[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

Hey guys and welcome back to the business show it is I your friend and host Ted Teo. So today’s episode is for all you sports fans out there because we are being joined by Ashwin anana over in sponsorship, and she will be talking to us about the ins and outs of the sports sponsorship industry. So Israel anon is the CEO and founder of open sponsorship is an online platform that connects athletes with brands. as traditional sports sponsorship deals only go to the top 1% of athletes, it’s been started open sponsorship to help all athletes have the opportunity to be sponsored by brands.

 

Ishveen Anand is a graduate from Oxford, and is listed as a Forbes 30 under 30, and one of ynX top 100 female founders. In today’s episode, issuing shares how she spotted the gap in the sport sponsorship industry, her thought process and how she facilitated the connection between the brands and athletes, and how brands can get the most out of their collaborations with the athletes that they’re working with. So guys, if you ever receive any value from the show, they don’t deserve to get your support.

 

The best way you can do this is to subscribe to the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts and to share the show with somebody who will find it useful as well. And if you’d like to stay up to date with the latest episodes, tools and resources, then make sure you log on to Ted teo.com that’s t Ed teo.com. And now let’s dive right in. He’s just been thank you so much for joining me today. It’s such a pleasure to have you here.

 

01:16

Thank you so much Ted really nice to be here.

 

01:18

So Ashwin, let’s have a very simple icebreaker so we can all get to know you a bit better. Please share with us who is issuing on and when she isn’t working.

 

01:27

Haha. Um, who is she when she’s not working? I’d say she is a fairly fun loving exercise freak who really enjoys spending time with people who are real, like talking about good stuff.

 

01:46

Nice. So it’s been please share with us your story. I understand that you grew up in the United Kingdom’s and you were previously a management consultant as well. Please connect the dots for us and share with us how you became the person that you are today. A tech entrepreneur.

 

01:59

Yeah, absolutely. So um, I grew up in England, as you mentioned, so I played sports all my life. So there was always this kind of thing within me that was I had a massive affinity to sports as a, as I said, I said like still obsessed with exercising, working out whatever else. But so what sports do you play netball and cricket. But to be honest, I was that person that if there was a spare spot on a team call me I would love to be there, even if I’m not that great at this for.

 

So did that and then graduated from Oxford, became a management consultant. And then really followed my heartstrings back into the sports world. And so became a sports agent fast forward. So I saw a problem in my industry kind of set out to fix it by being an entrepreneur.

 

02:44

Well, sports really is a big part of your life. So in your latest venture is known as open sponsorship. And I understand that there’s a marketplace for athletes to get connected with brand sponsors. So share with us what was the gap in the market that you saw? And what do you do to help deliver?

 

02:58

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m sure there are many people on this call who are listening, if you know your entrepreneurs want to be entrepreneurs, you may think at some point, oh, wouldn’t it be cool to get an athlete to represent my brand to promote me on social media or turn up to an event or whatever it may be? And you go, Okay, that’s a great idea. But How the hell do I make it happen? It’s probably too expensive. Does it work? What would I ask them to do?

 

And all of these questions and so when I was essentially a sports agent, selling sponsorship, what I realized is, there’s this wonderful form of marketing, but it was, it was almost like a little its own little club. Like if you were if you were in it, you were in it, and it’s very exclusive. And so I thought, you know, why is it not a literally like a way for everyone to kind of get involved. And you know, we were talking to just now about like crowdfunding.

 

 When you think about any of these amazing platforms or marketplaces, or Airbnb or whatever else, what they did is they drove accessibility and education. And that’s what we’re doing.

 

04:00

Could you explain to us in your own words, what exactly open sponsorship does for the athletes and the corporates that are on your platform? How do you connect them

 

04:08

inside we have athletes, of which about 60% are signed up through agents. So we do work with all the major agencies in the world. 40% is athlete direct, they’ll create sign up, essentially create a profile. Think of it similar to recruitment. We were talking about this before. So you know, you create a profile, and then you can essentially apply to campaigns, but like job postings on the brand side, which is the bigger driver for us.

 

 The demand is where the money comes from. They’ll listen, she’d go in and they can search through the athletes. But really, there’s this secret. So as far as as they’ll build a campaign a bit like a job posting, looking for athletes who have diabetes, or looking for athletes with pets, or whatever it may be. We’re offering X amount of money for these deliverables, and we essentially teach you how to think about structuring that campaign. And then the athletes will apply to you and then we do everything else. We might Manage contracts, payments to management, ROI tracking.

 

So we’re really hand holding the whole process I like in that bit to kind of almost like an Upwork or Fiverr,

 

05:09

mostly, but it’s specifically in the context of connecting athletes and sponsors. Now even before we speak a little bit more about the business model of open sponsorship, could you explain to us a little bit more about what it was like in the past before open sponsorship became a thing? Or was it a case where the larger brands and the more prominent athletes had little difficulty getting connected but a smaller brands? And the younger maybe up and coming athletes were struggling to even get to know each other? speak to anybody relevant at all?

 

05:34

Yeah. 100%. So you’ve got traditional sponsorship was very much like your Nike deal, right? And, and a few people would have like a Gatorade or a Pepsi deal, or whatever it may be. But then there was like nothing else. And of course, if you have enough money for an athlete, then you’d probably always go for the top 1%. And I remember I interviewed someone who worked at an agency I said, you know, why do you want to work with us? He said, Listen, whenever we speak to anyone, all we do is sell our number one athlete, their number one Olympian.

 

We didn’t really give any love to everyone else, just because it’s difficult, unlike selling sponsorship is hard. And so kind of a couple things realized one is we realized, well, these athletes do have value. Of course they do. Just the deals are smaller, the margin is smaller. So if you’re going to be incentivized to do these deals, you got to do them quick turnaround. But the second thing is because of the rise of influencer marketing, social media, digital marketing influences generally what happened was you started realizing that actually, okay, even if the athlete is not the number one, they’re still very relevant, but to their audience, I

 

06:37

see. So now you can actually tap on the loyal followers of each of the athletes as well.

 

06:41

Exactly, exactly. Because back in the day, if you worked at an athlete, you had to produce TV production, like do a TV commercial with them, then you have to buy media time, you know, invest, invest, invest. So obviously, you’re not going to do that unless they’re big enough.

 

But now it’s literally Hey, I’m going to pay you but you’re going to produce the content sitting at home with my product, you’re going to post it on your own on my channel, so the cost of everything else has gone down which means it’s it’s it’s worthwhile to work with a middle level or smaller money sharply.

