Episode 548: Five Minute Friday Check-in

Speaker A: Foreign

Speaker B: welcome to Sports Business Secrets. I'm your host, Kevin Tarka. This podcast is specifically designed to share secrets from experts in the sports business world to help you along your own path to success in this industry. Each episode is packed with lessons and insights that never expire. You'll hear from general managers of professional teams, to CEOs of sports tech companies, to agents, coaches, players, and everything in between. I invite you to join me in real time on my personal journey of representing players and coaches, traveling the world, and always finding a way to battle through obstacles in this competitive industry.

Speaker C: Happy Friday my friends. We got a quick one here today. Heading into the weekend, I'll do a five minute little check in to let you know what I've been up to and uh, a couple things I got my eye, my eyes on here leading into the busy summer of sports business and basketball landscape. So a couple of updates to start with. If you missed the ten year, uh, blog post that I wrote or the uh, the post on LinkedIn, please go check it out. Um, it was uh, yeah, it was a, it was a big milestone. I, I meant to do a whole episode on that, but I guess I forgot to do the deep dive. No need. I'll give you a quick recap here. Long story short is, I've been at this thing for a long time. It's been, it's been a decade, uh, since I quit the in quotes 9 to 5 and began this absurd journey along the sports business landscape with zero blueprint, no clue what the hell I was doing. Just a naive vision of what I thought was success at the time and the sheer will and belief in myself to just figure it out, which uh, which I am obviously still doing. So, um, yeah, that, that long blog post just kind of goes through, if you haven't listened yet or you're new here, um, to what I've been up to over the last 10 years, what I've been building, the places I've been, the people I've met. So, uh, on and so forth. So go check that out. Um, the next update here is a little Roy update. Obviously if you've listened to the podcast, you've heard a little bit about my involvement with Roy and the Roy Project and how excited I was about that and still am. Um, but as an update here, uh, I'm going to be taking a step back from as much as I've been involved with it. As I hinted last month, the, the House versus NCAA settlement, uh, is bringing major shifts to the college sports landscape, obviously. Uh, and it's just imperative to adapt with that. And if you didn't see earlier this week that was passed, um, the, the settlement was officially passed. I'm not going to dive into that today. I might actually have a guest episode and we'll do a deep dive next week on the settlement variables, uh, and what that means. But, uh, due to that and the official athletes getting paid directly from rev share stage of college sports, like I mentioned, things are, you know, you need to adapt to it and things are changing for all businesses and stakeholders involved. Which means Roy is pivoting the business a bit to really serve schools directly. Um, and so we've officially launched every nil vault. Um, it's more of a fintech platform that really helps athletic departments automate nil reporting and stay compliant during this next stage of college sports. Um, so, uh, with most startup journeys, the path has not been linear for sure. Uh, and change to whatever you're doing. Change in general, let alone a business plan, is never easy. But pivots are just part of the game. Um, you know, that stands true for businesses and that stands true for me as well. Right. So I always need to adapt and pivot and um, change with circumstances and that's kind of what I'm doing. So, uh, you know, it's just, it doesn't fit the exact vision, uh, and need that, um, was there before. Right. Working directly with athletes, working with coaches and um, basically relationships in my network already that direct to consumer business is not really the same vision. So that's why, you know, I'm going to be taking a step back and helping where I can. Um, but just really shifting all of my focus back to the agency side for now, which you obviously have still been doing, um, you know, helping athletes navigate basically the global hoops landscape. Right. Negotiating contracts, procuring contracts abroad, um, doing on court stuff, off court stuff, guiding the nil space, which is going to be a big, um, next chapter here for KTA heading into this summer, which I can update you on in the coming weeks. Um, speaking of kta, the KTA update, you probably saw that, uh, Toyo Kano, uh, we have the official extension with the Shibuya Sunrockers, which is very, very exciting. Uh, so he's uh, you know, if you followed his journey and all, it's uh, it's obviously I, I say this for all my clients and I might be a bit biased because they're my guys, but yeah, Toyo's journey has been miraculous. Um, is