Kyle Israel, welcome to Sports Management Podcast. Marcus, thank you for having me. I think typically on your side of the world, but fortunately I'm here in Florida with some better weather than people are seeing kind of globally. Definitely. It's really, really cold in Sweden when I'm at. And I know you say that it's kind of cold where you are as well, but at least you got the sun. We do have the sun, but thanks for having me. I appreciate it. The pleasure is all mine. So you are the co-founder of Momentus Sports. So can you tell us a little bit about your role and the company? Yeah, absolutely. There was a bit of a journey to get to a place where we decided to launch the platform. I'll kind of roll back here, but Magnolia helped partners. The logo you see behind me is our family office. And over the last three years as we typically are investing fairly agnosticly, we started to lean into a few core verticals of focus, really with the intention of building subsidiaries or platforms to pursue the thesis that we were looking to activate. And so Momentus, for us, was our platform that we launched in sports generally. You could think of us as a sports organization. We do have a $100 million fund currently that we're out on market raising, but we'll pursue opportunities in sports properties, emerging leagues, tech on the edge of sports eventually VS, EV whenever that makes sense and when it's outside of the fun mandate. But our core focus is really at the intersection of sports and real estate. So investing into these really unique teams and properties typically outside the big five leagues here in the US and outside of the championship in Premier League over in Europe or the UK. And the reason for that is we started to identify over the last 36 months as we were looking at deals and kind of deciding what our strategy was going to be was that in the middle market of sports. So teams from one to a $120 million dollar evaluations, there was a significant focus on infrastructure development. So stadium renovation in Europe typically or stadium development here in the US. And then ultimately mixed use real estate development around that. And so as we kind of processed our strategy, we wanted to lean into where our expertise was, where it is and we're not passive investors were typically active in nearly everything that we do. And so we started to identify that we could lean into our commercial real estate experience, both on the capital formation side, master development planning side, and pair that extremely well with sports generally. But in a way where we could invest in these properties and in these teams and be a meaningful minority partner and then help create a synergy between team ownership real estate developer and ensuring that these projects actually came to fruition. And so we made an investment into sporting jacks and Jacksonville, Florida about two years ago. That was our first investment that's now in our fun portfolio. But that became the proxy for us as it relates to the type of opportunities we as a firm wanted to pursue. And so that deal itself and I'll pause after this is a men's USL championship team that will start playing this spring. We have a women's game bridge super league club that is in first place right now, top of the table. They're in the second half of their first season. We have a 12,000 athlete academy. And then we're going to develop a 15,000 seat stadium on a large plot of real estate. Let's call it 60 to 80 acres in Jacksonville. And that became the deal will realize yes, we can participate on the team side. We can participate in the coGP positioning on the real estate. And so momentous is a vehicle built to continue to execute against that thesis, but also widen the scope of how we participate in sports in the future. Really interesting. And you mentioned that you're staying out of the big five and the biggest leagues is that because of the price tag or is there any other reasons? Yeah, I mean, the valuations or the multi billions at this point in time, we saw that you could go in whether through another fund or directly into kind of very, very small minority positions, especially with the amount of capital we're looking to allocate. And that's fantastic. And there are people doing that. Maybe it's treated more like an annuity a little bit to get up in a deal like that. But for us, we knew from an activation perspective, from a value ad perspective, or we believe that we could have more meaningful return opportunities in that middle market layer in particular because there's so much desire in the secondary cities across the US and Europe to have sports anchored mixed-use developments, live work and play style. And so that's really the reason that we focused on that category. In addition to that, we couldn't find anybody else from a fund perspective or a platform perspective that was pursuing that layer thematically. Meaning any investment they're making is purely in that middle market. In both of those positioning's team and real estate, we just couldn't find somebody that was doing it thematically. So we decided to build a platform to do just that. And when there's a unique opportunity like a make-jurly baseball deal or an NHL deal, it's a much larger check. We do have the capacity and ability to spin up some type of vehicle to go and pursue those opportunities via SPV. But we're very selective obviously about those. And we're really focused on the core mandate of the middle market of sports team and real estate. Can you just explain that SPV shortly if there is someone who doesn't know that is? Yeah, it's an acronym for special purpose vehicle. So think of a deal specific LLC or business that allows coGP like us to come in and manage an investment and bring an LP capital to round out the total investment that we're making into a club. So if a fund has multiple assets underneath it as a part of the portfolio over time, an SPV is very acutely focused on one specific deal and that's the only thing that SPV or vehicle participates in. Hopefully that's helpful. Yeah, for sure. Are you looking into women's sports in particular because I was speaking to John Reynolds who is very into women's football or soccer? And that the clubs IP value have risen from one million dollars which was St. Andrew's CdFC five years ago and now they are worth 150 million the sports IPs. It's a huge potential that in an up and coming market for sure. So are you looking into that specifically? Yeah, first of all, that was a very good interview. I saw that. So well done there. And yes, we are. In sporting jacks, we have a women's team right now that's playing. We're watching women's football, women's soccer both domestically and Europe