months from now. That doesn't always happen. Usually it's like a stepwise increase, but if you get caught behind the eight ball, you kind of the way that I've viewed it is you kind of miss out on a couple of years of your earning potential, if you're kind of really locked into that and that ends up being the case no-transcript brand doesn't do that and they're paying this person, you know, 10 grand or 12 grand or something.
Speaker 2:It's not uncommon that a bigger brand would buy them out of that contract anyway.
Speaker 1:Well, that's exactly where I was going to go. So I've had athletes that have been in this position. They've been in midstream contracts and they have some sort of like unworldly series of performances or whatever, and they're literally getting underpaid for what they're kind of, what they're delivering and what the sponsor kind of expected them to do. I, going back to your earlier point, to advocate for yourself, I and what I've always told the athletes is, I think it's the in the brand's best interest to lock you up and to renegotiate your contract in advance of when it's over. Not try to squeeze. Oh man, we're only paying somebody 10 grand and they're giving us, you know, 500 million Brazilian dollars of marketing value because they're the hottest thing on the planet, or whatever. If I was sitting there, being a brand manager, I would say listen, I got lucky. I found this athlete, I found you know, I found the needle in the haystack. I found the person that's going to be like so marketable, let's renegotiate. Now that they're like there, are they like the brand, they've been with us for a while, let's go and overpay them. And that's what I would think as a brand manager, and I tell the athletes that that like, go and advocate for yourself because they've got to realize that they're.
Speaker 1:When brands are signing athletes, I'll let everybody in on a little secret about high performance. When brands are out there scouring the world trying to find the athletes that are going to do well and be marketable and things like that, they all claim to have their proprietary systems. And okay, we're going to look at this race and okay, the athlete had this jump to this jump on this race. All that is bullshit. They're all just guessing and the ones that end up having the premium athletes either got lucky early in the athlete's career or tagged onto them after they were very good. There's no other way around it.
Speaker 1:I know there's a lot of people that spend a lot of time prognosticating on who's going to be the next X, who's going to be the next Killian, who's going to be the next goat or whatever. And when somebody actually finds that person, they find the magic. They claim to have the magic formula, but in reality that's maybe 1% of it and then 99% of it is they just got lucky. If brands just realized that and said, listen, we just we found the next whoever whatever analog you actually want to give went back to the athlete and said hey, we think you're the next. Whatever, let's get out of your contract early, start paying you what you're worth.
Speaker 1:I think that it's a better setup across the board versus having to come to it to the very end because you know you're going to get courted right, you know you're going to get courted and you know that after the fact people are going to try to come in and beat you to the punch, so to speak. So I've always said why not get in front of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Even if let's say it's the first year of a three-year contract and they blow up. I super agree with what you just said. Like get rid of that. Even just sign them for one more year to see where they're at Give it.
Speaker 2:put all your eggs in that one basket for a year. Give them what they deserve. It will be helpful to you. And then if someone does decide to buy them out, then you're still getting more money and like it's a win, it's all. Yeah, I mean, I hate to be businessy that way, but that absolutely is.
Speaker 1:I think you burn some sentiment when you don't do that. I mean, it still is going to come down to the next contract round because athletes are going to be driven by. They're primarily going to be driven by the value of the contract. There's obviously other things that go into it, but I kind of think that when you don't extend that goodwill this is me playing the role of brand manager on behalf of my athletes. Once again, athletes are my constituents I do think you burn a little bit of goodwill by not doing that, by not at least owning up for the remainder of the contract to pay kind of like fair market value, and that comes back to bite you in the rear once if you try to take a long-term perspective at it.
Speaker 2:Right, right, I agree.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's skip to number nine. This might get me get my blood boiling as well.