 

07:14

Yeah, in fact, I think in the past where a brand may only be able to work with one top athlete in terms of budget, I think now with open sponsorship, is it right to say they can reach up to 2030, maybe smaller athletes, but it through their own sub niche and types of audience, they’re following them as well. It becomes a lot more efficient for brands

 

07:32

100%. And if you think about like, what’s, what are marketers taught to do today is all about a B testing, right? Like you AB test different ads, different creatives, different channels, different budgets, etc. So same thing with athletes, like if you know that you need x, fine, but if you’re like, Oh, I’m not sure you can come to us and have like one UFC one winter Olympia, one soccer player one, there’s one. So you can really start a B testing male, female Paralympic Olympic, different types of athletes seeing which works and then doubling down on your strategy.

 

08:04

Guys, this has been shared, she really managed to spot a gap in the market, it’s been noticed that only the top 1% of athletes were really getting the sponsorship deals, and the rest of the nine 9% were left out. And now she’s jumped on this opportunity to fill up the gap. She has created a marketplace for all athletes to connect with brands. I really love this idea because firstly, athletes in general are getting more opportunities to get sponsored.

 

But more importantly, companies can also become more efficient with their advertising campaigns with more targeted ads by tapping on the audiences of the specific athletes that are reaching out to now let’s talk a little bit more about the business model open sponsorship, I noticed that the different tiers of payments for corporates and commissions are being taken from athletes and agents on the other side of the spectrum. Can you break this down for us and maybe explain why you’ve chosen such a structure? Yeah.

 

08:51

Good question. So we initially built the supply side. And of course, when you don’t really have anything to sell, like, you just have to incentivize them to come on. And also, sometimes when you start a business, it’s probably best to look at Well, what How is it done today in the real world, or the offline world, and try and replicate that. So taking a commission from an athlete is quite normal, or even agents quite normal. So let’s just do that, because they used to it. And it also means we could get them to sign up without having much pressure on delivering, you know, the beginning, they were like, sure, we’ll sign up, like, who doesn’t need help with sponsorship, we don’t think it’s going to work, but we’ll sign up. So they signed up.

 

And then on the brand side, initially, actually, interestingly, we launched for free and we were just going to take a commission. But what we realized is that you’ve got a lot of small brands who they’re never really going to do anything, and they just, they’re hoping to send a message to an athlete, but they didn’t really have the money and it wasn’t creating a great ecosystem. And so that’s when we put in the payments to be curated. Exactly, exactly. So and we’ve kept our subscription low. So you know, it’s anywhere from $79 399 or upwards from that.

 

And so the aim is not to price anyone out. But we want people to be serious, so that the athletes are not wasting their time applying to campaigns that are never going to come to life.

 

10:16

I understand. So what are some of the key indicators that brands to look out for when you’re looking to sponsor an athlete that’s on your platform? Yeah, good

 

10:23

question. I would say it’s a it’s a, it’s actually very brand by brand, like, some people just want the biggest following the biggest engagement. Right? Like, you know, it’s almost like a media buy. Some people want authenticity. And very important if you’re like, you know, we’ve worked with products that are gluten free or vegan, or, like I said, diabetes, or whatever else that you know, you’re looking for someone who’s relevant, who’s authentic.

 

Some of our brands are really looking for content creation. You know, they want athletes who take good pictures, and they want to be able to repurpose, so I’d say it like it does depend brought by brands, whether it’s like value or content, or whatever it may be.

 

11:05

Now, what about the whole process towards engagement? Do the companies and the athletes have a chance to speak together about what the deliverables of the project will be? Before we get to work together?

 

11:13

A good question, I would say it depends. So the reason being is because like if my if my campaign is like offering $100 worth of product or $500 cash, it’s almost like, how much work does anyone want to do before that, and I think the old school model, it was very much like, we should add value, we should have conversations or whatever else.

 

But if you think about like, house viewing, ultimately, you don’t, if you’re like, I like this house, and then the estate agent calls you and start asking you lots of questions. You might be like, Look, dude, I just want to go see the house, I don’t want to tell you everything about my life, until I’ve seen the house, and then we can talk about it. And so I’d say a similar way that if a brand wants to invest and spend time and get to know the athletes fine. But I would say we lean kind of a game away from that, especially given a lot of what we do is I wanted three month deals, we try and make it so that the campaign says a lot about who you are like you can go to the website of the brand and you know, see the campaign outline and whatever else. Because ultimately athletes are busy.

 

And so if you ask them to spend time upfront, getting to know you, I also have this perception that they might start charging more because they think, Oh gosh, this is a lot of work. So we try and really reduce the work on both sides, just to really get to the deal point

 

12:39

make as smooth as possible. Minus 10. So what can brands do to actually get a better reach with an athletes audience? or more importantly, how can they make the collaboration a good one on both sides?

 

12:50

Yeah, it’s a great question. I’d say I think Firstly, is going into it knowing what you want as a brand. Are you looking for good content that you can repurpose? Are you looking for traffic to your website? Right? Are you looking for virality So basically, understanding what you want is really important because how can you define what being successful means if you don’t know and I think that the problem is too many people come into it and they don’t realize so I think that’s the first thing which is like what are we going to judge success on and then I would say of course, it’s about finding like going back to that point, if what you’re looking for is as many swipes as possible to your website through then you want to use an Instagram story, right?

 

 Because you can swipe but like LinkedIn, then what you want is someone who has really high engagement but has a high following great and if you if they need to not be very content driven, so be it as long as the engagements there. So I’d say like understanding what you want and then matching it back to the campaign is really important. And then I’d say Secondly is have this opinion on whether you want to do one offs three months I personally do like like slightly longer term because you can potentially hit someone’s audience multiple times. So it’s interesting there’s a big debate around long term versus short term brand ambassador versus a one time influencer so it’s quite tough

 

14:20

and this is so the idea that repetition breeds a bit of familiarity. So if any of you see an athlete that you follow recommending a product the first time you might actually think much about it, but at a fifth or sixth time you may actually be curious and you think Okay, you know what, I’ll go check this out.