to your point. Yes, climb rapidly from evaluation perspective. I think even angel city when Bob Iger came in, it was at a $250 million valuation. And to your point in only five years prior, it was nowhere close to that. I think another signal from the market as it relates to the NWSL here in the US is the recent franchise acquisition in Atlanta where Arthur Blank and their group acquired the franchise rights only for $160 million. Where five years ago that was nowhere remotely close to that price point. So yes, it is very much trending. It is something that we're watching closely. We are looking at opportunities to continue to participate there. We're very excited about the Game Bridge Super League, which is a USL owned league. It's in its second season. It's still very approachable from evaluation perspective. But we'll provide unique opportunities in women's soccer, which the US obviously has a great history of being or producing talent in to still be a part of that growing soccer infrastructure on the women's side here. And as we open our funnel more towards Europe in the future, obviously there's a ton of focus. And there's been success as it relates to 50,000 people showing up to these women's football matches where that's something that we're paying very close attention to. So absolutely, whether it be soccer, whether it be basketball, even volleyball, we're watching the women's side very closely and do agree that it is a trending and maturing pretty quickly market within this asset class. Definitely. And you mentioned also before that the momentous is blending ownership with real estate. What's the hardest strategic choice that you have to make in that model? There's a couple things. At the end of the day, a key part of my role is the underwriting of the operators of the club that's associated with the real estate project. We are not looking to be control owners and any franchise today. We want to be like I mentioned a meaningful minority. So there is an important underwriting of the people that are waking up every day and executing the strategy on the sporting side and the team operation side. There's risk there. In a sense, you've got to get that right and you've got to back the right team, especially as more people get into the space and start to participate in this asset class. On the real estate side, these are huge projects. 40 to 100 acres, 500 to a billion dollar cost type of projects. So when you're selecting an opportunity, really understanding, hey, what's is the land under control? Or is there still a process to acquire the land? There's risk baked into that. What is a local market demographics? When you look at how a city or an area in a community is trending, you're typically looking at a lot of the normal underwriting data points, market migration, how many people are in the market? What's the age demographics? What's the foot traffic? What is the driving traffic? We do have real estate experts on our team. I'm not going to pretend to be one at the moment and get engaged.
on that side, but it's the real estate and kind of the fully baked, typical real estate view that you look through when deciding, you know, can we develop a multi, you know, housing complex here? What does bring some type of medical into this ecosystem look like? Is it needed? Is it necessary? FNB and entertainment are considering the same thing and then hotels as well. If you get into an opportunity where there's not a line of sight on land and land's not under control where that ownership group of the team does not have a great or emerging or budding relationship with the public entities, whether that be the county, the mayor, the city, it's always great to have that support on your side. There's some qualifications to ensure that you don't get into a deal where you think real estate is just around the corner as a part of the opportunity when in fact, it's much longer than you anticipated because that impacts IRR, that impacts the whole lifetime of each investment. So there's not really one. You've really got to show up and ensure that the qualification of the opportunities is really buttoned up. And for us, that's very real estate forward while ensuring that the operational group on the team side or at least that we have conviction with that operational group that they can execute. Interesting. And you mentioned Europe as well that you're looking into this market. And here's a little bit different when it comes. It's not as many franchises as in the US and many clubs have these 51% rule that the usually is the case in Sweden, for example, that the fans and the members own 51% of the club. So that's that percent difficulty in for Europe rather than US. It certainly does to your point, Sweden, Germany, right, with the 50 plus one rule. I think Bundesliga and the DFL generally is one of the most untapped markets globally as it relates to soccer from an investment perspective. There's just the innate challenges of you can put your capital there, but you're not going to make many decisions about how it's spent and all the elements that you would want to be a part of. Typically, it doesn't mean it can't be done. I know of deals currently right now where they're thinking about ways to work around that. That's one piece, obviously, to your point. The other piece, maybe I should mention just as we think about Europe, it was a core focus for us the last three years. I was looking at deals across every country, every level. You know, what I identified kind of personally is that I think in three to five years from a real estate perspective that local councils, local cities are really going to start to get behind the idea of live work play. There's many housing crises or a need for housing in many communities across Europe, where this thesis in this strategy can be impactful. If you look at Berlin as an example on the east side of the city, in East Side Gala, we have new, a couple of years old Ubra Arena. It's built up with a music venue next to it. Hospitality, hotels, everything there. It's been transformational for the city of Berlin. It's probably a reason why they're going to have a chance of having an MBA Europe basketball team because of the venue, because of the setup there. For us right now, the core focus at least in 2026 is the domestic U.S. Reason being, it's where we have the most expertise. It's where we understand the markets the most and understand how to work the public-private relationships. They were paying very close attention to Europe. It's a market that we do want to be in eventually, but we realized in the short term, there were plenty of opportunities here in the domestic U.S., where we had relationships established and where