Three Things: 1) Being first in new sponsorship deals 2) LIV, the PGA Tour and your business 3) Fish puke and fate
Three Things I learned in SaaS, Sports, Tech and Live Events:
Nobody wants to be first, but they all want to be early. We announced our first MLB team deal which included corporate resale enablement. We've been talking to a dozen or so teams since Thanksgiving working out the details. As expected, everyone wanted to do a deal but they just didn't want to be first. Once we announced LAFC, the timeline for others sped up real quick. Now that the Texas Rangers are on board, many have changed their tunes. Fortune favors the brave. Yes, there's always risk in being early. But there's more risk in being too late.
People do what they're incentivized to do part two. We've talked about it here in the past. It is vital to building your team and competing together. Arsenal boss Arsene Wegner got himself in hot water a decade ago when he referred to "five trophies" when citing his goals for the club by adding qualification for the Champions League as a "fifth trophy." The fans and press mocked him relentlessly. But how can anyone blame him considering the economic windfall involved in qualifying? LIV golf and the PGA TOUR are locked in a very public competition and it will be driven by what incentivizes the players. Trying to force incentives on people doesn't work. What drives them comes from decades of life experience. "History and tradition" will work for some. Being a pioneer, making more money and playing less matters to others. If nothing else: know what incentivizes your team to a person and try to build your incentives as such. When a sales person asked me who they should call the other day, the answer was simple: "Whoever makes you the most money personally." Aligning the plan and company goals with that statement, that's our job.
"You have two choices: 1) Go to Nineveh or 2) Go to Nineveh covered in fish puke." What a terrific worldview. A friend spent months jumping through hoops to try and get to Asia to see family. He went so far as flying to another state to get passports renewed. Only to pick up covid on the flight home from said state and cancel the trip entirely. Sometimes the path for us is pretty clear, no matter how much we do. There's a lot of peace, at least for me in that realization. I'd prefer to go in a clean and tailored t-shirt that isn't "covered in fish puke."