 

14:34

Yeah. 100% and then also from the athletes perspective, if you’re paying them only for one thing, they’re probably less inclined to really get to know you versus if you’re doing something slightly longer term. And I think the most important thing is if you can get your influencer your athlete to talk about like the why behind it. The what is easy, right? Like hey, here’s a toothpaste but like, why does this toothpaste make sense for me to see

 

14:59

No, in fact, the best partnerships will probably be the ones where the athlete is so passionate about a product that they you know, they would have said yes to helping the company, even if they were not going to be paid anyway. Yeah. Okay. It’s been I’m particularly excited for this next question, could you share some of your favorite stories on some of the projects or collaborations that open sponsorship has helped create in the past.

 

15:22

I wouldn’t say that, like, on my baby is like I like every single deal that happens. But I’d say like, some of the stuff that I’m really proud of is, I mean, obviously, it’s really fun working with bigger brands. So we recently signed Walmart as a client. So seeing athletes post about Walmart, like fortune one company is pretty sick, right? I’ve also really enjoyed that, like the female athlete side of things, I feel like we’re a really big advocate for female athlete deals. So like, the first time we work with Birchbox, it was it was really, really fun. So I like that.

 

The other thing is I going back to that objective heading, we recently were kind of concluding a very, one of our largest brand ambassadors deals like multi multi month, multi year. And one thing that came out of that is COVID. Here, everything changed. Their big focus was recruitment, right? Because suddenly, it was really hard to recruit people and retain and whatever else. So we used our athletes to drive recruitment, like, come work for this team as the best team, I’m part of the team, etc. And they said it really drove application your applications for them. And that’s, that’s just really nice to think

 

16:37

I see. So you’re going one step further and helping the industry grow. And it’s not just about helping Connect sponsorship to use? Exactly. I see. Okay. So it’s been I’m curious how many companies and athletes have signed up to your platform at the moment.

 

16:49

So we have around 11,000 athletes. And then we have a network of around 20,000 brands, but obviously, they’re not all doing a campaign. So at any point in time, it’ll be like a few 100, we’ll be doing a campaign

 

17:03

by sea. So it’s been this open sponsorship, half a dispute resolution mechanism in place right now, what happens when there’s a bit of a disagreement between the brands and the athletes? How do you step into resolve this and smooth the process out?

 

17:16

I’d say the primary thing that we’re doing is controlling the money. Right? So there’s, there’s almost essentially like an insurance, right, so we charge our brands, as soon as a deal is accepted. And then we hold that money in escrow. And we release it to the athlete when it’s done completely 100% correctly. Of course, like sometimes with longer term deals, we may change our payment terms. But that’s the typical case. So the best way to make sure stuff happens well, is by making sure that no one gets paid unless it’s done.

 

So there’s, there’s kind of one, we do have terms and conditions. You can delete a post for at a time, like whatever it may be. It’s tough if they’ve been paid. And the deal is like a year. But again, like the beauty of a market basis, we have a lot of accountability. So for example, if you do enjoy your deal with an athlete, you can leave them a one star review. And then that’s published on their profile forever, and obviously affects them for future deals. So similar to Ubers, or whatever else like I think the review system, the ranking system is quite strong.

 

18:21

So guys, as we just spoke about a social power of a review, reviews and testimonials from others can really make a big difference as to whether someone will want to work with you. So if you’re providing a platform service, why not incorporate a reviewing system, this could potentially increase the overall quality of the work provided by the participants of your platform. And in addition, guys is very important to be aware of your reputation in the industry and in the marketplace, because you never know when a bad review could really have an impact on your business.

 

Okay, back to you. Ashwin, could you share with us the kinds of sponsorship deals that open sponsorship fdcs I assume that cash is not the only form of remuneration possible?

 

18:56

Yeah, so we have cash product royalty equity. Cash is obviously King. And our most common well not common, I’d say product product is most common, but cash is the most powerful obviously, product is literally I’m going to give you a mattress in exchange for a social post your testimonial. royalty is like affiliate marketing. And then equity is we don’t do a lot with that. I like the idea of it basically almost becoming like a Kickstarter for art between athletes and brands, but not giving money from the athlete to the brand, but giving their name image likeness.

 

19:30

So I guess the dispute resolution mechanism could be a bit more complicated when there is a product sponsorship involved. I assume if the product being sponsored is maybe a mattress, you wouldn’t actually be holding the mattress and releasing it only upon the completion of a project. Right.

 

19:44

Good point. So we have something in our platform where if you ticket it says product return request, and it’s basically like, again, we basically obviously we’ve learned over time, so we have a couple of checks and by So one is, you can ask the athlete to put a credit card on file, Oh, interesting, you can charge them. If they don’t deliver, and your product is expensive. The athlete can choose whether to add that or not. So then you can choose whether you want to give a deal to an athlete that did not add their credit card.

 

So that’s one, frankly, we’ve never actually ever charged northeast credit conference. So it’s more of a failsafe. And then the be. The other thing is we can ask you to return the product. But again, there are there’s definitely situations where the athlete especially like some of these team sports, the athlete gets caught or gets traded, and they move from one city to the next. And they don’t take all their goods with them. So we’ve had some issues, but it’s not not been that bad.

 

20:51

Okay, interesting. This mean, so the NCAA recently decided to waive long standing rules, banning student athletes from profiting from their own names, images and likeness. So how has this impacted open sponsorship? I assume this is a very exciting time for your company in this moment.

 

21:07

Yeah, it’s huge, huge, huge. So the rules basically say that now they can make money and that that could be they can do training comes with kids, they can sell merchandise, they I mean, they could do so many different things. Obviously, one of those is sponsorship, we’ve obviously been at the forefront of the sponsorship industry in terms of it as a marketplace for the past few years. Why is so relevant as because one, there’s 467,000 student athletes as half a million, so like this, the scale is huge. As you can imagine, most of those people have less than 10,000 followers, they’re truly micro athletes, which means they’re going to be making free product or a couple of $100 $500 max per deal. So no agent, no middleman is incentivized to sit between that.

 

So that’s platforms come in. Lastly, it’s about disclosure as well. So there’s a lot of rules around like, everyone who does a deal must disclose it. And disclosure through a platform is so easy, because it’s literally one excel sheet. And you get I mean, you can send it real time by API’s. So all of the ni l stuff has really shone a light on like the need for athlete brand marketplaces. So we got a lot of attention through that. Obviously, we’ve got a lot of athletes as well. But the thing is, the sponsorship deals are tough to do. So the other side of it is like we are the leaders and actually getting brands to spend money on athletes. So it makes sense that these guys would come to us.