Speaker 2:I don't remember what it is, so tell me.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you Understand the images and likeness in the terms of your contract, knowing when to redline this section of a contract from the start. So I'll start out and you can kind of go. Athletes are in large part sports models they're used in. You can go and open up any catalog and you will see. Alongside actual sports models you will see athletes that are performing at the highest level, that may be unbeknownst to the viewing public, are who they are, but they're absolutely being utilized in that way. So you've got this specific point to understand what the kind of like framework and limitations of this likeness and image piece actually is when you sign it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think so often. It's usually kind of like anything, like we don't know what, we don't know until we know it, sort of. So when you first get into a contract, your first few years, like I don't really know, you're just like, well, this is what the contract says. So this is how I have to go about it.
Speaker 2:And, like anything, you can always fight for something and be like, well, this is really what I would like to have on it. A brand might go with it or not. Like I've got all these tips and you might be like, well, I tried all of them and I only got three, but you just never know. So this is one of those things where this is a very regular conversation on both sides of the coin and often an athlete manager will, especially if it's a new to the company manager. They're sort of just inheriting this boilerplate contract that has been there for years and they probably came in a fury and the athlete manager has no idea what the heck the thing says either. So they don't mean you any ill will or harm, they just are. Just you know it's a storm.
Speaker 2:So what I would do go through and find someone you know, find an attorney, find someone to speak to that you trust, and dig through imaging and terms of what the likeness they might like that means. I don't know if someone creates a Jason Koop bobblehead that is a likeness of Koop or photo or video, or whether it's in print or it's a mailer in a. It's not often these days, but you might get something from, let's say, eddie Bauer, rei, and inside the catalog for that season is a insert. That's a mailer. It has picture of you. But is there a clock on this contract sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So put a clause in your contract red line things you don't like on imaging and if there, if it doesn't say it in there, then then you need to put it in Something that says this if it's used in a campaign, the campaign, if it runs for more than three months, then you're adding X amount of dollars to every other time that particular image was used again. And if all of a sudden like, let's say, they run and a brand runs something for a campaign, and then it's great, it's there for 60 days and it's all over the internet, it's on Instagram and Twitter and all that, and then it goes away. But then they all of a sudden the holidays come around and that shoe's now on sale or they want to push that shoe again that you were wearing in this image and they show that again, again. Put something in your contract that gives you monetary kickback for that so real world example of this.
Speaker 1:I'm going to anonymize this as much as possible. It's an athlete that I no longer work with but I worked for with for a long time, pretty popular athlete, also a good looking athlete. Like most athletes have a good, just phenotype and architecture about them where the brands want to use them in images because they're athletic looking and they resonate with the everyday person. They're not a sports model, right when they're like you know, like coming off of the parish runways or things like that. They're actually real people, real good looking people that other real people can look at and kind of aspire to. So this person fit that mold very well.
Speaker 1:I was doing some consulting work, some ad hoc consulting work, with this brand. I flew into one of the biggest airports in the world, stepped off of the airplane, started walking down the terminal to get into my Uber and there is a 30 foot tall picture of this person in one of the biggest airports in the world in a brand store that is attached to the airport and I immediately called this person. At first off, I was thrilled for them. I was like hey, that's cool. Like here's a gigantic image of you that you're still with this brand and I said did you know that they're using these images? Cause I was with this person when they were kind of collecting these images, so to speak. So did you know that they use this image of you when you were here in this fashion?
Speaker 1:And this person goes no, they told me that they were using it for something far more remedial than that, far more remedial than that, like a, you know, social media campaign or something like that.
Speaker 1:And they just happened to like the image so much that they blew it up 30 feet tall in the middle of one of the busiest airports in the world that hundreds of thousands of people are walking by. And my first thought is what you were just thinking is let's go look at the contract and see what the scope of limitations are for using these images. And sure enough, it's unlimited, right. This is six or seven years ago, when all these things were a little bit more of the wild west. But to your point of trying to figure out what that scope of limitations are, here's an instance where, if that brand were to pay a proper sports model to go and do the exact same thing, they would have to pay five or ten x of what that athlete's entire contract would be, and they're just getting away. You turn on your mic when you say things like. That makes me sound.