we could create the best structure for the returns that we were looking for. But I do think that sport generally and then the combination of real estate with sport will be a very heavy trend as we roll into 2728 and into 2030 as it relates to Europe. At least that's just from sitting in my seat and what I'm seeing on the ground. Interesting. Is there some specific areas in the U.S. that you're targeting more than others? Because if you're talking real estate, maybe if we take New York as an example, it's very crowded if you compare to maybe Texas. Not an expert in the U.S. market by far, but there are certain areas that are definitely more crowded and if you have the real estate pieces, well, that might add a piece of complexity. Now, it's a great question. So our core focus in the way that we articulated is premium or premier secondary markets throughout the U.S. If you think through the lens of soccer, we're not trying to go into the markets where the MLS currently exists. Those are typically bigger media markets. We're looking sub 32, look outside the largest 32 markets that the U.S. has and that's where we see a few things. Number one, we see a population of people that typically has a minor league baseball team in their community, maybe a minor league hockey team, but typically not as much competition for live sports entertainment being one thing, but a desire to continue to build out those communities with sports franchises. Two, you see public-private relationships really turning on where these local governments and entities are realizing the value of these live-work plan environments, the experiential opportunity for their citizens anchored by sport. So those are markets that we're very focused on, but on simple terms, you think of the Charleston South Carolina, you think of a Omaha, Nebraska, Jacksonville, although they haven't NFL team, they're kind of at the top of those secondary markets. So it's markets like that really across the country we're generally willing to look at. I would say that our real house is in the southeast and sun belt because of some of the relationships and partnerships that we have with developers in those regions, but we're not afraid to do something in Oregon or Washington. If it makes sense, ultimately, but yeah, premium secondary markets, not a lot of big five sport competition. And if we can make it work in the sun, about our southeast region, ideally, but it doesn't need to exclusively be there. I understand. And you mentioned you were deciding Florida. So is there anything around there that is of interest at home? Yeah. So sporting jacks, it's about two hours north of here in Orlando. So that was a part of the reason why we participated in that deal. I'll be able to go to a match, which is not normal for me this week. So I can drive up and see the match on Saturday night. There are a number of other projects here across the state, you know, on the space coast, where SpaceX and NASA are very much an emerging community when you think of the future of space travel, interusing space travel to go from here to China and two hours. I forget what the framing of that is. Okay, what type of trend or general trend is coming up out of those very kind of unique marketplaces where people are moving to because of corporations being there that need entertainment. And so there's a number of those in South Florida, Central Florida, East Coast, West Coast, and in North Florida, they were paying attention to where we're obviously actively involved in sporting jacks and jacks involved moment. Interesting. And I know that the sporting jacks was your first flagship project that includes WSL and U.S.L. teams plus the stadium and mixed use development. So a lot of things in one there. So what are the biggest lessons and learning that you have taken from this project? Good question. Number one, building an incredible culture within the sports organization is critical. Ensuring that everybody is on the same page from ownership to management to the staff, to the sporting side, to the athletes. Having the right culture in place from the very beginning is critical. An expansion team has challenges. Obviously you're bringing a new brand to a market that is showing up for the first time. So how do you activate? How do you get the word out in a meaningful way to the community for us in Jacksonville in particular, having a soccer academy with 12,000 athletes that are walking around with our badge on, whose parents are wearing our memorabilia as well or our merch. Those are all critical kind of early days establishing of the franchise and organization, especially when it's an expansion opportunity. I think those are two key learnings. The real estate component is really, really critical. We've learned that you really want to have land under control when you enter an opportunity. There's a couple sites that we've been looking at in Jacksonville in particular in making decisions on to figure out what's best for us. Ideally, that's already baked and under control is a learning for us. It doesn't really change the process, but it is a risk mitigator that you would want to think about and consider. We're playing in with that club currently in a third party stadium. So we played at Hodges Stadium at the University of North Florida. You're doing your best, too, but you're not creating the environment that a fan will experience in your brand new home stadium. I'm so really working hard to ensure that in the interim going into your own stadium, you're creating an environment that is still exciting and enticing, engaging for fans to come out to and really enjoy the product that you're putting on the pitch. So those are all some key learnings. It's a great question. If we had two hours, I could probably go quite deeper, but it really comes down to the team owners that are waking up every day and think about executing the project. It's just critical that there's extreme alignment. Unfortunately, we have that with Jackson, though. You just can't take for granted just assuming that they're going to operate with a standard and with a capacity that you would expect. It's got to be trust, but verify to ensure that and we're fortunate that that's the case. But we've looked at other deals where over time, it became evident that that wasn't which we stayed clear of. So those are some of the key kind of like just initial things that stick out to me. Yeah. Looking forward, you said that 2026 you're focusing on the US market, but if you're taking on different goals and looking three, five years ahead, are there any any big plans for momentous? Yeah, I mean, I think for us, we'd obviously like to have closed our first fund and have the capital to play.
