Fan Favorite: ScoutDay’s Unique Approach to Success | StartUp Theory

Tom Bilyeu offers tactical advice to ScoutDay founder Alex Tuccio. ScoutDay strives to deliver the technology that gives a fair opportunity to achieve their dreams, get scholarships, and complete their education. Learn more at scoutday.co. ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 2-23-17  StartUp Theory is a new series in which founder of Impact Theory and co-founder of Quest Nutrition Tom Bilyeu shares the tactics you need to build a company by breaking down the challenges facing real startups from the Impact Theory community. CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS: Range Rover: Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://landroverUSA.com https://landroverusa.com/ Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com https://www.vitalproteins.com/ and entering promo code IMPACT at check out. iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACT when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu NetSuite: Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at https://NetSuite.com/THEORY https://netsuite.com/THEORY ********************************************************************** What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  You're listening to the Impact Theory Podcast, your source of empowering ideas and actionable techniques from the world's highest achievers. Join host Tom Bilyeu, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of the billion-dollar brand Quest Nutrition, on a journey to unlock your potential and realize your vision of success. Welcome to Impact Theory.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Excellent. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode. Remember that we are in the beta phase here, but this is Startup Theory. I am joined today by Scout Day and Alex Tuccio. Over there, he's going to walk us through what we're doing. What is up, Alex?

• 1:51Speaker 00

  I'm good, man. You ready for this?

• 1:54Speaker 00

  Nice, man. Well, you guys are blowing up on Instagram. Congratulations on that. Some pretty rapid growth. You guys have had some big posts. I was digging through your feed. And yeah, man, there's some really cool stuff going on over there. So obviously, nobody at home knows, or I'll say very few people probably know about your company. So why don't you give us a quick synopsis about what you guys are up to?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So what we're working on at Scout Day, we're basically building an online recruiting platform. Right now, we're just focused on baseball. That's my background. Played four years of D1 baseball. And what we're really looking to do is just use technology to improve athletics overall, starting with the recruiting process and starting with baseball. And so what our platform does is we expose high school players to access MLB scouts. So basically, high school players submit their highlight tapes or other video footage. We have a team of scouts that watch the footage, give the players some feedback, score the players, and then we have a certain criteria that the scouts set that basically verify if a player is a verifiable college prospect or not.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  And so what we're looking to do with our evaluation process is really two things. Is one, give as much value to the player as possible in terms of the access and the feedback from the scout. And two, is really create a network and a platform that coaches can trust to really level the playing field for college recruiting and specifically baseball.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  All right, cool, man. So I've got a few questions. So the first one is, you're using MLB scouts. Is there a reason you're not using college scouts?

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so MLB scouts, they're at the pinnacle of talent evaluation. You know, that's what they're paid to do for a living. They're, they watch baseball all year round. They're in charge of selecting the players that we watch on TV. So there's no one more qualified to basically say, you know, look, this player is going to be a great player, an average player, or not so great player.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  All right, so but walk me through what the, in fact, let me really fast explain to the audience. So obviously, I'm getting these companies, I don't know anything about baseball. Understand how to work backwards on a business and figure out, you know, obviously where the value is, what the mission is, and then how we reverse engineer that. Um, and get to the most streamlined process. So, um, Alex, one of the things when I was going through what you guys submitted to us was. Your, um, value proposition takes like a 90 degree turn in the middle of explaining what your business is. Um, and I, I have four, um. What I would say are viable business opportunities, given the setup of what you're doing.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  I don't know which one you want to pursue. I think they're all viable. So we'll go through those one by one. But first I want to understand like. Um, every company needs a mission and the reason you need a mission is it becomes the filter. What's say yes to, what's say no to, how to structure your business. Um, so give me in a, in a tight sense, not with a lot of commas and, and, uh, you know, run ons, but what's the mission of Scout Day?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  To give as many players the opportunity to play at the college level and get an education.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  Okay, perfect. So, um. For those watching at home, I think you'll see how some of the things that they submitted to us. Um, they don't align with that. And so I want to go through, um. Why you've chosen that, um, whether you think that's the biggest business opportunity, given some of the things you've already put on your own map, including AI. Um, and, uh, big data and some of the deep learning techniques that I think you guys are going to get into later. Um, because. If you're go really and in the presentation that you gave to us, it really seemed like the thing that was driving you.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Uh, was education and you just said it there in your mission statement. Um, part of this is to get an education. And I just want to know, like, if I can call bullshit on that. And so i- is that really the driver or is the driver to help people play baseball?