Speaker 2:It makes me sound better my blood is boiling just hearing this yeah.
Speaker 1:So I guess my point, I guess my point with that, I guess my point with that is, is these things like actually happen and as an athlete, first off, you should be recognized for and paid for the work that you're, the services that you're providing in this case is your like, likeness and image. But you also have to protect yourself on the front end when you're signing these contracts, to know that they can, they have the potential to have these things happen.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's such a great example because it happens repeatedly and I'll give you. You know, fit models are a friend of mine who's also an athlete. He's sponsored by a shoe company, strong Athlete, and he was approached by another brand that he doesn't work with to be a fit model for a campaign. So he spent two days with this other company that he's not sponsored with made.
Speaker 1:Sports models make a lot. I know we're.
Speaker 2:Twice as much for this two-day fit model gig for a brand he's not sponsored with than any of the actual contracts I had on my desk at that specific day for the brand that hired him. So let's say you're being, I don't know, here I have Fritos. Fritos is going to sponsor you.
Speaker 1:Chef Kelly coming in with the Fritos on her desk. I love that. I know I'm at Morgan's desk.
Speaker 2:Fritos is going to hire you to be a fit model to do two days for them and they're going to pay you $30,000 for two days and meanwhile they have a handful of athletes that they are approaching to that they're literally offering to be annual sponsored athletes for them and their offer to those athletes is $10,000 for a year. So my big besides that, there's levels to this that are just crap. But I love putting in a contract that any time for an athlete and it will go under this whole image and video and likeness thing that you get first dibs as an athlete at any campaign you're running, you get first dibs over a fit model.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's super smart. This dovetails into the next point which we were going to combine and, kelly, if you'll give me such liberty, I'm going to add my own flair to this, are you okay with that? Okay, so this is the last one and I want to come back and revisit one point, but it dovetails into this likeness in image piece. Know that you are a marketing employee and my flair is and asset for the brands that you sign with. So the employee being you're an actual worker bee and the asset is your actual image Two distinct things that get rolled into this marketing bundle that you have to realize, the kind of the game that everybody's playing here.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thank you for stating that. That is such a great segue into stating to the athlete manager that you have a potential, you have an offer with like. I recognize that I am a marketing employee at this point, but I also want you to recognize that I know that I am an asset and my likeness and my image is an asset to you, so this is a very right. It's a good touche to put in an email or say in a meeting and it's really like look, I want you to know that I understand this, but I also want you to know that I really do understand this.
Speaker 1:I understand the world that we're playing in right. I'm not so naive to it.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I love that. You know there's a handful of athletes. I remember sitting on an airplane next to a very well-known ultra runner one day and overhearing when someone asked him what he did and he said I'm a marketing employee for fill in the blank brand.
Speaker 1:Because it was easier for him to have the conversation.
Speaker 2:I'm a sponsored athlete and the other was. He recognized that it was just. It was true.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's smart. Well, there you go. It avoids the conversation. Okay, let's come back to something that I egregiously skipped over on the contract and the support piece of it. Egregiously skipped over on the contract and the support piece of it.
Speaker 1:I'm finding more and more that athlete managers have some level of discretion.
Speaker 1:After everything is all signed and all the you know I's are dotted and the T's are crossed and you're in the middle, midstream of your contract or whatever. That when athletes go back and they have a good relationship with the brands that they are working with, when they go back midstream and say, hey, listen, can I get support for X or can we change this to Y or can I do something different, that's not stated in here At least. I found and I want to get both your impression on it but then also how you think athletes should handle this that the athlete managers are just more receptive to those midstream types of changes and they have either formal discretionary stuff and funds that they can use or they've got the kind of authority, so to speak, to roll things up the ladder and say, hey, listen for this athletes that's doing this, that's not on their contract. Why don't we divvy up our funds or allocate our resources or whatever, because of this special situation. What do you have to say to that discretionary piece after it's all said and done?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. It's literally why I always say before hey, before you sign anything, ask for everything you want. If you're like, oh, I'm going to ask me about my camp after I'm signed, You're not going to get anything, ask for everything you want. If you're like, oh, I'm going to ask them about my camp after I'm signed, You're not going to get anything for your camp after you're signed, Put it in. Put it in before. But I will say this If let's say I don't know, I'll use Killian as an example. If midway through the year, he was like I've just decided I'm going to go run up the Matterhorn as fast as I can.