will probably do five or six projects total in this fund. I think that we'll probably have an SPV or two that are going into a really unique asset. Maybe it has real estate as component of it, maybe not, just depending on the asset. So seeing a handful of those investments over the next three to five years will be meaningful for us. And then I think that as time goes on, especially with my seat being in Berlin and in Europe and majority of the time and the relationships that I've built there, being active in Europe and the Mina region, the Middle East, there's a lot of activity there as well, a lot of capital looking to get into sports. Those are markets that we want to participate in when it makes sense for us. We're not going to get out over our skis, but it is very obvious to me that US capital is looking for TAM, total addressable market beyond the domestic US. Some of that's in Latin America, South America, but a lot of meaningful opportunities are there in Europe as well. And I think it's a market that needs to continue to mature from a club operations perspective. A lot of it is still kind of how things were done 20, 30, 40 years ago. And it's pretty obvious that the sophisticated partners, investors and operators who were thinking about football in 2040, rather than football in 2000, are just in many ways operating better franchises or clubs at the moment. So we're paying very close attention there. I'm watching some case studies deals that we've looked at, deals that we may have invested in in the future, but that we're kind of tracking now over two, three, four-year cycle to ensure that our strategy, our thesis, would have been effective in those cases, so that when we do start making more meaningful investments, their long term, we've been able to track dummy cases to see how they played out ultimately and then tweak our strategy and thesis from there. A lot of things happening for sure. Plenty of things happening right now. No doubt about it. That's great. I like to get to know their guests a little bit more as well. So how does a boy get interesting to sport become a college quarterback and then transitions into a sports executive and investor? A long journey in a long road. So yeah, I was very fortunate to play sports, played all sports really growing up. I was fortunate to play quarterback and be the starting quarterback at my university, UCF here in Orlando. Played some professionally overseas across Germany, Poland, and Moscow of all places. I guess you could probably call it semi-professionally with American football. But we did get paid and is an incredible experience to break out of the bubble. It's been interesting that a lot of the relationships that I built 15 years ago as an athlete have been meaningful as I move back into sports again. But I spent the first decade of my professional career post that in broadcasting, both on the radio and TV side. And also in the hospitality space as a restaurant tour, had a couple of independent projects of my own. I was a master franchisee for fast casual restaurant concepts as they moved into markets here in Central Florida, took a restaurant brand from no locations to 15 locations and really operated that process from top to bottom. And then I took a very strange right hand turn because I was mentoring student athletes. They were graduating from my university in 2017 and 18. And I saw this kind of cycle of depression. They were being told they were set up perfectly for success. You got a free education. You had this incredible sporting experience. Now go be normal, get a job and move on. That's just not the experience for the athlete who's completely losing their identity. They're breaking away from all of their teammates at one time. They don't have this really unique structure anymore to perform within every day. And so I just wanted to do something about it. I thought for myself personally, there was this transitional challenge in that phase of my life that brought up depression and just a struggle to articulate this feeling of like I was this person, but today I'm not anymore. Like how do I deal with that going forward? And so that sent me down a very long rabbit hole, getting into neuroscience, understanding neurochemicals, dopamine, neurodrenaline, cortisol, etc. And I ended up co-founding a startup called Nestry, which is an acronym for NeuroStrike. I'm really where our early focus was on supporting contact sport athletes who had retired or weren't playing anymore. And they're kind of struggle with what we believe to be symptoms of CTE. Don't ask me to say that acronym. It's very, very long and challenging to say. But ultimately what you hear about in the NFL from concussioning, they're subconcussive heads. So I co-founded that startup. We brought in some fantastic investors in the sports community, Calvin Johnson, Omega Tron, among others, and started to grow it. At that point in time, my fiance who works for the Adidas family, the Adidas grand children, started a family of funds focused on sports and health tech through the premise of if Mr. Dozler was alive today, what would he be doing with Adidas and what would he be investing in? So I met my fiance through that process. We