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12–Kevin Hughes – Branding Athletes and Rewriting the Rules of Sports Marketing
26 Plays3 months ago
In this episode of The Unfolding Thought Podcast, Kevin Hughes, founder of Walker/Miles, dives into the seismic shifts in athlete branding and sports marketing in the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) era. Drawing on a career that spans professional basketball, HR, and creative leadership—including as the Minnesota Twins’ creative director—Kevin offers a unique perspective on navigating the intersection of storytelling, strategy, and innovation.
Kevin reveals the essential role of authenticity and adaptability in building impactful brands, from young athletes to established professionals. He shares how NIL is disrupting traditional pathways in sports, creating opportunities for athletes to take control of their narratives, and how universities can adapt to this new reality.
Tune in to hear Kevin’s insights on the power of story, the lessons he’s learned from working with world-class athletes, and what it takes to thrive in an industry where the rules are constantly evolving.
Mentioned in the Episode:
- The role of branding and storytelling in professional sports and collegiate programs.
- Insights into how the NIL era is reshaping the athlete-brand relationship.
- Lessons from Kevin’s time as creative director for the Minnesota Twins.
Links:
Connect with Kevin Hughes:
- Walker/Miles: http://walker-miles.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinhughesbranding/
Join the Conversation:
Have thoughts about this episode? Share them with us on social media, by leaving a review, emailing Eric at Eric@inboundandagile.com, or by visiting the website at https://unfoldingthought.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to Kevin Hughes
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Unfolding Thought podcast. My name is Eric Pratum. Today, I speak with Kevin Hughes, the founder of Walker Miles, a brand development agency based in Minneapolis with deep roots in collegiate and professional sports.
Kevin's Career Journey
00:00:22
Speaker
In our conversation, Kevin takes us on his journey from playing professional basketball, transitioning to HR and then portfolio school, working with professional athletes, collegiate and professional programs, and eventually launching two agencies.
00:00:41
Speaker
Early in the recording, Kevin's mic cuts out for a split second several times. I think you'll get the idea of what's being said, so I've left the recording as is.
Brand Strategy and Creative Development
00:00:52
Speaker
And now, I bring you Kevin Hughes. Well, Kevin, thanks for joining me. Could you please give all of our listeners at home a little bit about your background?
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Eric, again, thanks for having me on on the podcast. I'm really looking forward to the conversation. um Yeah, my name is is Kevin Hughes. I am currently the founder of a brand development agency called Walker Miles located here in Minneapolis. um A little bit about myself, kind of my my background, i've I've spent a lot of my, the majority of my career kind of in the brand strategy, creative development realm. um and i And if I had to summarize kind of my approach to what what I do, it's it's really ah working with clients, working with athletes, working with anything that you would identify as a brand, so to speak, and providing, you know, business strategy through the lens of brand development.
HR and Portfolio School Transition
00:01:52
Speaker
um That would be my my sweet spot. um A little bit of my background, I you know i worked um started my career in HR, actually, at a 14-degree company, Twin Cities, working on retention. um So a lot of ah looking the Twin Cities um kind of the surrounding area and what would, how we were recruiting individuals, but then we retained individuals that we recruited recruited from across the country. So really spent the first two to three years of my career um studying Twin Cities the way a sociologist would. And then um after leaving that position, I went back to portfolio school to get into the advertising side of the business and become a copywriter.
00:02:43
Speaker
Um, so worked in the Twin Cities here on the creative side, um, eventually launched my own agency. Um, and then I found myself in the last probably seven or eight years, I've found myself, um, back into, in kind of the, the.
00:03:01
Speaker
business side of sports. um I was the in-house creative director for the Minnesota Twins, the Major League Baseball team up here for about four seasons. And then before I started my agency, I worked in the professional athlete representation space.
Founding Walker Miles and NIL Focus
00:03:19
Speaker
um So I was doing a lot of brand strategy, um content development,
00:03:25
Speaker
not only for the agency, but then for the professional um NFL players that we represented. um And then in the last two years, did a lot of that same work in the NIL landscape ah with a lot of collegiate athletes that we represented. And now at at Walker Miles, um you know I find myself kind of in its in this sports world and we're kind of leaning into it and, and, you know, finding some, some success with a individual athlete brands, but also in this NIO space.
00:03:58
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you. So I want to make sure that we come back around to, you know, where you're you're really focusing at the moment and where you're seeing success and how you feel about the changes in the space and all that. But before we get there, I just want to clarify something real quick. So this is your second agency that you've started so far in your career, correct?
00:04:25
Speaker
It is correct. Okay. And so you had, you went into HR. I'm curious, was HR something that you intended to go into or how did you end up in HR? And then I guess, how did you end up going back to portfolio school? Was there motivation on either side of that part of your life? Great question. I should even go back. So I play um i played collegiate basketball um at the was at Wisconsin Green Bay, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, and then had the opportunity to play overseas ah for my first year out. And then um i I ended up actually moving back to the United States around 2005, and I lived out in in San Diego, ah Pacific Beach area.
Psychology and HR Influence
00:05:14
Speaker
um And honestly just bartended for I needed I needed kind of some time after the collegiate experience and playing at that level. um I kind of understood that I didn't have the normal maturation, maturation process of a college student because I was always answering to a coach or answering to an authoritative figure. And so it really was, I guess kids are calling it a gap year nowadays. It was kind of a gap year before that even was terminology. Um, but I, I was looking to come back to the Midwest, you know, originally from outside of Milwaukee, I was looking to come back to the Midwest and I, um,
00:05:56
Speaker
you know I had a couple interviews and and I had some connections at um a Target Corporation, which is headquartered here in the Twin Cities. and I just was actually looking for a start somewhere. and what i What I liked about, you know I had a business marketing degree and I minored in psychology.