Speaker 1:This is Killian, Everybody just says OK, go Right Over lunch during his lunch break During lunch break.
Speaker 2:So he's got some big thing he wants to do and it will be a great marketing tool for the company. The company is going to find the money for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, does that answer your question?
Speaker 1:It does Okay. Last point before we get onto a four-hour podcast.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And I want to expand on this a little bit because it's 1230. It's almost lunchtime for me.
Speaker 1:This has themes of something that we mentioned earlier, but the way that you expressed it, or the way that you expressed it on Instagram, was if you can't run in the shoes, you shouldn't be signing with them, and what I want to do is I want to expand that to all the different types of partners that athletes can bring on board Footwear, equipment, nutrition and things like that.
Speaker 1:There's this, this general.
Speaker 1:There's this point of it's not consternation, but it's kind of confusion with how much should the athletes scrutinize the products that they're using, promoting, wearing, advocating for and this came up in the whole spring energy controversy as well, where they had this huge ambassador network and their project their products turned out to be fraudulent, unbeknownst to the athletes themselves, but a lot of people took that as as well.
Speaker 1:The athletes should have known better or should have put more kind of like scrutiny on that, which that's a legitimate source of feedback. So I kind of turn it over to you when athletes are like negotiating contracts, they obviously can't be responsible for the entire like you know product chain of every single, of every single component that the brand has underneath their purvey, where it's sourced and how it's made, and do they have humanitarian, you know blah, blah, blah and all this kind of stuff, but there's still, at the same time, should be some sort of reasonable scrutiny that the athlete is kind of putting on the products themselves. So how do you counsel athletes on that, on that front, particularly with new brand or brands that are new to them? They're switching from one to another or they're just doing this for the first time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really great question, especially, you know, as we have such an actual, solid example.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that's why I bring that up. I mean I know that boils a lot of people's blood, but like actually that did happen, that we can't like erase history or whatever that, something like that actually happened, and it's unfortunate that that some of the athletes got caught in the crosshairs of that. But how, what should athletes be doing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a hypothetical. So most contracts, I'm certain, like everyone that I've honestly ever seen, has a like you can't speak disparagingly about your brand, blah, blah, blah. However, if, let's say, if I was an athlete for spring, I could care less of what they thought after I said that, because I don't want to stay with you anyway. So it doesn't matter if I breached your contract by saying something disparaging. So I think it's a really good lesson in delivery and taking a beat to like how can I say this about this particular product? Let's say, it's a shoe that you are working with a brand and it's campaign for a shoe that you're like you have to do. You're required to do this campaign for the shoe.
Speaker 2:I think it's important to be honest with something and we're all different as far as what we're looking for with a product, but you, you know it's really. It's always possible to be like, hey, these are the great things that I like about this shoe, I like this one. This one works better for me on these things, but I would use this one for fill in the blank or this one's still my favorite, but so it's kind of that stroke kick method, but I would be aware of the delivery, of how you say it, just for your own protection, or you could always just run it by honestly by your athlete manager. But I'm more of a ask for forgiveness later kind of person, because if you're wearing so there's a certain brand that I just cannot wear all personally, like I feel like I'm getting injured and I can't, no matter what I do, I can't wear that product. So when someone asks me about it, that's my feedback.