quickly found out that she was pregnant and so I moved to Berlin, which is how I ended up back overseas. And at the same time, Magnolia Hill partners, the family office that I'm now with, they were our largest investor in that startup. They said Kyle, we have deep institutional fund management experience, et cetera. It'd be interesting to pair that with somebody like yourself who's more of a strategist, operator, very relationship driven, ultimately entrepreneur, come in and help us start to look at these sports deals that are crossing our desk. We're not sure if we want to participate in this asset class. You can learn a lot of the institutional finance and investment side along the way, but your core focus will be identifying how we show up in participate in sports. And if we do it all, so it was a very long sport to hospitality to the neuroscience and startup space that ultimately led me to the family office. And then with the launch of momentous last September, and that was kind of the culmination of three years of work of identifying how we wanted to show up in participate in sports. And a lot of saying yes along the way, a lot of getting into rooms where I was definitely not the smartest person in the room, a lot of willingness to work through at times. What I would term as imposter syndrome and a lot of learning, right? Insolent time as quickly as possible. And so being comfortable with ambiguity, being comfortable with the unknown, but kind of showing up every day and taking it head on, ultimately led me here, but there's no other space of vertical in the world that I'd want to be participating in that sports is just such an incredible platform for impact and for growth and for change. And if we think about it, what's the one thing that brings every nation together in the world every four years? Right? You know, it's the Olympics and so sport have this deep tradition of unifying the globe rather than dividing it, which is a problem in society today, obviously. Highlighted heavily here in the US. And so I feel fortunate to be a part of an ecosystem and a part of an asset class where you can not only access incredible returns from an investment perspective but have incredible impact on local communities and other human beings in a meaningful way. A complete degree and so many great takeaways from what you said there. And one thing that you said that a lot of saying yes and a lot of not being the smartest guy in the room. I mean, that's good advice that people usually give to say yes to opportunities and to surround yourself with smarter people because if you spend time with the smart people, you'll be the fifth one and so forth. So I think you did it right. So usually I totally agree with that. I think that comes off the tongue really easily. Like it makes sense when people hear that. It's another thing to go and do it. And I would urge anybody that's listening in your audience. And it's like break out of the bubble, get comfortable being uncomfortable. And that's usually where magic starts to happen is when you put yourself in those types of positions. I thought that was just stuff people said before. But now I'm realizing that that's what it takes to do unique things in life. And I'm happy that for me that's within this world of sports. And you said also that you had a tough times transitioning from being an athlete into the business world and I think that's very common among athletes that you identify as an athlete. And then when you're not anymore, you're having a little bit of an identity crisis. Was that the experience you had or what was the difficulty for you transitioning from sports to more of the business side? The great question. Mine was similar to that. Now I think when you use words or language like identity and identity crisis, like that's the language that we use to describe what we think this experience is. I had something similar. I was trying to figure out what's next for me. Right. I've been known as this. Now I'm not or I'm not that anymore, but people still think I am. And that's the only way they think about me. There's two sides to that coin that can be advantageous in business and networking and relationships. But it also can be a reminder that you aren't that person anymore constantly. But that seems to be the value people see in you. So that's a weird dynamic a little bit. But if you take it a layer deeper and what I realized is that me myself and these athletes that I was working with are mentoring, they didn't have the language to articulate that feeling. All they could say was like, I'm having an identity crisis, I think. And so I was really thinking about with my partner, like how do we give these athletes an understanding of what the experience actually is and then solutions to help them work with that experience. So what it ultimately is, if you go down this neuroscience rabbit hole with me here for a second, this is Kyle Israel's opinion. I'm not a doctor. I don't pretend to be a doctor. But from what I've learned is if you think about for a second on an American football team, you have 125 teammates. And on Friday, those are your teammates. And on Monday, you're no longer on that team. You're breaking.