 

22:34

Yeah, I assume the brands wouldn’t want to actually deal with a huge pool of candidates and to manage them individually. So I guess a platform, allowing them to actually make the process a lot easier, something that really fits into maybe a corporate strategy in today’s day and age in terms of social media marketing.

 

22:49

Yeah, no. 100%. I mean, you’re basically hitting people with younger audiences. You local, very localized audiences. So if you’re like a local pizza shop, or whatever, and you’re focused on the Kentucky market, there’s basically no better way then University of Kentucky athletes,

 

23:07

Ishveen, could you show us which countries open sponsorship is currently available in right now?

 

23:13

Yeah, we’re I mean, as a marketplace, you’re kind of available in every country, of course, we are only in English as a website. Our team basically predominately sits in America. And that is a big focus for us. Having said that, we just recently did a deal with a football club in England, and a actually a betting brand in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, like a few different offices. And so we love cross border deals. I mean, that was kind of my background. So we love the idea of working with people wherever they are, with the US athletes and vice versa. For now, that’s where I see the real opportunity.

 

23:52

So I expect to see that open sponsorship will be a global platform in the future.

 

23:56

I think so yeah.

 

23:58

This mean, could you share with us a little bit about your tech entrepreneur journey? What was some of the difficulties that you faced when you first started out the company?

 

24:07

Yeah, I would say I mean, obviously, going into the tech side of it, I’m non technical. So I had like, it took me about a year to find my technical co founder, who I’m working with now, and we’ve been together since 2016. And at the beginning, I mean, how do you even test for someone when you’re not technical, right? And like, how do you know what speed they should go out? Like, all of this stuff that’s completely foreign. So I think that was definitely a challenge. And I think that’s like concurrent with, like hiring is always a challenge because usually you in corporate world you hire for positions that you have done, you get promoted in your highest one Junior in our world in tech, you’re hiring for positions that you have no idea how to do them, and

 

24:56

you’re hiring someone who’s actually smarter than you in a specific area and you’re trusting them. To do the job better in the UK 100% 100%.

 

25:01

So I think that was that has always been one of my hardest things, which is like hiring and like, really like getting the process down for hiring. So, yeah, the non technical side. And then even things like pricing, right, like you play with pricing, I still think are way too cheap, it feels too cheap to me. But you’re changing all of that as difficult. So it’s, it’s not so quick to just like, turn around and do something, because you have to build it into the website, and then the stripe and everything else.

 

25:34

So it should be noted open sponsorship is up and running. Could you share with us a little bit more about the journey, when you were starting to reach out to corporates, could you share with us about that part of your journey was like, and do you have any advice for the entrepreneurs listening in to this podcast?

 

25:46

Yeah, I’d say I mean, founder sales are traditionally the best sales, because you’re so passionate about your, your project. So I would definitely say like, don’t be too quick to hire someone for sales, because they’ll never be able to sell it better than you. Of course, if you are technical, and you really hate presenting and meeting clients fine. But otherwise, I would say that. And then I think like the why going back to what I said earlier, like the why behind what you’ve built is so important, way more important than the how. And if you can say to someone, hey, here’s why I built like for us, I’d be like I built open sponsorship because I love sponsorship marketing, but I think it’s too difficult to get these deals made. Now what happens is if that person believes in the why they’re going to buy you hopefully, and you know, you’re gonna have a great relationship, if they don’t believe that, if they’re like, I work at Nike, and I don’t believe that’s true.

 

They’re not probably going to become a client. Or if they’re like, That might be true, but I’m just not interested in what you’re building. There’s enough other people out there especially early on. So I would say like, it’s not about trying to change people and convince them, it’s really about, like finding people who believe that what you’re doing. Makes sense, because there’ll be your your early adopters

 

27:12

guys is finished yet no one’s going to be as passionate about a business as the founder itself. Now I know that not everyone is comfortable with sales. But as long as you’re an entrepreneur, it’s really important to develop that skill set. It’s really crucial for a founder to actually be involved in the whole process.

 

So even at the start, even if you’re comfortable, make sure that you’re going on to sell the company so you can learn the process you can learn what the contents of the clients are and how you can manage them on then can you actually probably teach a sales person how the whole process can be managed? So even if the listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation what we like it to be probably that last point sell yourself. So it’s been How can our listeners get in contact with you?

 

27:52

Yeah, check out open sponsorship tell anyone you know who has marketing dollars, you use it yourself. And then personally Twitter Linkedin.

 

28:00

Notice you tell the LDS as well, they should get into sign up. That is

 

28:03

true. Say I’m so and that would probably be the other thing. Like if you if you hear me, I’m so focused on the brand side to a tee. But I genuinely believe when you’re building, you have to be so focused. So especially two sided, like, whatever you’re doing even entrepreneurs, I, you hear so many times people talk about, like, I’m gonna do this and this and this.

 

And it’s like, No, no, like, one thing, because again, when you start selling, you hook people up one or two things you got, you don’t tell people like, Here’s 500 reasons why I started this company. Which one do you like? So I’d say focus is really big as well.

 

28:38

Good point. So it’s really thank you for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure having you here.

 

28:42

Yeah, thank you for having me. Awesome.

 

28:44

Now guys, thank you for joining me in today’s episode, I really enjoyed the fact that was able to learn about the sports industry and the sports sponsorship industry from his spin. And I’m really impressed that she spotted this gap in the industry, and she has created a whole platform to fill it up. Now one big key takeaway that I learned from ashvin is about how she managed to dispute resolution process. And I think that’s a very important key ingredient that most people may not really think about when you’re thinking of offering a platform like this.

 

So where you have a platform like Fiverr or Upwork, where it’s a direct cash transaction for service provided, you know, you can as a platform, hold an escrow amount of money and release it only upon the completion of the project. But in a sports sponsorship will a fair number of views can involve products. So how do you actually protect the company if you’re going to provide a product to the sports athlete and I realized a student’s idea of potentially charging the athletes if they don’t deliver on their end of the bargain is a great way to actually protect the corporates. So guys, I’ve received so many valuable insights from issuing today which were your favorites.

 

Now guys to stay up to date with all the latest episodes, tools and resources that make sure to log on to Ted Teo calm, that’s t d t o.com. And even better yet, sign up for our newsletter and you’ll hear from me directly. If you have a need to speak or you need help then drop me an email at Hello at tattoos calm and as before If you’ve received any value from the show, then I’d love to get your support. The best way you can show this is to subscribe to the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts and to share the show with somebody who will find it useful as well. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.