Speaker 1:But that happens all the time on the front end, and that's I kind of want to take this part of the discussion sequentially. So you have an athlete that's getting courted by brands, multiple brands. So you have an athlete that's getting courted by brands, multiple brands what level of due diligence would you advise that they actually do on those brands?
Speaker 2:As far as the product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as far as the products themselves, Should they actually get in? Should they wear testing? Should they test things out from a nutrition perspective? How deep can that actually go? I'm not saying that athletes who are signing new contracts need to these like ultimate arbiters of the products that are coming out. I'm not saying that at all. But what I'm trying to get a little bit of a flavor for, and what we can kind of counsel athletes on, is how, like how can they do enough in advance to make sure that the products are going to work for them, that they can authentically endorse some or all of the features of the products as you've just mentioned? Like, how can they navigate that?
Speaker 2:I love this question. One of your athletes just yesterday was like you're going to send these emails out, all these people that sent you offers and terms, and you're going to respond. Ask if there's a clock and you're going to ask them to send you products so you can test the product. Absolutely, ask for the product right away Because, again to the statement, you don't sign with the company if you can't run in the shoes. And there's a couple, two or three brands out there right now that are very specific, that some people are like gosh. You know these people. This brand has money coming out of their money but it cannot run in their shoes.
Speaker 2:It's unfortunate, but I would absolutely. My response to that is always are you sure? When was the last time you ran in their shoes? You're like well, it was three years ago. Like they have new models now. Ask them to send you specific, different ones to try. Give it a shot. They're really coming after you, but I would absolutely like you've got to try, otherwise you're going to be, you know, leaving the starting line in the shoe and jumping in the you know, the bushes at the first aid station and putting on a different brand and that's not going to fly well. So, as far as nutrition, send me any time, send me a product, send me working sample, if you.
Speaker 2:One thing I love about the feet is because it's or like even Vibra. I'm like it doesn't matter what shoes or food you want, because they're all encompassing. I always thought those were two smart brands. But let's say, if you're, I don't know again, fritos is going to sponsor you. Go out into the woods with a band of Fritos and spend 10 hours out there messing around and see how you feel. But yeah, am I answering your question?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying to get a flavor and I'm trying to like communicate to the audience and the athletes that are like contemplating this is what's like try to get a try to get the answer to what's a reasonable level of scrutiny to put on these things. I mean, obviously, yeah, they've got to be able to run the shoes, but you and I both know many examples of where that is not the case. They're sponsored by Brand X. They cannot wear Brand X's shoes and it's a shoe company. This is where it kind of comes into conflict. And then they wear shoe Y at the right.
Speaker 1:I mean that happened when the Vaporflies first came out because everybody was looking for a performance advantage that were not like not nike athletes and it caused a level of consternation amongst the whole community for a short period of time. Now, with their brand, I think we need to recognize that our brands out there that are trying to do either a head-to-toe solution or some semblance of a head-to-toe solution, so they're a shoe company that is also trying to outfit the rest of the athlete in a branded pack and a shirt and they might not be the best textile manufacturer or pack manufacturer and things like that, and so it gets kind of hairy with athletes that are either a really particular about their gear or B don't test it out in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a pack is a really good example of that. My advice is let's say, you end pack is a really good example of that. My advice is let's say you end up with a sponsor that's doing that. You're already signed with them and all of a sudden they're like oh, we have this co-company or we're co-partnering with fill in the blank brand for this pack and you have to wear it. Now, that's just it. Try the pack. If you're like this thing is horrible, I absolutely cannot wear it, then you need to let them know I'm not wearing it.
Speaker 2:It's not going to happen. Let's say, if it's a shoe company and they don't make a road running racing shoe yeah, that happens a lot actually. Then most contracts will say that's the caveat. If they don't make a product that you need to do a specific event, then you can wear something else.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this dovetails into the next piece of this. We're kind of going chronologically.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So the athlete does their due diligence. They can run in the shoes that they're promoting. They like the pack that they're actually wearing. They authentically, you know, have kind of tested it out. Then what happens midstream is the promotional side of things right, where let's face it with any piece of nutrition or gear and everybody needs to sit down and really think about this before you pass judgment. There are things that you like about it and there are things that you don't. I can take my favorite running shoe, my favorite running shoe of all time, which was probably the Speed Gun.