00:06:15
Speaker
And what I liked about Target was I was attracted to kind of the creative the marketing side, the creative side on what they were doing. And um I kind of positioned my psychology minor to get into HR. And I was ah was told at the time,
00:06:33
Speaker
um you know, a target get into, get into your corporate, get into any position and then you can find ways to navigate through the corporation, which is a little bit more difficult than they let on. Um, but I took, no, I took a job and in, in, in HR. Um, and honestly, like I said before, it was, it was really fascinating. I had only been to the twin cities, maybe one other time. And, um,
00:07:02
Speaker
It, my first three years living here, you know, I was supporting the diversity team. And so I was, a lot of the research was around, um, Target at that time could recruit a lot of people from the East coast, from the West coast, um, diverse individuals, but they had a difficult time retaining those individuals.
00:07:24
Speaker
And it usually, it was interesting, it would usually, they'd usually leave right around the 18 month mark, usually right before that second winter, somebody would say, I'm getting out of here.
00:07:38
Speaker
Nobody told me it was like this, but um no, I think for for me, you know the the the anthropological approach or the the ethnographic research, you know to be able to be in an environment and observe the environment, um that's kind of what I did my first you know my first two to three years here living in the Twin Cities.
00:08:00
Speaker
um Because I was trying to study the culture of Target and the correlation to the culture of the Twin Cities, which there's a lot of overlap. And i there was just some interesting things. And so I kind of got that that sociological lens on you know on the people and the place that I was living my first two to three years.
Creative Writing and Career Shift
00:08:22
Speaker
um But i always wanted to I always wanted to get to idea generation.
00:08:29
Speaker
I always wanted to, who are the people that come up with the ideas? How can I get into a position? And that eventually led me to leave Target, go back to portfolio school, put together a book of my work as a copywriter.
00:08:45
Speaker
Um, cause a lot of people that I talked to said you got to get into the advertising world. You got to get into the creative world. Um, and so that's kind of how I landed it in the world. I'm kind of in now, but, um, I'm very thankful for my short stint in the, uh, in the HR world, especially at a corporation like target.
00:09:04
Speaker
Okay, awesome, thank you. And I'm going to lead you in this direction real quick just because you and I have talked before, so I think I have an idea of an additional contributor to you know what was drawing you to be one of these idea generators. and um what What I'm leading towards is, I believe you've told me before that there was a time when you were playing basketball overseas, i potentially even part of that time when you had come back to the US s and you were getting a little bit of a break. um
00:09:46
Speaker
you know maturing, finding yourself, finding some direction, all that. I think there was a time where you had just started reading, if I recall correctly, or you had really started reading certain types of material that got your mind going if i recall correctly so i don't want to put too many words in your mouth but ah perhaps you can describe that a little bit and if i'm right ah sorry not necessarily if i'm right but did that contribute in part to your desire to be one of these idea guys if i can call it that
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, i I think so. I mean, I often say I i didn't even really know what a copywriter was um before people told me um you should pursue it. and i and i kind of um Yeah, to to be a decent copywriter, which I'll say my my early years in the in the advertising world, i so I would say I was a a decent copywriter, but you yeah you have to be a ah ah good reader. You have to be able to read well. You have to be able to be consumed or absorb other people's ideas. So yeah, I would i would say
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah, based off our previous conversation, you know, i at at the level that I played at in in college, I'd never really found... um I didn't find the the joy of reading until um I moved back to the to the United States. And when I was living in in San Diego, um there was a gentleman that I befriended um and Where I was working the the bar that I was working and he was an English lit. I believe this was our previous conversation. He was an English um Lit major from Berkeley and Really just a ah ah curious mind right inquisitive mind. I think we we both were kind of connected on that level and
00:11:42
Speaker
I remember one night him just saying, hey a man, let me give you, he was always referencing books, right? An English lit major, always referencing books and and writers and authors. and And he just, he honestly, i i he took out, I remember he took out the receipt paper and probably wrote down, I would say 30 or 40 books that he recommended. And that, that like,
00:12:09
Speaker
i don't know I don't know if I'm a checklist kind of guy, but that that kind of set me off into this path of really um reading for for pleasure um and really getting into um the power of the written word and and really getting into different perspectives um and views on the world and and reality through you know a writer and author's
Basketball Career Impact
00:12:34
Speaker
mind.