[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

Hey guys and welcome back to the business show it is I your friend and host Ted Teo. So today’s episode is for all you sports fans out there because we are being joined by Ashwin anana over in sponsorship, and she will be talking to us about the ins and outs of the sports sponsorship industry. So Israel anon is the CEO and founder of open sponsorship is an online platform that connects athletes with brands. as traditional sports sponsorship deals only go to the top 1% of athletes, it’s been started open sponsorship to help all athletes have the opportunity to be sponsored by brands.

 

Ishveen Anand is a graduate from Oxford, and is listed as a Forbes 30 under 30, and one of ynX top 100 female founders. In today’s episode, issuing shares how she spotted the gap in the sport sponsorship industry, her thought process and how she facilitated the connection between the brands and athletes, and how brands can get the most out of their collaborations with the athletes that they’re working with. So guys, if you ever receive any value from the show, they don’t deserve to get your support.

 

The best way you can do this is to subscribe to the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts and to share the show with somebody who will find it useful as well. And if you’d like to stay up to date with the latest episodes, tools and resources, then make sure you log on to Ted teo.com that’s t Ed teo.com. And now let’s dive right in. He’s just been thank you so much for joining me today. It’s such a pleasure to have you here.

 

01:16

Thank you so much Ted really nice to be here.

 

01:18

So Ashwin, let’s have a very simple icebreaker so we can all get to know you a bit better. Please share with us who is issuing on and when she isn’t working.

 

01:27

Haha. Um, who is she when she’s not working? I’d say she is a fairly fun loving exercise freak who really enjoys spending time with people who are real, like talking about good stuff.

 

01:46

Nice. So it’s been please share with us your story. I understand that you grew up in the United Kingdom’s and you were previously a management consultant as well. Please connect the dots for us and share with us how you became the person that you are today. A tech entrepreneur.

 

01:59

Yeah, absolutely. So um, I grew up in England, as you mentioned, so I played sports all my life. So there was always this kind of thing within me that was I had a massive affinity to sports as a, as I said, I said like still obsessed with exercising, working out whatever else. But so what sports do you play netball and cricket. But to be honest, I was that person that if there was a spare spot on a team call me I would love to be there, even if I’m not that great at this for.

 

So did that and then graduated from Oxford, became a management consultant. And then really followed my heartstrings back into the sports world. And so became a sports agent fast forward. So I saw a problem in my industry kind of set out to fix it by being an entrepreneur.

 

02:44

Well, sports really is a big part of your life. So in your latest venture is known as open sponsorship. And I understand that there’s a marketplace for athletes to get connected with brand sponsors. So share with us what was the gap in the market that you saw? And what do you do to help deliver?

 

02:58

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m sure there are many people on this call who are listening, if you know your entrepreneurs want to be entrepreneurs, you may think at some point, oh, wouldn’t it be cool to get an athlete to represent my brand to promote me on social media or turn up to an event or whatever it may be? And you go, Okay, that’s a great idea. But How the hell do I make it happen? It’s probably too expensive. Does it work? What would I ask them to do?

 

And all of these questions and so when I was essentially a sports agent, selling sponsorship, what I realized is, there’s this wonderful form of marketing, but it was, it was almost like a little its own little club. Like if you were if you were in it, you were in it, and it’s very exclusive. And so I thought, you know, why is it not a literally like a way for everyone to kind of get involved. And you know, we were talking to just now about like crowdfunding.

 

 When you think about any of these amazing platforms or marketplaces, or Airbnb or whatever else, what they did is they drove accessibility and education. And that’s what we’re doing.

 

04:00

Could you explain to us in your own words, what exactly open sponsorship does for the athletes and the corporates that are on your platform? How do you connect them

 

04:08

inside we have athletes, of which about 60% are signed up through agents. So we do work with all the major agencies in the world. 40% is athlete direct, they’ll create sign up, essentially create a profile. Think of it similar to recruitment. We were talking about this before. So you know, you create a profile, and then you can essentially apply to campaigns, but like job postings on the brand side, which is the bigger driver for us.

 

 The demand is where the money comes from. They’ll listen, she’d go in and they can search through the athletes. But really, there’s this secret. So as far as as they’ll build a campaign a bit like a job posting, looking for athletes who have diabetes, or looking for athletes with pets, or whatever it may be. We’re offering X amount of money for these deliverables, and we essentially teach you how to think about structuring that campaign. And then the athletes will apply to you and then we do everything else. We might Manage contracts, payments to management, ROI tracking.

 

So we’re really hand holding the whole process I like in that bit to kind of almost like an Upwork or Fiverr,

 

05:09

mostly, but it’s specifically in the context of connecting athletes and sponsors. Now even before we speak a little bit more about the business model of open sponsorship, could you explain to us a little bit more about what it was like in the past before open sponsorship became a thing? Or was it a case where the larger brands and the more prominent athletes had little difficulty getting connected but a smaller brands? And the younger maybe up and coming athletes were struggling to even get to know each other? speak to anybody relevant at all?

 

05:34

Yeah. 100%. So you’ve got traditional sponsorship was very much like your Nike deal, right? And, and a few people would have like a Gatorade or a Pepsi deal, or whatever it may be. But then there was like nothing else. And of course, if you have enough money for an athlete, then you’d probably always go for the top 1%. And I remember I interviewed someone who worked at an agency I said, you know, why do you want to work with us? He said, Listen, whenever we speak to anyone, all we do is sell our number one athlete, their number one Olympian.

 

We didn’t really give any love to everyone else, just because it’s difficult, unlike selling sponsorship is hard. And so kind of a couple things realized one is we realized, well, these athletes do have value. Of course they do. Just the deals are smaller, the margin is smaller. So if you’re going to be incentivized to do these deals, you got to do them quick turnaround. But the second thing is because of the rise of influencer marketing, social media, digital marketing influences generally what happened was you started realizing that actually, okay, even if the athlete is not the number one, they’re still very relevant, but to their audience, I

 

06:37

see. So now you can actually tap on the loyal followers of each of the athletes as well.

 

06:41

Exactly, exactly. Because back in the day, if you worked at an athlete, you had to produce TV production, like do a TV commercial with them, then you have to buy media time, you know, invest, invest, invest. So obviously, you’re not going to do that unless they’re big enough.

 

But now it’s literally Hey, I’m going to pay you but you’re going to produce the content sitting at home with my product, you’re going to post it on your own on my channel, so the cost of everything else has gone down which means it’s it’s it’s worthwhile to work with a middle level or smaller money sharply.