brain processes that, like the ending of a relationship, which is never easy, right? But times 120. So that's one, like your brain starts to release stress chemicals because you're all the sudden out of that environment. Number two is in sports generally, but in American football, it's one of the most dopant minutiaque environments in the world. You're in constant pursuit of something. You're training, you're working out, you're trying to become the starter or then you're competing, you're practicing, but all year around, there's this pursuit of better. The next thing, meaning your brain is getting this very, very strong chemical and these dopamine hits all the time. So let's say that all ends on Friday and on Monday, you wake up and you have no teammates, you're not pursuing anything in sport anymore. Ultimately, you're not getting the same amount of dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical that gives you the energy to pursue something or get up and drive towards something more. And you're not feeling there sensing that anymore and it can be this low. I like this saying for athletes, typically everybody else's norm, the general population from a neurochemical perspective is the athlete's basement. So for me to go be normal actually means I need to go down from a neurochemical perspective to what for me is a basement and all of a sudden I'm not getting those neurochemicals. So that is like another key piece of just understanding, hey, the sport is gone, but what's the next thing I want to pursue? Is that an internship? Is that a job? Is that a relationship? Whatever you're looking towards, understanding that when you set a goal on an intention and you go pursue that, your brain starts to release that dopamine again. And so it's important to have like the what's next there so that you can drive towards that. So the relationships, the structure, the environment, the dopamine inertia piece of it and then the in some cases celebrity or just being out in front of 50,000 people and performing like those are the moments in your life that you'll have the most adrenaline ever, right? The most dopamine ever and not having those anymore or a way to show up and compete is tough. Yeah, the transition for me was challenging, not knowing any of that prior or what I was really experiencing. I think moving to Europe helped me because when I woke up every day, everything was new and novel and I had to figure out where to buy groceries and how to ride on a tram or train somewhere, like all of those things kind of filled out void of like what's next, but it is something that needs to continue to be talked about more. I think it needs to be framed beyond identity and go like, hey, there's a neuro chemical element to this so that people actually know what they're dealing with and can prepare appropriately. Definitely. I haven't actually thought about it that way, but it makes a lot of sense. As you said, like it's hard to get these highs that you get in sports in regular life, so to speak. Yeah, I understand it's easy to miss out on those and these feelings and getting those dopamine hits for sure. No doubt. And if we stay on that topic a little bit, so you transition from athlete into business has being an athlete influenced you or helped you as an investor and strategist in the sports industry more from a business setting. Yeah, I believe that it has first and foremost, like in the business world, I'm in there's two sides, right? There's fundraising side and then there's the deal flow side in making investments and the fundraising side in particular. I don't care who you are or what you've done in the past raising capital is not easy. And you have to show up with grit, tenacity. You've got to follow through. You've got to wake up with true intention that like I have to continue to pursue raising capital. I think in sports, you have to show up every day and perform. You have to continue to strive to be better. And so just the innate built in like I'm waking up today and there's a lot of stuff for me to accomplish that in sports was obviously really critical. You didn't have a choice. You had to show up and perform or you didn't have a spot. And in business, it's the same way, right? You've got to show up and perform or they're going to bring somebody else in to do it that can. So just the tenacity and grit, I think was critical for the space that I'm in today. We're building business, right? So leadership qualities that you get in sports in particular as a quarterback, you know, you're the leader of a team generally, but at least ten guys on the field at the same time of you. So how do you communicate with them? How do you get them motivated? How do you keep them excited and locked in? How do you make it seem like you're all rowing in the same boat together and that you're just in equal as the leader ultimately? I think learning that in sports has allowed me to apply that to any business I've been in hospitality. I had to manage 16 to 21 year olds, right? Making myself equal to them, showing them that I'm an equal, but demanding a certain level of performance, I learned how to communicate that really, really well in that world in the entrepreneurial world ambiguity, right? You don't know what's around the corner. Don't know how long of a company is going to survive. You have a one way and you're under pressure to perform. That is a good place for me to be in because there's pressure and demand. I think sport has helped me understand how to manage pressure when to push, when to back up. Those are only a few parallels. There are a lot, but it absolutely from a leadership perspective, from a communication perspective and from a grit and resilience perspective, those are all things that I lean on, not consciously, but just with how I'm built to this point. The leadership aspect, I think, is really interesting because I feel that it's kind of different in a sport setting versus in business because in sports, especially in elite sports, everyone is elite and they are the 1%, they are the high performers, basically everyone on that team. That's maybe not the case always in a business setting. You're having someone who's happy with their job doing what they're supposed to and that's it. You're a high performer and then if you're unlucky, you're having an underperformer or low performer. Your team is different from a sports team in that aspect, I would think. Yeah, I would say generally yes. There are those in the sports world that can fall into that category, perhaps, but definitely from general business perspective, it's more impressive when somebody has brought somebody onto the team when they can take somebody that's struggling, understand what are the levers that I can pull to motivate this individual to get a better product or performance out of them, but in a way that they genuinely feel that I'm aligned with them and not trying to micro-manage them. I think that ability to give people a chance, have some empathy, understand what that person is going through that allows you to kind of show up and work with them through the right lens is critical. I think that I've learned a lot of that through sport, but it is different. You just assume that everybody's going to wake up with the same fire that you do at times, but that's just not how the world works. It's an advantage and a cost benefit to not just turn around and fire, but if you have the ability to get the best out of that human being and you have strategies and ways to do that, you can number one, save your company a lot of money. You can continue to move quickly because you don't have to re-onboard in that position. For me, I'd rather lean into that individual and bring them up and lift them up and show them that there's hope here rather than going, "You're not going to work for me next," and then start the process all over again. Yeah. I like that mentality because it's usually talked like higher fast, higher fast, if they are not the right person, then get them out as quick as possible. I like that mindset that you have that you see the best in people and you see that you can give someone struggling that you can help them and get to the maximum of their capabilities. It doesn't always work, don't get me wrong. It depends on the industry as well. When I had employees, I had 260 that were making $9 an hour. Yes, I would spend some time leaning into bad apples, but I also, in those cases, made a clear decision like this just simply doesn't work and we're moving on. As you go into more of a white collar setting where salaries are much bigger, people are moving places to come work for you, you want to be super mindful of what are everything I can put into place to give this person the best chance of success so that number one, I don't uproot their family, bring them here and let them go. But number two, there's something I likely identified them in the first place that made me want to hire them and how do I get that version of them to show up? It takes time, it takes effort, it does take energy, but depending on the case and the circumstance and the type of industry, I think both can be effective. But my inherent Kyle, how I wake up and see the world with a father that was a minister is typically those people that aren't performing aren't just lazy most of the time. They just need somebody to believe in them. And I try to figure out ways to make that individual feel like you're believed in and we're trying to make you successful here. And I find that most human beings are responsive in a positive way when somebody shows up that's a manager or a leader. And just typically get them to kind of earn on pretty quickly and go, okay, I'm going to go all in here. I'm going to start rolling the boat in the same direction. But that's not always 100% right? It just kind of depends case by case, but I generally want to give people the benefit of the doubt and give them a chance to succeed. I like the mentality. Thank you. It's worked well. It's not easy. It takes a lot of time sometimes. Well, it makes the hiring process really important. Yeah, for sure. You can say on that because I usually like to ask some advice and you gave some before about working in sports. But if you're talking about the hiring process, if someone is, there are a lot of young people listening students that they want to get in.