Speaker 2:Pearl Zumi.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pearl Zumi, actually, no, that's actually that is my favorite running shoe of all time. I had to really rack my brain on that one, pearl Zumi. I can look at that shoe and there are things that I loved about it it was my absolute favorite shoe of all time and there are things that I really didn't like about it. There's about it it was my absolute favorite shoe of all time and there are things that I really didn't like about it. There are. There's always things that you don't like about whatever it is with nutrition, product, piece of gear kind of whatever. And so how do you help athletes navigate that, that piece of it where there are, where they're having to promote a product, kind of through the lens of their role of being a marketing employee of the of the brand, where there is some of this internal conflict? I like these pieces, I don't like these pieces. How do I publicly, how do I publicly kind of communicate that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question, something that happens so often to athletes. So I think there's a way that you can do it. I think you can be professional in the way you like, list all the great things and you're like there's a few things that I wish that I would love to see tweaked. If there's a second edition of this, or maybe in the year, I can't looking forward to giving my notes on this to our shoe designers, you know, for feedback for the next edition. Or you know I think there's a way to do it for the next edition, or you know I think there's a way to do it. But it's also important to know.
Speaker 2:But remember, just because there were things that I might not like as an athlete, if I list it, another person that's reading it might be like I don't care about that. You know like I love that part of it. You know some people love that. Like you know, it has like really sticky rubber here. It's like I'm like gosh, that's just too hard, I can't run in that carbon foot plate. And some people are like I love a carbon foot plate and I might be like I don't like the shoe because of that and they're like I don't care. So that's important to remember as well. But I think that it's up to the athlete. Some people it's not important to them to be able to be. You and I are very like. We want to give all the feedback for our own research and just to share that, and not everybody wants to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the public kind of comes down to feel bad speaking for the public, because maybe I missed the mark on this, but they kind of come down to two things. Right, it really resonates with them when people can communicate how they are authentically using things, like I'm actually using this product or this piece of nutrition in this exact scenario. This is exact. I woke up, I waited an hour and I took this gel and I liked the way the gel tasted and I waited 30 more minutes and then I took another gel.
Speaker 1:Where they get, where the public kind of gets sideways and gets cynical I'll use that word they get kind of cynical about it is when the person doing the communicating is kind of exaggerating their use or their involvement in it. So I'll give you a good example of what happens in footwear, right, so in footwear they use the elite athletes as part of their testing group. And that testing group in that test, that testing group happens in the field. They send them a bunch of shoes, tell us what you think, tell us where the wear patterns are, tell us what you like, tell us what you don't like. It also happens in the lab, right, they go to a lab, they do running economy testing. They do whatever the shoe companies are actually doing when the athlete actually tells that story.
Speaker 1:In that sequence, I got the shoes, I ran them on, I ran them on, I ran them on, I ran with them on the trail. I then went to the lab. This is what we found out of the lab and things like that. When they tell that authentic story, the public can then realize it. But when that story gets like exaggerated to I helped develop the shoe, or you know, this is my like co-signed shoe, or something like that when they're exaggerating their involvement in the entire process, that's where people at least in my experience kind of get turned off and get really cynical about it. Because they then look at that and say, no, wait a minute, were you actually in the manufacturing process and you told them to choose this foam and not that foam? Or did you just wear it for 10 runs and say I like this foam and that foam?
Speaker 2:That's kind of like where I'm getting at and where I think like sometimes we need some like navigation guidance. Yeah, that's a good conversation and I've also seen the frustration on the eyes of the shoe designer when they read posts like that.
Speaker 1:And they're like no, they didn't. We sent them two colorways.