 

07:14

Yeah, in fact, I think in the past where a brand may only be able to work with one top athlete in terms of budget, I think now with open sponsorship, is it right to say they can reach up to 2030, maybe smaller athletes, but it through their own sub niche and types of audience, they’re following them as well. It becomes a lot more efficient for brands

 

07:32

100%. And if you think about like, what’s, what are marketers taught to do today is all about a B testing, right? Like you AB test different ads, different creatives, different channels, different budgets, etc. So same thing with athletes, like if you know that you need x, fine, but if you’re like, Oh, I’m not sure you can come to us and have like one UFC one winter Olympia, one soccer player one, there’s one. So you can really start a B testing male, female Paralympic Olympic, different types of athletes seeing which works and then doubling down on your strategy.

 

08:04

Guys, this has been shared, she really managed to spot a gap in the market, it’s been noticed that only the top 1% of athletes were really getting the sponsorship deals, and the rest of the nine 9% were left out. And now she’s jumped on this opportunity to fill up the gap. She has created a marketplace for all athletes to connect with brands. I really love this idea because firstly, athletes in general are getting more opportunities to get sponsored.

 

But more importantly, companies can also become more efficient with their advertising campaigns with more targeted ads by tapping on the audiences of the specific athletes that are reaching out to now let’s talk a little bit more about the business model open sponsorship, I noticed that the different tiers of payments for corporates and commissions are being taken from athletes and agents on the other side of the spectrum. Can you break this down for us and maybe explain why you’ve chosen such a structure? Yeah.

 

08:51

Good question. So we initially built the supply side. And of course, when you don’t really have anything to sell, like, you just have to incentivize them to come on. And also, sometimes when you start a business, it’s probably best to look at Well, what How is it done today in the real world, or the offline world, and try and replicate that. So taking a commission from an athlete is quite normal, or even agents quite normal. So let’s just do that, because they used to it. And it also means we could get them to sign up without having much pressure on delivering, you know, the beginning, they were like, sure, we’ll sign up, like, who doesn’t need help with sponsorship, we don’t think it’s going to work, but we’ll sign up. So they signed up.

 

And then on the brand side, initially, actually, interestingly, we launched for free and we were just going to take a commission. But what we realized is that you’ve got a lot of small brands who they’re never really going to do anything, and they just, they’re hoping to send a message to an athlete, but they didn’t really have the money and it wasn’t creating a great ecosystem. And so that’s when we put in the payments to be curated. Exactly, exactly. So and we’ve kept our subscription low. So you know, it’s anywhere from $79 399 or upwards from that.

 

And so the aim is not to price anyone out. But we want people to be serious, so that the athletes are not wasting their time applying to campaigns that are never going to come to life.

 

10:16

I understand. So what are some of the key indicators that brands to look out for when you’re looking to sponsor an athlete that’s on your platform? Yeah, good

 

10:23

question. I would say it’s a it’s a, it’s actually very brand by brand, like, some people just want the biggest following the biggest engagement. Right? Like, you know, it’s almost like a media buy. Some people want authenticity. And very important if you’re like, you know, we’ve worked with products that are gluten free or vegan, or, like I said, diabetes, or whatever else that you know, you’re looking for someone who’s relevant, who’s authentic.

 

Some of our brands are really looking for content creation. You know, they want athletes who take good pictures, and they want to be able to repurpose, so I’d say it like it does depend brought by brands, whether it’s like value or content, or whatever it may be.

 

11:05

Now, what about the whole process towards engagement? Do the companies and the athletes have a chance to speak together about what the deliverables of the project will be? Before we get to work together?

 

11:13

A good question, I would say it depends. So the reason being is because like if my if my campaign is like offering $100 worth of product or $500 cash, it’s almost like, how much work does anyone want to do before that, and I think the old school model, it was very much like, we should add value, we should have conversations or whatever else.

 

But if you think about like, house viewing, ultimately, you don’t, if you’re like, I like this house, and then the estate agent calls you and start asking you lots of questions. You might be like, Look, dude, I just want to go see the house, I don’t want to tell you everything about my life, until I’ve seen the house, and then we can talk about it. And so I’d say a similar way that if a brand wants to invest and spend time and get to know the athletes fine. But I would say we lean kind of a game away from that, especially given a lot of what we do is I wanted three month deals, we try and make it so that the campaign says a lot about who you are like you can go to the website of the brand and you know, see the campaign outline and whatever else. Because ultimately athletes are busy.

 

And so if you ask them to spend time upfront, getting to know you, I also have this perception that they might start charging more because they think, Oh gosh, this is a lot of work. So we try and really reduce the work on both sides, just to really get to the deal point

 

12:39

make as smooth as possible. Minus 10. So what can brands do to actually get a better reach with an athletes audience? or more importantly, how can they make the collaboration a good one on both sides?

 

12:50

Yeah, it’s a great question. I’d say I think Firstly, is going into it knowing what you want as a brand. Are you looking for good content that you can repurpose? Are you looking for traffic to your website? Right? Are you looking for virality So basically, understanding what you want is really important because how can you define what being successful means if you don’t know and I think that the problem is too many people come into it and they don’t realize so I think that’s the first thing which is like what are we going to judge success on and then I would say of course, it’s about finding like going back to that point, if what you’re looking for is as many swipes as possible to your website through then you want to use an Instagram story, right?

 

 Because you can swipe but like LinkedIn, then what you want is someone who has really high engagement but has a high following great and if you if they need to not be very content driven, so be it as long as the engagements there. So I’d say like understanding what you want and then matching it back to the campaign is really important. And then I’d say Secondly is have this opinion on whether you want to do one offs three months I personally do like like slightly longer term because you can potentially hit someone’s audience multiple times. So it’s interesting there’s a big debate around long term versus short term brand ambassador versus a one time influencer so it’s quite tough

 

14:20

and this is so the idea that repetition breeds a bit of familiarity. So if any of you see an athlete that you follow recommending a product the first time you might actually think much about it, but at a fifth or sixth time you may actually be curious and you think Okay, you know what, I’ll go check this out.