00:12:34
Speaker
and And I think that all kind of um parlayed into you know me being able to to to move into the creative field as a writer. um Even though I didn't really have a lot of practice as a writer, um I think I i just absorbed You know, i I believe writing is an exercise I'm thinking, so I think you need to be a good, I believe you need to be a ah good thinker before you can write well. I won't spend too much time here, but you've probably come across this research or these statements i before, as I have, I seem to recall that
00:13:19
Speaker
there's been research done into ah people's level of empathy or their ability, their their success at empathizing with others. And if I recall correctly, people who read fiction have a much easier time understanding that other people have inner lives and, you know, and then having empathy for them as compared to, I guess, perhaps people that don't read or people who focus on nonfiction or something of that nature. And, you know, you mentioning that I think he was an English lit major leads me to believe that you spent some amount of time
00:14:06
Speaker
reading fiction perhaps and then you know there's probably a whole line of and inquiry that we could go down with your time in retention and dealing with people who were in some ways different from you and like did that contribute to your Ability to understand empathize or whatever else, but I know that would be a Perhaps a a long a long road that would distract from a bit of what I want to get to which is you mentioned ah you were in sports You were fairly successful
00:14:41
Speaker
Can you give me a sort of like an order of magnitude or percentages or whatever you might call it to help someone who's listening to this understand i how many people roughly or percentage wise play something like high school basketball versus AAU versus college versus professional overseas versus something like and NBA. I mean, because you shrink ah quickly, right? But you made it to one of the highest levels from what I understand.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yes, i did I did. I wish I knew. I mean, there's there's more, I think there's more kids and in youth getting into sports. I'm sure the percentage is it's become even more difficult from when I was coming through. I don't have specific stats on, you know, who makes it. I mean, I think there's, you know, if you're looking at, I played collegiate basketball at the division one level. And if you're looking at the division one level, I think you're,
00:15:44
Speaker
you know the there's probably 12 scholarship athletes on a team and you're and you're probably looking at you know anywhere around, I believe there's 300 or just north of 300 division one. So 300 times 12 you're looking at 3000 maybe so yeah, so you're looking at what let's let's round up under right around 4000 division one basketball players in the United States um at any given time.
First Agency Launch
00:16:15
Speaker
um And so yeah, and then and then getting an opportunity to to play overseas is just that next level and then the NBA is just that that ultimate level right and now
00:16:28
Speaker
Even as the NBA and basketball has become even more of a global sport, you're starting to see a lot of the top players in the NBA are not individuals that have come you know have been born and raised, are not even Americans. right If you think about some of the top players um that are playing today.
00:16:50
Speaker
so That, I think that probably, you know, blame the 92 Barcelona dream team for introducing the world to the level of basketball, but it's, it's very, you can see how people have caught up pretty quickly. Um, and I just feel that I was, I was, you know, fortunate. I, I was, I was born ah a tall human being. I come from a tall family. So there's certain, there's certain things that were, um, on my side and in my favor, um, as I pursued, you know, the sport that I played.
00:17:20
Speaker
Okay, so you went to portfolio school, you had this desire to be involved in idea generation, you were advised to, I guess, um ah you were advised that you should either simply just get into the advertising space because that would align with you, or that's where you could do what you wanted to do.
00:17:46
Speaker
and you came out of school and and did did I hear you say that you launched your own agency right after that before you ended up going to the twins? no yeah i did launch my my My first agency that I launched was before my time at the twins. um i So when i when I started in the advertising world, um I didn't launch my agency right away. I i spent probably about six years in the agency world at two agencies before um i I felt like I was able to kind of go into that world on my own. I had a business partner. um I think what I was able to observe was
00:18:34
Speaker
In the creative field, you're just kind of passing ideas up. right And then creative directors are kind of sifting through ideas and and piecing them together and and really selling them, right or or at least convincing individuals in the agency that this is the avenue to pursue. and I don't know if it came from a little bit of, you know, I was a little bit different because um I had that Fortune 50 experience. I had worked for a very large corporation um and I kind of seen the inner workings of um an organization of that size and I think that
00:19:10
Speaker
What I realize is you know in that agency world at that time, everybody's after the same thing. right They're after the the the output, the the um quality product, the creative work, right the execution.
00:19:25
Speaker
um but they go about it in different ways. And and I think that was a time period and a point in my career where it was, well, we can do that. right I can do that. right And so um that ultimately led me to you know launching an agency and and getting that experience.
00:19:46
Speaker
um which I think you know the entrepreneurial mindset is is something that you can take you know anywhere. You can look at the market and try to identify, quote unquote, white space for yourself or for clients. You can also take an entrepreneurial perspective to a corporation and and operate as an entrepreneur and then find opportunities within that corporation, within the parameters of that corporation,
00:20:15
Speaker
um find white space and and opportunity you know in that world. So I think it's it's a perspective that i've um you know i've I've tried to, it's a it's a perspective that i've I've had, I guess, and something that now I find myself you know kind of going back to my second time, two time founder, I guess, one one exit, I'll say. one Then you were recruited by the twins or you you somehow got connected with them.
Return to Sports with the Twins
00:20:50
Speaker
Was that the beginning of your experience with sports marketing or sports in your career, you know, post basketball?
00:21:00
Speaker
It was. you know I honestly thought um i you know I had moved i kind of moved on from the sports world. right like i I still played but basketball up here you know just to kind of stay in shape, but i I really loved this creative world that I was in. I was working um for clients in a lot of different sectors. I was in the the medical device world. I was in the financial world. I was in the um consumer package good world. and And I really was removed from sports. And um it wasn't until you're correct that the Minnesota Twins, I got contacted by a recruiter.
00:21:39
Speaker
And and um she said, I have a creative director position you know at a professional sports team here in the Twin Cities, would you be interested? And I said, yeah, for sure. I would love that opportunity. right and and And I didn't think that I would ever really go back into sports. I kind of kept the two separated, but it just worked out. um It was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. and And now I find myself kind of in this full circle moment where i've I'm back you know with the current agency and some of our clients. I'm now almost not only in my back in sports, but I'm i'm also you know looking at a focus in collegiate sports.
NIL's Impact on Collegiate Sports
00:22:24
Speaker
And some of the, some of the time I'm actually focusing on basketball in the collegiate world, which is really a full circle moment, um, for me as an individual. Okay. Awesome. So then I realized we're glossing over a little bit, but having come back to, or haven't come back to sports, but having it now become part of your.
00:22:49
Speaker
career in advertising as a copywriter, as a creative, then you you've had some experience in-house, you had some experience with the representation of athletes and all that. In the time that you've been working in this space, now we have things like name, image, and likeness that's going on. We have various rulings, which I imagine you are probably much more familiar with.