• 5:56Speaker 02

  I mean, baseball's a huge driver of driving student athletes to college. There are many athletes who wouldn't be able to get accepted to college without baseball. So I'm just a huge advocate that sports is a huge driver to success in the classroom and in life. There's so many parallels. So that that really is at the core of our mission. Baseball is a huge part of it. Neither, it's not a fifty fifty split, it's not a ninety ten split. They're just both, it's just a happy marriage between using athletics and not letting athletics use you. So that's really where the mission comes into play. It's not literally all focused on the baseball piece or all focused on the education piece. It's it's connected. You can't really have one without the other.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  And for many players, that's really the case, you know, using baseball to get to the pro level or to get to the college level to get that degree. Sports are super important. It's not just what happens on the field. It's, you know, what you really learn while you're on the field, but also off the field as well.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Okay, so if if that is a major driver for you, help me understand then. So if my goal is to get these, not necessarily to get them into the MLB, but the goal is to get them into a college so that they can get educated. Why don't you work closely with colleges instead of working closely with the MLB? Because if I understand your mission correctly, then it doesn't matter if they ever get to the MLB, but it matters very, very much if they get into college.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Right, so you mentioned kind of the direction that we're looking to go using AI and different machine learning algorithms. That's really where you'll see the education piece come to fruition. It's all about matching players with the right schools and the right schools doesn't necessarily just based on their athletic profile. So I think it's more a much bigger piece of our much bigger mission. Being in beta right now, it's definitely difficult to portray all different aspects of our vision. Right now it is very baseball focused, but on a much bigger scale in terms of a big business opportunity. That's more the direction that we're looking to go is using sports, using the technology to make sure that players are having the most success at the schools that they go to. And

• 8:05Speaker 02

  You know, when our technology is ready, expanding into um the the lower market of the youth market and also into the professional market as well.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Would would you consider it a failure if um a scout was watching one of the players that you had in your app? Uh they fell in love, they thought they were amazing, they took them directly onto the Yankees, they play for the Yankees for eighteen years. Um they retire rich, they're in the um Hall of Fame, but they never go to college. Would that be a failure?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Uh, that's not really up to me. That's really up to the the athlete and the player. And if that player is happy with that career, I think that's all that really matters. I don't necessarily think sports or education really drive happiness. So if that's the path that the player chose to stick to.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  So. Right, so I'm obviously trying to trap you and and the the reason that I want to know if that's a failure and I I am gonna force you to take a stand on that is because it's gonna determine what you do from a business perspective. So I don't think that one is better than the other, including you don't think that one is better than the other, but one is going to inform your business model and one is not. Um and so if the the like, to me, that sounds like a resounding success. And that to me, like, just from my perspective, and you know, honestly, my perspective in in this is totally irrelevant, but to give you like, if if this were my business to run, um my mission would be, let's say, just for argument's sake, um I don't care about college.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Right, because I don't think it's a predictor of success, and I'm ultimately interested in turning that human into the most um elite human being that they can be. Uh as I define it, which is that they acquire as many skills that have utility and they put that utility to the test and service of something larger than themselves. So, understanding how um being able to use their athletic prowess to play at an elite level, to garner the attention of the world, to have that celebrity um through the accomplishments and knowing that usually an athletic window is very, very small. Um I would say, okay, my goal is to get them into the MLB. Now, if part of what they need to get into the MLB is to go through the college. Program, then I would love to place them into college and I would, you know, say, okay, there's two paths before me. There's the traditional stair step approach where they're