one, uh, way to put it. But from not really Knowing what he wants to do with his life, uh, you know, being in California, uh, after some school, to getting his first professional contract, to the injury in B3, to jumping up to B2 this last year and then in the third year of his professional contract getting a large extension to say the least. Um, and then he's going to be making a splash not only in the B league next season, um, but uh, for the first time. But he also got his official camp to Japan national, sorry, his official invite to Japan national team, uh, training camp. So he's actually there as we speak. Today's the first day and so hopefully we'll be, you know, we'll be having a summer full of uh, Japan national team events and leading up to FIBA Asia cup in Saudi Arabia in August. So obviously more on that to come, but um, we'll see. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of great players that got invited to camp and uh, you know, him being one of the young ones, you never know what could happen. But I know that uh, I know that he's going to impress a lot of people once he, once he uh, gets out there and he's able to do what he does. Uh, and then the rest of KTA stuff. So for free agency obviously June and July are hot months here for international leagues. Uh, so we got Donovan, uh, we got Jaime, we got Austin, a few other guys I'm trying to help out. So in the coming weeks, hopefully before the end of uh, July, we'll have some new contracts and new teams to announce and I'll give you the details on that stuff when I have it. Ah. And then lastly with um, with more focus back on the agency. As always on my end, education plays a huge role or that's educating college players about how to sign with an agent or how the agency world works. Um, I'm kind of back to that um, that education side working on a project that I really started many years ago, but hoping to aggregate all of these blog posts, all of these podcast episodes and essentially build what's going to be um, a digital ecosystem, a uh, one stop shop of um, where everyone needs to be if you're a stakeholder in the basketball world and just this uh, platform if you will to have um, a resource for education if you want to see contracts, if you want to see rules, if you want to listen to what the markets are like. So that's kind of coming together as we speak and in the short term as a part of it, um, I'm going to be launching like essentially one of the market deep dives here. Um, market breakdowns coming soon, I'm hoping by the end of next week. But uh, let's see if you're listening to this. I might have to have you send me a message and hold me accountable and uh, and, and ask for where the full deep dive market breakdown is, at least the first one. So uh, yeah, that's what I got for you for the quick, quick update here. Heading into the weekend, uh, you're definitely going to want to tune in tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, um, USA time. I will launch uh, the next guest episode with a. Let's see. I'm gonna keep it a secret for now. Uh, it's a professional basketball player, um, entrepreneur, uh, creator, um, played at a high level of college basketball here in the States, played a national championship game uh, back in the day, uh, played for an amazing coach and he's got some great gems on uh, how he got recruited, what he studied, how he uh, how he transitioned from college player to pro and how he's transitioning from being a professional athlete to being a full time entrepreneur. So that is a, an episode you're definitely going to tune back into. Appreciate you uh, appreciate you listening today and as always, if you got an idea for me, if you want, um, you know, if you think I should interview someone or have them as a guest or you just want to chat sports business, you know where to find them. Have an amazing day. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning.

Speaker A: This episode is brought to you by Balogy, a uh mobile app created by coaches for coaches. The Balogy mobile uh app makes it easy for you to effectively evaluate, manage and track overall skill development for your team. This is not just another software, it's a solution to help you scale your program expectations and principles in less time. The Bali app is internationally available and used by some of the top programs in the US. Go to Balogy.com that's B A L L O G Y.com for more information.

Speaker B: Thanks again for listening my friends. If you enjoyed the episode or if it brought you any value at all, it would mean the world to me if you could give it a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. If you share it on social media, make sure you tag me at Kevin Tarka. If there are any topics that you want me to dive into or any guests you'd love for me to have on the show, just shoot me a message and I will do my best to make it happen. Have an amazing day and hope to see you back here. Soon.