into this industry and when they are at the interview, what's some tips that you can give for someone to give a good impression? Let's just work in the world of somebody graduating university and moving into the workforce. Anything that you can do in advance of going out and entering the workforce from an internship perspective is extremely valuable. It really sets you up for success. We have right now we're a team of I think nine full time here at my little Emma Menace and we have nine, 10, 11 interns. We very much lean into our interns. We've really tried to get them exposed to as much as they can handle. I'm depending on the school schedule be as active as possible with them in our interns. I can say see a lot that they typically wouldn't see. There are a lot of calls with a lot of fascinating people having fascinating sophisticated conversations that just kind of shrinks the novelty over time to like how do you show up and have a call with somebody. What's the right way to do that? How do you negotiate? How do you take a call and turn it into something actionable? When you show up with some type of intern experience or lived working experience, I think you're already ahead of the curve. I think in humanly we need to want to show the best version of ourself in particular in an interview process. But I think I find people that are most genuine that are willing to say these are my strengths and yes, these are my weaknesses and being honest about those weaknesses is really critical. It builds trust. It allows me to know where the areas that we need to help them and work on them. I think it's beneficial to be as honest and transparent as possible because ultimately if you're not the right fit or you elaborated too much or you frame yourself in a higher position, then you are. That will come to the surface. That's just to be, here's who I am today, here are the goals that I have. This is when I want to evolve into. I think this is an environment that can help me do that. Honestly, transparency, thinking about whoever's interviewing you, like, trusting a core component of that and when it's baked with a little bit of exposure to the market already through an internship and entry level role, I think you're really setting yourself up to be as successful as you possibly can. I think those are some of the core things that I think about they can help individuals be successful, but at the same time, how can you stand out? I'll give you an example that's real time at the moment. We're talking to a handful of service providers or subject matter experts and various things that we're focused on. One in particular, yesterday, went out of their way to create a 53-page deck about a particular project that we have, their opinion and perspective of it. They didn't have much information to go with. They didn't care if not everything on that deck was perfect or right. What it showed me is like, holy shit. This person just, I met them a week ago, they built a 53-page deck with little information. A lot of it actually is really unique and different than what I've seen in the past. I need to spend more time with this person and you don't need to create a 50-page deck every time, but showing some type of, hey, I've thought about what you guys are doing or here's how I think I could be additive and showing up in your organization or anything that just is different than the normal hiring process that catches somebody's attention on the management team. That is also a very strong differentiator in my opinion. And then lastly, no, I'm long-winded a little bit is the communication and advance of an interview, just showing that you've done a little bit of research on the team, on the executives that are hiring you or you're going through the hiring process with it. Paul mentioned my football experience or mentioned that I live in Berlin. Curious how that's going, Kyle, looking forward to the interview, like how Berlin today, that's not much. They looked at LinkedIn for 30 seconds, but at least you know it was like part of the process from a preparation perspective and that is, although not elaborate, a differentiator when you just have some of those key things that catch people's attention. No, definitely. I couldn't agree more and I think they're all great advice. And specifically the last one, it doesn't take much, but when someone is pitching, take from drawing something from my own experience, pitching for the podcast, they want to jump on. They haven't done any. You see that this is just a copy pace that they sent to 20 people. But as you said, if they just said like, hi Marcus, I like the previous episode with John, like I'm suggesting this person, then okay, at least they have done something instead of just high team or high who this may concern and you know, going along those lines. And I lose interest pretty fast. We have a somebody that wasn't in turn that's currently getting their MBA at Stanford. They're now working us with us as much as they can in their semester and they're going to join the firm full time once they graduate. But he's going through a course right now in Stanford's MBA, South, about unique communication. So he told me a story this morning on an investment relations call where he looked up somebody he was getting on a call with, ultimately to pitch to fundraise. And all that that guy like Porsche 911s had a couple of them. And so he wrote an email like, hey, I'm still driving my mini Dan with my family around. I'm aspiring to Sunday drive a Porsche 911. You know, a lot about that. Until then, I'll just talk to you and learn more about the Porsche, you