00:23:18
Speaker
than I am. i But ah all of these things, from what I understand, amount to collegiate players can now benefit financially from their participation at sports ah being sponsored or whatever else it is. So um first of all, I suppose, can you help clarify for me and anyone listening what is going on in the space around NIL or anything else generally, what's the current state of things?
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, i've I was kind of, I'll go back to kind of when it started. So when I when i took the opportunity in the um professional athlete representation space, it was really to carve out a newer service offering outside of just historical contract negotiation. So the gentleman that I worked with was an NFL agent and historically it just was contract negotiation, but the,
00:24:19
Speaker
The world is changing, right? The world's more dynamic and athletes are looking for more services. These athletes now are brands within themselves. And so they need representation at the table, not only to help them from a brand perspective, but then also to support them in a marketing endorsement negotiation. So having the knowledge of ah of a marketer or a brand strategist when you're representing the athlete, you're now having that perspective on the side of the athlete versus a brand and an agency telling the athlete, this is what we're going to do with you, so to speak.
00:24:57
Speaker
So i I was extremely excited just because of this ever changing world that I saw when I was with the twins and the importance of the athlete brand almost becoming more important than the team's brand. I really wanted to kind of pursue and get my hands dirty in that world now.
00:25:16
Speaker
As soon as I got into that world, NIL started. And so now the NCAA allowed college athletes to benefit off of their name, image, and likeness. And what started as, and a lot of this is just my personal opinion, but what started as the NCAA allowing a you know an athlete to take a small time marketing deal with a local car dealership or a local restaurant and allowing them to receive compensation for their time, their service and the brand partnership, so to speak. What started as just the idea of, you know, these athletes should, we should not restrict these athletes from being able to benefit off their own name, image and likeness.
00:26:02
Speaker
I think just once the floodgates opened, there were a lot of um things that happened. You started to get alumni figuring out ways just to directly compensate these athletes to attend the university.
00:26:19
Speaker
some of the stuff that maybe was potentially happening under the table, now it was just brought up over the table. And then you get boosters and alumni that are able to ah you know directly pay athletes to transfer to their school. um And I'm not saying specifics, I'm just saying more in generalalities general aities and broad strokes, what happened um at that level. Now, what what has to catch you up to where, where it is today. Cause it has gone through maybe two or three shifts in the last, I would say 24 to months. Um, the house versus the NCAA ruling it now allows universities to directly pay their athletes starting next year. So there is a, um,
00:27:11
Speaker
revenue split. So um in the power four conferences, so the big 10, the big 12, the SEC and the ACC,
00:27:23
Speaker
The profit sharing model is now universities are allowed to share the profits with the athletes and the profits are determined through ticket sales, um ad revenue from broadcast, as well as ah brand spar partnerships. So partnership or endorsement deals with the university. um So starting next year, football programs and basketball programs in the Power Four conferences will have In essence, a salary cap. So each team will have, um it looks like early estimates, you know, football programs could have around 10 to $12 million. dollars
00:28:04
Speaker
annually to pay their athletes. And they say that basketball programs in the Power Four conferences are going to have roughly 3 to $3.5 million dollars annually. Athletic departments in the Power Four conferences will average around 22 to $23 million dollars annually to pay to their athletes directly. How they split that up and what athletes they specifically pay is up to the individual university.
NIL and Conference Dynamics
00:28:31
Speaker
um So now In essence, you're just at the you know you're at the the infancy of just these collegiate athletes now becoming professional athletes. And I think you're still there's a lot of things that still need to be ah figured out. I think we're getting closer to the market setting.
00:28:53
Speaker
Um, but it's, it's fascinating because you say, can you, can you educate the listeners on NIL? I I've been on the front lines of NIL and I still at times don't know, you know, what's going to happen next. Um, but I think you're starting to see, uh, you're starting to see, um, the markets set to a certain degree and you're starting to see maybe where the opportunities might lie.
00:29:19
Speaker
Let me make sure that I understand this. So yeah you separated out the Power Four ah conferences. do Where does this stop, I guess? it for For someone who's not thinking too much about the difference between the SEC or something and like the the Mountain West Conference.
00:29:46
Speaker
is this limited to like the big money if i can call it that is it or some of these developments largely limited to those powerful conferences division one division two division three is it just anybody who's in and see double a where where does this stop if you can draw a line i guess.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah, the only reason I separated out the Power Four is because the Power Four conferences have the infrastructure set up set up around the broadcast of the game. So that's where you're getting, because you're getting, you're receiving the ad revenue split, right? So if you think about Big Ten games, they have their own Big Ten network. They have any Big Ten game that lands on, you know, one of the major affiliates That's the only reason that the Power Four have a clear delineation or separation between a lot of the other programs is they're just going to bring in so much more money because of the television broadcast rights.
00:30:47
Speaker
Now, the other conferences do have profit sharing models set up, but what is determined as a profit is just a little bit different until they get the infrastructure around maybe the streaming rights of their conference games until they maybe set up who knows what the future looks like, but if there's more demand for mid-major conferences, um for those games to be broadcast, you know, live broadcasts, then you're gonna open up doors and opportunities for more ad revenue, right? And then once the ad revenue is coming in, well, then that just trickles down, then that revenue is gonna go to these these ah smaller small colleges or smaller conferences. But that's not to say,
00:31:35
Speaker
Um, there's still some smaller conferences, um, that have a very strong alumni base that have a very strong booster base. And so there's still athletes that will be paid, um, you know, a hefty amount of money. Just when you're looking at, when you're looking at college sports and the university is just taking broad strokes, it's easy just to separate.