 

14:34

Yeah. 100% and then also from the athletes perspective, if you’re paying them only for one thing, they’re probably less inclined to really get to know you versus if you’re doing something slightly longer term. And I think the most important thing is if you can get your influencer your athlete to talk about like the why behind it. The what is easy, right? Like hey, here’s a toothpaste but like, why does this toothpaste make sense for me to see

 

14:59

No, in fact, the best partnerships will probably be the ones where the athlete is so passionate about a product that they you know, they would have said yes to helping the company, even if they were not going to be paid anyway. Yeah. Okay. It’s been I’m particularly excited for this next question, could you share some of your favorite stories on some of the projects or collaborations that open sponsorship has helped create in the past.

 

15:22

I wouldn’t say that, like, on my baby is like I like every single deal that happens. But I’d say like, some of the stuff that I’m really proud of is, I mean, obviously, it’s really fun working with bigger brands. So we recently signed Walmart as a client. So seeing athletes post about Walmart, like fortune one company is pretty sick, right? I’ve also really enjoyed that, like the female athlete side of things, I feel like we’re a really big advocate for female athlete deals. So like, the first time we work with Birchbox, it was it was really, really fun. So I like that.

 

The other thing is I going back to that objective heading, we recently were kind of concluding a very, one of our largest brand ambassadors deals like multi multi month, multi year. And one thing that came out of that is COVID. Here, everything changed. Their big focus was recruitment, right? Because suddenly, it was really hard to recruit people and retain and whatever else. So we used our athletes to drive recruitment, like, come work for this team as the best team, I’m part of the team, etc. And they said it really drove application your applications for them. And that’s, that’s just really nice to think

 

16:37

I see. So you’re going one step further and helping the industry grow. And it’s not just about helping Connect sponsorship to use? Exactly. I see. Okay. So it’s been I’m curious how many companies and athletes have signed up to your platform at the moment.

 

16:49

So we have around 11,000 athletes. And then we have a network of around 20,000 brands, but obviously, they’re not all doing a campaign. So at any point in time, it’ll be like a few 100, we’ll be doing a campaign

 

17:03

by sea. So it’s been this open sponsorship, half a dispute resolution mechanism in place right now, what happens when there’s a bit of a disagreement between the brands and the athletes? How do you step into resolve this and smooth the process out?

 

17:16

I’d say the primary thing that we’re doing is controlling the money. Right? So there’s, there’s almost essentially like an insurance, right, so we charge our brands, as soon as a deal is accepted. And then we hold that money in escrow. And we release it to the athlete when it’s done completely 100% correctly. Of course, like sometimes with longer term deals, we may change our payment terms. But that’s the typical case. So the best way to make sure stuff happens well, is by making sure that no one gets paid unless it’s done.

 

So there’s, there’s kind of one, we do have terms and conditions. You can delete a post for at a time, like whatever it may be. It’s tough if they’ve been paid. And the deal is like a year. But again, like the beauty of a market basis, we have a lot of accountability. So for example, if you do enjoy your deal with an athlete, you can leave them a one star review. And then that’s published on their profile forever, and obviously affects them for future deals. So similar to Ubers, or whatever else like I think the review system, the ranking system is quite strong.

 

18:21

So guys, as we just spoke about a social power of a review, reviews and testimonials from others can really make a big difference as to whether someone will want to work with you. So if you’re providing a platform service, why not incorporate a reviewing system, this could potentially increase the overall quality of the work provided by the participants of your platform. And in addition, guys is very important to be aware of your reputation in the industry and in the marketplace, because you never know when a bad review could really have an impact on your business.

 

Okay, back to you. Ashwin, could you share with us the kinds of sponsorship deals that open sponsorship fdcs I assume that cash is not the only form of remuneration possible?

 

18:56

Yeah, so we have cash product royalty equity. Cash is obviously King. And our most common well not common, I’d say product product is most common, but cash is the most powerful obviously, product is literally I’m going to give you a mattress in exchange for a social post your testimonial. royalty is like affiliate marketing. And then equity is we don’t do a lot with that. I like the idea of it basically almost becoming like a Kickstarter for art between athletes and brands, but not giving money from the athlete to the brand, but giving their name image likeness.

 

19:30

So I guess the dispute resolution mechanism could be a bit more complicated when there is a product sponsorship involved. I assume if the product being sponsored is maybe a mattress, you wouldn’t actually be holding the mattress and releasing it only upon the completion of a project. Right.

 

19:44

Good point. So we have something in our platform where if you ticket it says product return request, and it’s basically like, again, we basically obviously we’ve learned over time, so we have a couple of checks and by So one is, you can ask the athlete to put a credit card on file, Oh, interesting, you can charge them. If they don’t deliver, and your product is expensive. The athlete can choose whether to add that or not. So then you can choose whether you want to give a deal to an athlete that did not add their credit card.

 

So that’s one, frankly, we’ve never actually ever charged northeast credit conference. So it’s more of a failsafe. And then the be. The other thing is we can ask you to return the product. But again, there are there’s definitely situations where the athlete especially like some of these team sports, the athlete gets caught or gets traded, and they move from one city to the next. And they don’t take all their goods with them. So we’ve had some issues, but it’s not not been that bad.

 

20:51

Okay, interesting. This mean, so the NCAA recently decided to waive long standing rules, banning student athletes from profiting from their own names, images and likeness. So how has this impacted open sponsorship? I assume this is a very exciting time for your company in this moment.

 

21:07

Yeah, it’s huge, huge, huge. So the rules basically say that now they can make money and that that could be they can do training comes with kids, they can sell merchandise, they I mean, they could do so many different things. Obviously, one of those is sponsorship, we’ve obviously been at the forefront of the sponsorship industry in terms of it as a marketplace for the past few years. Why is so relevant as because one, there’s 467,000 student athletes as half a million, so like this, the scale is huge. As you can imagine, most of those people have less than 10,000 followers, they’re truly micro athletes, which means they’re going to be making free product or a couple of $100 $500 max per deal. So no agent, no middleman is incentivized to sit between that.

 

So that’s platforms come in. Lastly, it’s about disclosure as well. So there’s a lot of rules around like, everyone who does a deal must disclose it. And disclosure through a platform is so easy, because it’s literally one excel sheet. And you get I mean, you can send it real time by API’s. So all of the ni l stuff has really shone a light on like the need for athlete brand marketplaces. So we got a lot of attention through that. Obviously, we’ve got a lot of athletes as well. But the thing is, the sponsorship deals are tough to do. So the other side of it is like we are the leaders and actually getting brands to spend money on athletes. So it makes sense that these guys would come to us.