• 10:22Speaker 00

  going to go to college, they're going to play hopefully for a D1 team and then they're going to get drafted. But there's also playing for a smaller college and then going to the farm leagues and then, you know, getting bumped up. And maybe that's a trajectory that we follow people on as well. And so I would know how to build my, my business model out because I'm trying to turn them into a pro athlete. Right? And, um, but there's clarity in that, right? So there's clarity in saying, I don't care about education rather than bifurcating it and saying, well, I care about this and I care about that. And it's really up to them about what they want. It's like, I'm going to feel that in your business model. I'm going to feel, because like, think about me as an MLB person, you're going to come and I know that you already have relationships with people.

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• 13:09Speaker 00

  That's Q U O dot com slash impact. But you're going to come to me and you're going to say, "Hey, do MLB scout, I want you to put a lot of time and attention and energy on this, but here's why." And it's going to become the greatest resource to MLB recruiters ever, and we're going to help you get just an unbelievable crop of talent into Major League Baseball. Help us make that happen and you know, so here the the stair step approach. But I'm going to guess the MLB recruiter also doesn't really care. I mean, look, if they're testifying before Congress, of course, they're going to say that they care about education. But at the end of the day, do they really? Right? Like, didn't Ken Griffey Jr., who was huge when I was a kid, didn't he go right into the major leagues?

• 13:51Speaker 00

  I think so. Sure. So if you had to pick, and for the sake of this show, you have to pick, education or professional?

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think professional. Like I said, me personally, you know, you just voiced obviously your personal mission and your thoughts. You know, me personally, like I said, I'm a huge advocate for sports. I think sports is bigger than just a bat and a ball and a football. There's just so much to be learned where, you know, you're not necessarily going to learn those skills in a classroom from a textbook. And, you know, everyone's different. This is just my opinion. And I'm just, I just believe from my own experience that, you know, I know what sports can teach you about being a person and being a good part of society. And so I think that's, that's honestly bigger than just getting a diploma or getting several diplomas like some people do these days.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  And, and if I have to pick, that's, that's what I would pick.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Okay, so I'm a big fan of binaries. So we're gonna say that we don't care about education. So officially Scout Day is anti-education. Is that correct? I'm obviously kidding, but just to be binary, the model that you want to pursue, we'll just say for the sake of today, for clarity, is gonna be to get into the MLB. Yes? Okay, perfect. And the reason that I belabor that point, dear people watching at home, is the clarity of your mission is like step number one. Like you just have got to know exactly what you're trying to make come true. Because the moment that you have any fuzziness on that, the moment that you don't know exactly what you're trying to make come true,

• 15:36Speaker 00

  you're not gonna know what systems to build into place. And the whole idea behind a mission is not only that it be something that's in you, that you're passionate about, that's gonna get you up and get you going when things get hard, which they inevitably will, but it's knowing what to say yes to and what to say no to. So the thing that kills business isn't usually a lack of opportunity. It's oftentimes too much opportunity and people not knowing what to prioritize and what to say yes to. So lesson number one, because look, obviously, Alex, the vast majority of people at home, the businesses that they're gonna run have nothing to do with baseball, but there are core principles that are gonna apply to everything. And I would say that is one of them, like really, really knowing what your mission is. So all right, our mission is to get people into the MLB. Now, more things in your pitch actually make sense.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  The one thing to me that was sort of like, I didn't understand it because it didn't line up with everything, especially not the AI, was the education component. Because if you really follow this to its natural extreme, if you guys really, 10 years from now, whatever, you have this AI unit running, it's able to diagnose and assess people, people are gonna start using it younger and younger, right? And you're gonna have the parents that really wanna see their kid turn into something, and they're using it when their kid's like six, right? And I'm not saying that's bad at all. Look at Tiger Woods. Look at the chess champions where literally the guy, he was a, I can't remember if he was into chess, but anyway, says to his wife, We're gonna have two kids and I'm gonna turn them both into chess grandmasters.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  They ended up being women and he did, he turned them both into chess grandmasters. Because he just started teaching them from such an obscenely young age. I don't think that's necessarily bad. But just like that would be, that will be the natural outcome of this tool, right? If you make it. So, understanding that that's where people want to take it, then you know, we've got,