00:32:00
Speaker
the power four, which historically used to be the power five, but the pack 12 kind of, you know, people are just jumping ship. And so now, uh, the terminology that I've heard a lot is just, is just the power four. So I want to get to your perspective on how this is going to change things. It sounds like things are going to get more business-like if I can refer to it like that. But first.
00:32:26
Speaker
Just to make sure that I understand some of this as well, I think you put it as basically the average power for football team might have somewhere around 10 million dollars, 10 to 12 million dollars to compensate their athletes. um ah Basketball teams were somewhere in the range of about three million dollars. um So, and in life, I should say, a lot of things follow a long tail distribution. You know, you look at ah Patrick Mahomes or Steph Curry or some of these players, they make a hundred times what the average player makes in their league. And for the listeners out there, it may not be a hundred times, but it's a lot more, you know. And so am I thinking of this correctly that
00:33:21
Speaker
on what a you said you may have 12 athletes on a basketball team like that are on ah scholarship or ah something of that nature.
00:33:32
Speaker
so ah You're probably going to have ah one athlete who's making the majority of that money, or is it going to be split up? Or for a football team, I don't know what a college roster is, but it's got to be somewhere between 60 and 100 players. And only some of those are, at least at the moment, on scholarship. And on one team, you go to an Alabama or an LSU or some of these big programs, Oregon right
Athlete Compensation and Opportunities
00:34:00
Speaker
now. um you're going to have a couple of star players. So am I thinking of this correctly that you might very well have a five-star recruit for football ah coming out of high school, making nothing, I guess, and then making half a million dollars the next year? Oh, you'd be you'd be surprised, Eric. it's north If you're a five-star, you're you're going to be north of a half a million dollars. um this is the The money that I just talked about is is just the money coming from the university. Now, collectives are these entities that have popped up in the NIL era. And there is a dotted line association between the university and these collectives. Because for a while, when NIL first started in 2021, the collective and the university legally could not
00:34:55
Speaker
talk about what they were working on or athletes that they were pursuing. Now, there's a little bit more um freedom for these collectives to speak to the athletic departments and the coaches at the university. Now, collectives are basically just a shell that allows alumni and boosters to donate money and then the collective figures out ways to facilitate that um to certain athletes.
00:35:23
Speaker
um Most recent headlines, I'll just give you an example. The the star recruit, there's a freshman who just, or he's a senior in high school in um high school basketball. I think he's out of the state of Utah, but he just signed with BYU next year. He's the number one recruit in the country. He just signed with BYU next year for $7 million. dollars
00:35:48
Speaker
He will be a freshman in college right now. Now I haven't seen the specifics. I don't know if it's seven years over a certain amount of time, but I i think it's $7 million dollars for one year. So that's, I think there will eventually be more regulation ah in regards to this, but coming from the world that I came from, even in just football, we,
00:36:14
Speaker
We were, I was exposed to athletes that were making more in college than they would make in their first two years under the rookie contract. So there're we've created an interesting dynamic now where certain athletes might be actually incentivized to stay in the college ranks because of the size of their NIL deals and the ability to generate compensation for for themselves.
00:36:50
Speaker
That's interesting. Okay. So, and yeah, I think with that consideration, you, you took it right in the direction of where I was thinking it would be helpful to go. And that was, I was thinking, you know, what do we need to know about how this might change athletic departments? How it might change the motivations of not just college players, but parents of young athletes and you know all of this but that's I mean that's one aspect of it that you hear about plenty of athletes that register for the draft after their junior year or something in one sport or another um so they only play in college for two or three years if they're really hot right they want to
00:37:36
Speaker
They want to get out and and be a pro or get paid or or whatever it is. Now we have a different motivation that could change the dynamic of what seems like, oh gosh, this is driving change in so many ways. What's what's your perspective on this thing? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things. you know i don't have I don't have a crystal ball, right? There's a couple of things that I see happening. I mean, we've allowed capitalism to infiltrate collegiate sports, which there was always a ah correlation, but now you know we're in it. And so athletic departments at these universities and you're starting to see this change already, they're going to need to be almost reinvented. They're going to need to be run like a business and you're going to have to start to assess the
00:38:30
Speaker
the value generation, the revenue generation, not only of each individual sport and team, but you're also going to start to take that a little step further and actually starting to figure out revenue generation off of an individual athlete. Now.
00:38:49
Speaker
What does that do to collegiate sports? I don't know. There's always been revenue generating sports and non-revenue generating sports. What does that do to Title IX? I don't know, right? Having a a certain number of of women's sports compared to men's sports, right? What does that do? You know, there's always at the at at the at the university level and collegiate level, when it comes to athletics, there's always been certain sports that just generated more revenue than others. And that, that was fine. That was part of the, you know, that was part of the way it was set up, you know, a soccer team versus a football team or baseball team versus a basketball team. Now you're really going to have to figure out how much revenue are we generating out of each sport.
00:39:34
Speaker
ah You know, it's it's sad playing, you know, playing at the level that I did, you know, and now I'm sounding a little bit like, you know, i I'm showing my age a little bit ah as I'm getting older, but there was a purity to college sports. And now we've allowed, we've allowed it to change and and to go back to something we talked about previously.