 

22:34

Yeah, I assume the brands wouldn’t want to actually deal with a huge pool of candidates and to manage them individually. So I guess a platform, allowing them to actually make the process a lot easier, something that really fits into maybe a corporate strategy in today’s day and age in terms of social media marketing.

 

22:49

Yeah, no. 100%. I mean, you’re basically hitting people with younger audiences. You local, very localized audiences. So if you’re like a local pizza shop, or whatever, and you’re focused on the Kentucky market, there’s basically no better way then University of Kentucky athletes,

 

23:07

Ishveen, could you show us which countries open sponsorship is currently available in right now?

 

23:13

Yeah, we’re I mean, as a marketplace, you’re kind of available in every country, of course, we are only in English as a website. Our team basically predominately sits in America. And that is a big focus for us. Having said that, we just recently did a deal with a football club in England, and a actually a betting brand in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, like a few different offices. And so we love cross border deals. I mean, that was kind of my background. So we love the idea of working with people wherever they are, with the US athletes and vice versa. For now, that’s where I see the real opportunity.

 

23:52

So I expect to see that open sponsorship will be a global platform in the future.

 

23:56

I think so yeah.

 

23:58

This mean, could you share with us a little bit about your tech entrepreneur journey? What was some of the difficulties that you faced when you first started out the company?

 

24:07

Yeah, I would say I mean, obviously, going into the tech side of it, I’m non technical. So I had like, it took me about a year to find my technical co founder, who I’m working with now, and we’ve been together since 2016. And at the beginning, I mean, how do you even test for someone when you’re not technical, right? And like, how do you know what speed they should go out? Like, all of this stuff that’s completely foreign. So I think that was definitely a challenge. And I think that’s like concurrent with, like hiring is always a challenge because usually you in corporate world you hire for positions that you have done, you get promoted in your highest one Junior in our world in tech, you’re hiring for positions that you have no idea how to do them, and

 

24:56

you’re hiring someone who’s actually smarter than you in a specific area and you’re trusting them. To do the job better in the UK 100% 100%.

 

25:01

So I think that was that has always been one of my hardest things, which is like hiring and like, really like getting the process down for hiring. So, yeah, the non technical side. And then even things like pricing, right, like you play with pricing, I still think are way too cheap, it feels too cheap to me. But you’re changing all of that as difficult. So it’s, it’s not so quick to just like, turn around and do something, because you have to build it into the website, and then the stripe and everything else.

 

25:34

So it should be noted open sponsorship is up and running. Could you share with us a little bit more about the journey, when you were starting to reach out to corporates, could you share with us about that part of your journey was like, and do you have any advice for the entrepreneurs listening in to this podcast?

 

25:46

Yeah, I’d say I mean, founder sales are traditionally the best sales, because you’re so passionate about your, your project. So I would definitely say like, don’t be too quick to hire someone for sales, because they’ll never be able to sell it better than you. Of course, if you are technical, and you really hate presenting and meeting clients fine. But otherwise, I would say that. And then I think like the why going back to what I said earlier, like the why behind what you’ve built is so important, way more important than the how. And if you can say to someone, hey, here’s why I built like for us, I’d be like I built open sponsorship because I love sponsorship marketing, but I think it’s too difficult to get these deals made. Now what happens is if that person believes in the why they’re going to buy you hopefully, and you know, you’re gonna have a great relationship, if they don’t believe that, if they’re like, I work at Nike, and I don’t believe that’s true.

 

They’re not probably going to become a client. Or if they’re like, That might be true, but I’m just not interested in what you’re building. There’s enough other people out there especially early on. So I would say like, it’s not about trying to change people and convince them, it’s really about, like finding people who believe that what you’re doing. Makes sense, because there’ll be your your early adopters

 

27:12

guys is finished yet no one’s going to be as passionate about a business as the founder itself. Now I know that not everyone is comfortable with sales. But as long as you’re an entrepreneur, it’s really important to develop that skill set. It’s really crucial for a founder to actually be involved in the whole process.

 

So even at the start, even if you’re comfortable, make sure that you’re going on to sell the company so you can learn the process you can learn what the contents of the clients are and how you can manage them on then can you actually probably teach a sales person how the whole process can be managed? So even if the listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation what we like it to be probably that last point sell yourself. So it’s been How can our listeners get in contact with you?

 

27:52

Yeah, check out open sponsorship tell anyone you know who has marketing dollars, you use it yourself. And then personally Twitter Linkedin.

 

28:00

Notice you tell the LDS as well, they should get into sign up. That is

 

28:03

true. Say I’m so and that would probably be the other thing. Like if you if you hear me, I’m so focused on the brand side to a tee. But I genuinely believe when you’re building, you have to be so focused. So especially two sided, like, whatever you’re doing even entrepreneurs, I, you hear so many times people talk about, like, I’m gonna do this and this and this.

 

And it’s like, No, no, like, one thing, because again, when you start selling, you hook people up one or two things you got, you don’t tell people like, Here’s 500 reasons why I started this company. Which one do you like? So I’d say focus is really big as well.

 

28:38

Good point. So it’s really thank you for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure having you here.

 

28:42

Yeah, thank you for having me. Awesome.

 

28:44

Now guys, thank you for joining me in today’s episode, I really enjoyed the fact that was able to learn about the sports industry and the sports sponsorship industry from his spin. And I’m really impressed that she spotted this gap in the industry, and she has created a whole platform to fill it up. Now one big key takeaway that I learned from ashvin is about how she managed to dispute resolution process. And I think that’s a very important key ingredient that most people may not really think about when you’re thinking of offering a platform like this.

 

So where you have a platform like Fiverr or Upwork, where it’s a direct cash transaction for service provided, you know, you can as a platform, hold an escrow amount of money and release it only upon the completion of the project. But in a sports sponsorship will a fair number of views can involve products. So how do you actually protect the company if you’re going to provide a product to the sports athlete and I realized a student’s idea of potentially charging the athletes if they don’t deliver on their end of the bargain is a great way to actually protect the corporates. So guys, I’ve received so many valuable insights from issuing today which were your favorites.

 

Now guys to stay up to date with all the latest episodes, tools and resources that make sure to log on to Ted Teo calm, that’s t d t o.com. And even better yet, sign up for our newsletter and you’ll hear from me directly. If you have a need to speak or you need help then drop me an email at Hello at tattoos calm and as before If you’ve received any value from the show, then I’d love to get your support. The best way you can show this is to subscribe to the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts and to share the show with somebody who will find it useful as well. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.