Speaker 2:They chose a specific shoelace or that, they wanted boa, and then they chose this, this is my shoe though yeah, and I'm like dude, I'm so sorry like I feel that, as a chef, I feel that so, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of layers to that but needless to say like being honest with delivery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess, like, where would you come at it with, like you're going to be your? Now that's part of your business, right? This is you going to be helping athletes like navigate this kind of like part of it and there's not, like it's not explicitly drawn out, and I'm just wondering where you would come at it from an advice standpoint in terms of how athletes should be communicating what that testing process looks like.
Speaker 2:I think if you're going to put the post out there and communicate with, be as direct as you can and your involvement and is clear on every step. If you're going, go in, yeah, yeah, because, like you said, then there's no room for scrutiny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, or there's no room for miscommunication right If you just like say how you authentically used it.
Speaker 2:I think that's the big or I don't know, man, I wasn't there. The shoes made in Germany, but I had a lot of conversations with the team and this. These are the things I specifically did help with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we. So I've told the story a few times. Many years ago we were partners with Goo Energy Labs and it was when their Roctane energy drink, when they were formulating it essentially, and they sent us like a gazillion cans of it to our office. And at the time we were running lots and lots of camps and so we had a high use case for using this product with athletes in real time under like really intense conditions, cause they're doing a training camp where they're like tripling or you've seen those training camps, kelly, they're like tripling or quadrupling their volume and so it became a good like incubator for goo to kind of like, test their like, test their their drink mix out and the the overwhelming piece that I'm going to synopsize this as concisely as I can the overwhelming feedback was we really like the way this product works.
Speaker 1:It tastes terribly, but that was our extent and this is my point. That was our extent being a marketing employee of goo at the time. We had a relationship with them and things like that. That was part of their, that was part of that was a part of their deal and we told that story. In that way.
Speaker 1:We got in some of the early cases of goo rock tang. We gave them to our hundreds of athletes that were coming through our camp product. This was their feedback and they changed the flavor formulation for their final release. What we didn't say was we helped to goo formulate this product because we didn't. We just gave it to our athletes. That's all we did. And I use those stories a little bit as a little bit of a parallel, because that happens all the time in product development, where you're using your partners, you're using athletes, you're using people that are your marketing employees as part of that product as part of that product development cycle and then also to tell the story of how the product kind of came to life, comes to life and how it gets used in real time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great parallel, but you know there's a difference between I helped create or I was part of the testing program. I've tested this for months, sort of thing I'll use, let's say, like Adidas and Tom Evans a few years ago.
Speaker 2:He very specifically put a lot of time in working on a shoe with them and they promoted the shoe as his shoe. That is a very legitimate true product partnership right. But it's not like you know. They sent that shoe to everyone else in the team and it wasn't like Corinne Malcolm, who was on the team, was like I helped create the shoe. She didn't. She tested it a few times but she would never have said I helped create this shoe.
Speaker 1:Exactly. There's actually a research paper, a case study, on part of that entire process where they looked at his running economy across different grades, and I absolutely agree with you that that's an authentic use case to where the athlete is so involved in it they can say, listen, they literally did, they made it for them.
Speaker 2:I still have that shoe. I love it.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you were a fan, but I liked it. Yeah, I liked it a lot. I have a lot of Adidas shoes that I'm rotating through. I've worked with them. I'm sure you do as well.
Speaker 2:Same Coop same.
Speaker 1:All right, all right, kelly, this has been wonderful. I hope the audience and the athletes out there, both that you work with you're peeling back the curtain a little bit on your business model. The athletes that you are starting to work with directly, but also the athletes that are navigating the process, can learn something from. Is there anything you want to leave, particularly the elite athletes that are listening to this? Is there anything that you want to leave them with that's kind of universal, whenever you have these touch points with them that we can all kind of learn and grow from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, just be curious and don't get so caught up, especially for those that are first signing your first contract.