00:39:54
Speaker
It's happened so fast that it it has started to even just trickle down into the high school ranks, right? You see high school kids, there's certain states won't allow NIL deals for high school kids. There's other states, I think Texas just passed a law where there they allow high school kids to to ah partake in NIL compensation and NIL deals. So now, how low will it will it go? ah you know I don't know you know. I think youth sports,
00:40:23
Speaker
It's a different ballgame than when I was coming, you know, no pun intended, but when I was coming through the ranks, it was, it
Youth Sports and Societal Influence
00:40:30
Speaker
was different. Now society has put sports in general on this pedestal. And so there's, there's, and there's so much money.
00:40:40
Speaker
behind You look at the revenue deals, look at the revenue deals in the n i in the NFL, Amazon, everybody wants a piece. Amazon wants their Thursday night games. you know Netflix is getting some Christmas games. it is Everybody pays attention to sports and it it becomes so ingrained in our society that you talking about the state of the state with youth sports is is sad to me, but it's not sad to to everybody else out there. There's a lot of parents that see sports as an avenue ah for their child and and look at you know look at the the potential from an earnings perspective on if
00:41:24
Speaker
you know Would you rather have a kid be in the NBA or be a doctor? i'd you know Nowadays, i i don't I don't know. Now, another thing that I wanted to add too, which because you're seeing the this shift, going back to talking about the Power Four, you know the Power Four conferences, in in essence, they don't even have to recruit out of high school anymore because they can allow what you're starting to see in the transfer portal is you're starting to see Mid majors are becoming a stepping stone to power four conferences. It's another chance. Okay, you're a high school senior and you're really good at basketball. Well, then we're going to let you go to a mid major and now you have one more year to perform.
00:42:11
Speaker
at that at that mid major conference level. And then let's say you continue to put up numbers. Now we can recruit you because now you've proved yourself even at a higher level. So there's there's another level of filtration that allows these big time powerhouse universities to say, I don't need to take a risk on you coming out of high school. I can let you go one more year, and then I can still have the pick of the high performers that are already playing collegiate sports. So that's another, sorry, that's a little bit of a tangent, but those are the two, those are two fundamental um variables that
00:42:55
Speaker
I could see, you know, changing dramatically, just being a different, it will be different. it will be College sports will be, it's already entered a different era. You know, I'm thinking on one hand about the The way that the brain develops and all of that and, you know, ah very broad strokes, um you know, in the average man, the prefrontal cortex does not finish developing until about the age of 25 or so. ah For women, I think it's two years earlier, something like that.
00:43:33
Speaker
But and there are plenty of parents, there are plenty of of people who are parents who will comment on things like, ah you know, a 15-year-old girl on average will seem to be more mature than a 15-year-old boy. ah So there's this part of me that's thinking about being a 21-year-old. And I'm in my junior or senior year, I've just gone through the transfer portal and Now, I mean, this is a, it was always a job, probably, you know, I've had at least one fairly successful athlete, not professional by any means, but fairly successful athlete in my family. And he was very clear, this is my job.
00:44:19
Speaker
You know like I'm going through college. They're paying for me to be here. It's part of my job to be a good student it's part of my job to train and excel when I'm out on the field but and I'm thinking about that like the ability to make good decisions and then on the other side of things which is really, this is one area that I want to dig into you with. You talked about things trickling down and imagining a situation in which maybe some of these programs, Power Four programs or whatever, have been run very business-like for a long time. ah For whatever reason, there's lots of money, they have prestigious programs, who knows what.
00:45:06
Speaker
And lower down whether you're getting into your mid majors or i don't know how far down we go that.
Challenges for Young Athletes
00:45:15
Speaker
They're going to be programs that are not prepared at all to deal with they just don't have the staff they don't have the infrastructure whatever it is to deal with our players we have a hot player.
00:45:26
Speaker
who got themselves into the transfer portal and went from making nothing to now, next year, they're going to have a million dollar contract at another school. We don't even know how to handle that. We don't even know how to talk to this kid. you know The staff involved, ah how the universities evaluate the r ROI, I guess, of their programs and even the mission of their programs.
00:45:53
Speaker
I'm really curious, ah to to to bring this around to a question, I'm really curious how you see these collegiate programs, these athletic departments needing to adjust. What are the things they don't see coming? ah Who is going to be most impacted? What do they need to be prepared for?
00:46:12
Speaker
Yeah, very it's very it was very situational and depending on what university you're talking to, right, if they have the capital, well, then they're going to be directly paying the athletes. I think, and you know, I think there's the big opportunity, I i think, is you're going to need to you're going to need to be able to articulate to these athletes um You're going to need to be able to support them and develop them holistically. And so it's got to be bigger than the programs that I think take a step back and say, how can we prepare our athletes to be successful
00:46:52
Speaker
whether they go on to become a professional or not, or even if they go on to become a professional, that's a short window. So how can we actually be thinking long-term and start to develop the kids and in certain facets?
00:47:09
Speaker
or areas so that we can, you know, prepare these individuals to be professional human beings, so to speak. Right. We talked a lot. I mean, our talk track, when I was, when I was working with NFL athletes, the talk track was, you know, the average span in the NFL was three and a half years. Right. You're going to be in your second career.
00:47:33
Speaker
eight, nine times longer, second career, whatever you do after you're done playing football, you're going to be in that career nine, you know, eight, nine times longer, nine times 27, 30 years, right? thirty Another 30 years, you're going to be doing something else besides being professional football. And that's just if you're average.
00:47:54
Speaker
right And so and you know I think there's in in some of the things that in my experience in the athlete representation space, some of the things that were very interesting that popped up was um identity issues with these athletes. Who are they after they're done playing the sport?
00:48:14
Speaker
You know, who are they when they, du they've always been laser focused on being a football player. They've linked their personal identity to their profession. We do this even outside of professional sports. You know, in Western civilization, we do this all the time. Hey, what do you do? We link our identity to our profession, right? Um, but even in professional sports, that even gets a little bit more difficult because we're, we're.