know, a conversation. And it was like again, like 30 seconds identifying that, but he got a response from a cold lead that could be very valuable, generally speaking. And that's something that they're studying in the Stanford MBA program is like, how do you write an email to get people to pay attention? And so to your point, yeah, I think seems like common sense, but we often just get into our little habits and routine as humans where we just don't think outside the box even just a little bit sometimes. And that I think we're all guilty of that over time, but it is a skill that you can learn and it's not hard to learn. Of course, we have all done it. But it's today so much information. And you know, people like yourself are getting hundreds of hundreds of emails maybe every day. And in order to stick out and have something extra, then you need to go that extra mile and spend those extra minutes and researching something. Otherwise, you're just wanting the out of the many. Nothing with the advent of AI as it relates to human capital and humans being a part of businesses like anything standard, anything that is slow is just not going to work anymore. There's organizations whether you like it or not, I'm going to think of ways to be more efficient. AI obviously gives you a lot of ability to do that. And so when you are bringing human life, real human capital into an organization, like you want the best of the best, the most unique. And so standing out today is likely more important than it's ever been. Your CV or resume is probably not going to be the thing that gets you to the next step. Complete agree. Something else that is really important that I like to end on is networking. Who is someone from your network that do you think would be a good guest on this show? I think Bobby Hennabry. Bobby is his name. I'm having to make an introduction. Bobby is first of all a fascinating human being, but he is the principal for John L.A.'s family office. He's a one man show from Mr. L.A. John and Bobby are partners and investors with us here at Moment of Sports. He travels 200 plus days a year. He is a master networker in relationship builder. Obviously, it really helps when you're representing John L.A. Hall of Fame American football player. But nonetheless, his work ethic specifically as it relates to reaching out to the network, building and tension on relationships, especially in the family office world where family offices in the past have been behind the curtain and pretty discreet and secret. You're seeing family offices as capital moves down to the next generations. The younger generations going, Hey, we've got capital. There's asset classes that our generation wants to participate in. Let's be collaborative. Let's get out from behind the curtain and go invest directly or co-invest or whatever. And I think Bobby just does a fantastic job of generating opportunities, interests, high applying for Mr. L.A. because he really focuses on networking. And that is probably you bring up a great point to wrap here with Marcus. Like, if somebody says, would have you learned the most in the last three years of being in the family office sports world, it is you're not going to get anywhere unless you know how to build strong, intentional, organic relationships. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes energy. You don't have to be the most charismatic person in the world. You don't have to have the best personality, but you've got to be active and you've got to show up and you've got to get out of an event. And you've got to walk up to people where there are three people talking in a room and you're kind of nervous about budding in and introducing yourself. Like, I hated that at the beginning. I was like, ah, there are in talking. Like, I want to meet them though. I don't want to intrude. My mindset now is no, like, go in there, introduce yourself, open up a conversation. Typically, people are looking for that in those environments. And in sports, if you can't network, if you can't build relationships, you're in trouble. Unless you're the athlete or unless you're kind of a manager or a coach or something along those lines. Otherwise, people want to work with people they like. Like in our firm, we say, we only work with people that we want to do life and business with together. We have a no-asshole rule for partners. Like, and you only learn that about people through networking with them, building authentic relationships. So however, I can help you connect to Bobby. Let me know. He's a fantastic moderator. He'd be incredible on this podcast. And he's in an interesting place where he sees a lot of what's happening kind of globally in sports and they're very active. So Bobby's my guy. Bobby sounds amazing. So I would really appreciate the introduction there. Kyle, thank you so much for taking the time to join the sports management podcast. An hour already? An hour already. I'm going to post, Marcus. I felt like we've been here 20 minutes. So I haven't said something right. I appreciate that. I am.
I know you have a lot of your plates, so I was thinking one hour is good, but we mentioned before we can go down to a rabbit hole on many of the topics here, so we can run this back for a version 2 at some point for sure. Let's do it, absolutely. Appreciate you having me, man. Appreciate the work that you're doing in the space. Thanks. If you want to get in contact with me, send an email to
[email protected], connect with me on LinkedIn or follow the podcast on Instagram, X and Facebook at sportsmpodcast.
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