Speaker 2:Try not to allow yourself to get so caught up in the sexiness of being signed as a professional athlete that you're like five grand, I'll take it, and you run away, stop and take a beat and you have a great story of one of your athletes from years ago who was like I'm going to be rich, I have my first contract. It was like $10,000. But just take a minute and just pause before you sign your life away, like have someone help you with it, before you get caught up, because inevitably what happens is the dozens of times an athlete athlete it says to me gosh, I remember how stupid I was when I signed my first contract, or that's not a nice word, but I just didn't know and I was so excited to sign anything that I would have signed it for free or for a dollar. Take a minute and ask yourself, you know, to really dig through that contract and see what is there and what is not there.
Speaker 1:Kelly, I have to thank you because, to to that story right there, the whole landscape has gotten better and that doesn't happen by accident. You can take a lot of credit for that. You're not the only person that can take credit, but you can take a lot of credit for it because you've been such a staunch advocate for athletes, both informally and now formally, which I think is really cool. We're in a much better position than that story would indicate Several years ago and if anybody wants to buy me a beer, if you're at a race, I'll gladly anonymize that story and tell you the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a huge. We're at a really great point right now where we have the opportunity for these much bigger contracts to come our way and when I say our, I mean to this ultra running community. But it's going to take the athlete and whoever's representing them, whether it's their partner or if they have an agent or just a coach. It's going to take someone to get them to actually search those out and demand that. If we're just sit and wait and complain for it to happen, it's not going to, but we are knocking on that door.
Speaker 1:It's very cool, exciting time yeah, I think it's cool once again. I didn't say that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when I first started to have to encounter all this, and now I I'm in, now seeing the progression. I'm happy with the progress, but I know that there's more to come and, like I said, I just want to express how grateful I am to you and all the athlete managers out there that are doing it right, that circle of people that has gradually gotten bigger and bigger to where it used to be one, maybe one, and now I can say it's getting bigger and bigger. So I'm super bullish on the future. I'm bullish on the future for everybody the brands, the athletes, the agents now that you can call yourself in that cohort and all our support services. Kelly, this has been awesome, thank you. I'm going to leave links in the show notes to everything, but once again, from you to me, I've always appreciated you and this has just been a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks so much, Coop. I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 1:All right people, there you have it, there you go. Much thanks to Kelly for coming on the podcast today and maybe demystifying some of this process, but hopefully providing the elite athletes out there, maybe the brand managers who are listening and also the public at large, a little bit of a toolkit, so to speak, for how to handle a lot of these contract renegotiations. We're still in the really early stages of this. From a trail and ultra running perspective, we don't have a lot of precedent to work with, and then the fact that a lot of these contracts are wrapped up in NDAs, unlike some of the league sports, I do think limits the way, or maybe the rate, that we actually see these things progress and the kind of the sophistication that they progress with. Nonetheless, I'm super happy with where we're at and where we're going. I do wish all the elite athletes out there that are going through this process a whole lot of luck and fortune. Go out and advocate for yourselves and, as we mentioned during the podcast, I'm appreciative of the brand managers starting to take a little bit more ownership over this and also treating the athletes a little bit more fairly within these contract negotiations.
Speaker 1:That is it for today, folks, if you like this podcast, feel free to share it with your friends and your training partners. You found it entertaining. You found it informative. That is it for today, folks, if you like this podcast, feel free to share it with your friends and your training partners. You found it entertaining. You found it informative. That is the best way that you can spread the love of this podcast. As always, it is not monetized in any way, shape or form through advertisements and sponsorships. I went through that during the course of this podcast. Is my audience, my constituents, are athletes. They are not the brands, although I do love them, but the people that I am primarily looking out for are athletes and my commitment to those athletes is not to take on any sponsorships to potentially adulterate the content that is within this podcast. So if you find it informative, just spread the love and share it with people. That is the absolute best thing that you can do. All right, folks, that is it for today and, as always, we will see you out on the trails.