00:48:41
Speaker
Especially with NIL, we're giving them positive reinforcement when they're in high school now, in college, and they they create this strong identity that's linked to what they do, the profession they're pursuing. And then they have a three-year career, a four-year career, and then they're done. And then, who am I? What do I do? Right?
00:49:01
Speaker
so i going back to your question, I think the universities that actually take a step back and say, hey, let's actually, we have an opportunity here now, right? We have we have these athletes that are coming coming in, they're they're top performers in a in a sport, um but we all but they're also kids.
00:49:24
Speaker
yeah yeah Yeah, they're also, you know, young adults, right? So how can we make sure that we set them up for bring them into a program? where they can succeed, where they can soar with their strengths, but how do we support these individuals to make sure that they're prepared for whether they tune whether they have the opportunity to go play professional sports or not? ah How can we make sure that we support the financial literacy
00:49:56
Speaker
mental health services, right? this These are things that I think are going to be part of the program that these athletic departments need to start to build to support the athletes in in this modern world.
Walker Miles Brand Strategy
00:50:13
Speaker
we've We put these individuals, we've always put professional athletes on a pedestal, and now we're just putting these collegiate athletes on a pedestal, and we need to make sure that we're supporting them almost from a human and development standpoint.
00:50:27
Speaker
You said earlier when you were talking about your agency that you founded and you're running now that you are doing either all of your work or a good portion of your work in the collegiate space.
00:50:42
Speaker
Is that then the core of your work? Are you working with universities and athletic departments around their marketing? Are you taking a position on you know the things we were just talking about? you know Maybe it's not so much about marketing as much as it is like Here's what you're going to need to fulfill upon maybe a traditional mission for a school, as you know, ah bringing up like good, well-rounded human beings. What is it that you're focusing on in your collegiate work now? How does that relate to what we're talking about?
00:51:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like I said before, if if I had to summarize when when we kicked this off, if I had to summarize what I do, it's honestly my my sweet spot. And what i I want to carve out with Walker Miles with my business partner is.
00:51:37
Speaker
business strategy through the lens of brand, right? The importance of brand strategy, right? A lot of the general public doesn't really understand, brand's a logo, brand's color. No, brand is a set of ideas, a foundation, the alignment of how your corporation acts, how you look, how you talk about yourself, right? So but what i'm what I'm finding in in the space that I'm in now is,
00:52:03
Speaker
you know I have background in, in i can I can build their program, but where the creative aspect comes is something that I identified with the twins. There's a lot of opportunity in the NIL space in the brand partnership world. So historically in professional sports,
00:52:27
Speaker
The brand partnership team was an internal team that was driven by a lot of individuals that had sales backgrounds. And they would be talking to a potential brand. They'd be talking at the table with marketers for that brand. And they would come in and they would want to they would sell the idea of a partnership. Hey, brand X, come and be brand partners with the twins. right And then they would agree upon that that brand partnership deal. And then it was a transaction. And then they would figure out how to activate.
00:53:00
Speaker
I, or I think the sweet spot lands and what we're doing with Walker miles is we're putting brand strategists and creatives at the forefront of the brand partnership space so that we can immediately think about activation instead of thinking about a space that historically was has been rooted in transactional agreements. So I can understand the core i can build the core brand of the of the university or of the team
00:53:31
Speaker
And then when i in the NIL space, when I go out and look for brands to come in and activate with an individual team, the men's basketball team, the men's football team, I can think about it through the lens of how do we activate on this?
00:53:46
Speaker
How do we actually create something that is a partnership that aligns with your brand and aligns with the university's brand? And how can we be efficient in pushing that further down the line sooner instead of having it be a transaction? Oh, we'll put your logo up on the scoreboard.
00:54:07
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no. That's not the world that we're living in anymore. like Let's do an activation. Let's do be it sponsor the players. Let's do a behind in the scenes content shoot. right like There's a lot of things you can do now.
00:54:22
Speaker
to make sure that that partnership gets seen and activated upon versus just an old school transaction. To me, that's the sweet spot that we're finding right now is build the internal brand of the of the team or the university and then go out and find the right partners and then creatively execute the activation for the partnership. There are going to be some listeners who on one hand will say, oh, so you need to have a vision or you need to have a grasp of what your brand is before you go and do things, right? Oh, that's so obvious. And yet on the other hand, I think you and I both know, and hopefully a lot of people out there know that
00:55:10
Speaker
There are so many partnerships there are sponsorships that ah are undertaken their commercials that are sold whatever that Have really no tie between the two brands between the two ah The audiences or anything else beyond somebody was willing to pay me. So I did the thing I you know read did the 30-second live read or whatever um and i you know I did an interview with a friend of mine, Jeremy Newlick, who's a futurist, and a central thrust of his work is that your vision of the future, you you know essentially your predictions or how you think things are going to go, ah you know the economy, politics, my life, whatever it is, I generally see that as getting better or getting worse. Whatever your vision of the future is,
00:56:02
Speaker
has a tremendous impact on the strategies that you develop because if you expect that ah the economy is getting worse you're probably going to manage your 401k or a Potential home loan or whatever it is very differently from if you expect your ah the economy to be getting better or your career ah ah Prospects or whatever else is and I think The aspect that is really most fascinating for me at the moment, and again, I think it's going to be, it's going to seem obvious to to a lot of people, but most people don't actually do this, is the fact that
00:56:47
Speaker
You're saying that universities need to have a very strong sense of what their brand is they need to be prepared because all this money is coming all this change is coming and When somebody dangles a check in front of you You might very well you being an athletic department or a university you might very well make a bad decision you might make a decision that harms your brand and I'm even wondering if there are some things we could speculate on, I don't know if it's useful, but you know if their decisions that universities might make, because this money is now available, that harm their mission, the traditional mission of a school. yes Yes, you're right. i mean yeah yeah i mean we do it we do it with um Think about it. We do it with with relationships, right?
00:57:36
Speaker
yeah You think about the people that you spend your time with. There's an alignment. There's there you know our values aligned, our interests aligned. There's some type of connective tissue in our in our human relationships. It's the same aspect. right ha you're You're going to need to be able to analyze the people coming in, the brands coming in, the people that want to do business with you.
00:58:01
Speaker
and you're going to ah and have ah need to have a firm firm awareness and understanding of your your own brand to find those natural alignments. Because you're right, if you make a short, we used to say this with our athletes, um especially in the NIL space, every deal is not a good deal, right? like Think long term, same thing with these universities. Every deal that's coming in right now,
00:58:29
Speaker
in the short term potentially might not be a good long-term deal. And so you're going to need to have a firm understanding of who you are, what you represent, what those values are, and then be able to have the ability to analyze the brands that are coming in and what they might stand for. And then find that's going to find the most fruitful strategic partnerships or relationships moving forward. Not that I You know, want you to to do a big sales pitch or whatever, but it sounds to me like you're saying that or or it's implied that the big opportunity here is and the opportunity for your business as well is.
00:59:14
Speaker
There are, I think you said, somewhere around 300 Division I or top level, you know, whatever it is, ah collegiate programs. so There are all these different sports. um Do universities have marketers? Yeah, they do. Do athletic programs have marketers? They do.
00:59:36
Speaker
But the way that they've been doing business, the way that they've been thinking about their brands, ah most of these programs are simply not prepared. And you know I'm not trying to be a commercial here, but because this fascinates me and it really does sound like there is there's some planning, there's some preparation, there's a setting of the vision that needs to happen.
01:00:01
Speaker
That's the time. Now is the time when these universities should be calling Walker-Miles. Is that right? Yes, i I agree. I mean, it's it's why we so it's something that my business partner and I identified just by being on the front lines of it for the last to two years, two and a half years. And um I would agree. it's our It's our thesis right now. And and that's how We can build a couple prototypes and get a couple case studies of how we're actually creating value and impact. And then that would be the ability to scale would be we can we can apply the lessons learned on these early um projects into helping
01:00:46
Speaker
other universities, right? And that could be, um that is the vision. that is that is what we're where That is what we're seeing. And in an unsettled market, um we're you know we're trying to implement a little bit of a first mover strategy and try to try to get there you know as soon as possible.
01:01:05
Speaker
Okay. Somebody listens to this. They're involved in an athletics department. ah Maybe even they're involved in an alumni program or a collective or something, but they're somehow involved and ah they're convinced. How do they get ahold of you? Where do they find you, Kevin?
01:01:27
Speaker
oh Walker hyphen miles.com. Yep. They, they can get in contact with me there. Um, Kevin at Walker hyphen miles, uh, dot com is my email. Um, and that's where they can directly talk to myself, my business partner, and we can discuss, you know, any subject matter, you know, at hand and it's, it isn't ever changing landscape and ever changing world, but I think there's, um, it's interesting because.
01:01:55
Speaker
Coming from the brand strategy side, and and you know this, the world that that you come from, we do this for clients all the time. We try to immerse ourselves in their business and only in the direct immersion of ourselves into their business.
01:02:10
Speaker
do the opportunity start to present themselves, right? And sometimes that's, you know, you got six weeks, you got two months. If you have a good client that's got, you know, um some capital, maybe, you know, three, six months, the longer you spend in your client's work, the more you get to, the the the easier it is to see where the potential future opportunity might be.
01:02:35
Speaker
And all we're trying to do right now is I just got a two and a half year head start in this NIL space, right? And it, it was something that I didn't pursue. It just was presented to me because I was in the ah professional realm. But after two and a half years.
01:02:53
Speaker
You start to see, hey, this is where I think it could be going. And instead of identifying white space for a client, you know, this is kind of that time in, in, in my career to say, you know, this is white space for us, man. Like we can jump into this and we can own this.
01:03:12
Speaker
And our experience are both my experiences, myself and my business partner. You know, we were kind of built for this, right? This is, this is the space that we're operating in. Um, and, and let's be part of where it's going, uh, in the future. So yeah, if there's anybody out there listening that, that was inspired or or think there's a connection point with what we're discussing today, Eric. Um, like I said before, walker hyphen miles.com. You can get in contact with myself or my business partner for sure.
01:03:42
Speaker
That's great. Thank you. And I will put your website and your email address in the show notes. You and I have talked before, we referenced that already and we share a lot of interests and I think You know, I would say at the very least, you know, our first conversation I found fascinating. This is the best conversation I've had on this podcast so far. So I appreciate it. I hope that everyone finds value in it. And Kevin, I suppose before we go, any last things you want to put in here?
01:04:14
Speaker
No, Eric, I appreciate the time. and And just to reciprocate, you know, your comments, like you know, we've, we've talked a couple of times and, and always appreciate the conversation. And I feel like, uh, this definitely won't be our last. So, um, let's, let's do it again. Let's get it out of the calendar. We'll do it again at some point in the future and keep tabs on each other for sure. Great. Well, thank you very much for joining me, Kevin and everyone else. Thank you for listening.