• 17:28Speaker 00

  we've got something going. So I'm being told to look at the cameras more. So you'll forgive me, Alex. I promise I'm not ignoring you. But, okay, so,

• 17:38Speaker 00

  if we're gonna try to get people into the MLB, I broke it down. I think that there are four potential business opportunities for you. So number one, hi, number one is a social platform that connects high school players to MLB scouts. Number two would be a curated cadre of talented players that scouts can turn to to pick from. So not necessarily worried about any social aspect. Number three is the artificial intelligence player that identifies top players and helps them improve their game. So the one we were just talking about where, you know, people are filming their six-year-old and uploading it into your machinery. And then number four, an artificial intelligence play that identifies,

• 18:20Speaker 00

  identifies top players and farms the leads to MLB scouts. So not trying to usurp them. So the difference between three and four is in number three, the MLB scouts are gonna hate you. And in number four, the MLB scouts are gonna work with you. Does, have you guys fought through those four? Do you know which one of those is gonna be your path to revenue?

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's definitely gonna be the AI component. I just believe that if you don't have an AI strategy, you know, it's gonna be pretty tough in, you know, 2018, 2019. That's not the only reason why I want to use AI. I think that it's totally right for the recruiting industry and athletics in general.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  In terms of those, I think number four is probably the most feasible. Mainly because while AI is great. No matter how great our machine is, there's going to be things that a machine can't measure, like heart and character and things like that, that won't be able to be ever really be measured. Um, if it, if it does, let's uncover this video and uh, say how wrong I was, but. Um, I think the, the marriage between MLB scouts and technology, um, you know, baseball's seen it with sabermetrics. Uh, it's worked out, not to the extent that maybe a lot of people thought it could. Um, so I think keeping the humanistic involvement is going to be super important uh, to our success.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Okay, and so if we're doing that, and just to be clear for everybody watching at home, and our Facebook audience has disappeared. Um, the, the AI component um, that he's talking about would help identify top players and then would feed them into the MLB scouts. So basically, you guys are a resource specifically for MLB scouts, yeah? Um, now.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  What becomes your path to revenue?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, we're mainly looking at the subscription model uh, with a platform like ours.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  And who's paying the subscription?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  It would be the player, uh, especially if we get our AI to the point um, that we're looking to get it. It really becomes an all-inclusive player-driven platform, um, where you can basically train yourself, um, get deep analytics into uh, where you are, where you could be.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  And I would upload video to your site?

• 20:38Speaker 00

  I would upload video to your site and then your AI would analyze my movements and that kind of thing? Okay, and then it would give me feedback on my performance?

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Right, but with the, with the data that's, you know, we can pull together, um, it would be more predictive in nature. So we could look at historical data of, you know, let's say, uh, players who are in the MLB right now, and be able to predict out, you know, potential outcomes, um, based on historical data.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  Because you've loaded all that footage into the machine?

• 21:12Speaker 00

  You've loaded that footage into the machine?

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Sure. Okay, and walk me through what's the, um, what year do you think that the AI component takes over? Because it's going to be very different business models now with MLB scouts versus when it's AI.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the, how we implement it is really going to be everything since it's consumer facing. So the UX UI and things like that are still, I mean, UX UI is going to be most important, more important than the AI, because if we build a product that's ugly or doesn't work right, or consumers hate, you know, no one's going to use it anyways, no matter how good the algorithms are. Um, so in terms of what year, I mean, it's just all dependent on how quickly we can gather the data and figure out the right ways to manipulate it.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Um, so one of the things that you guys are going to want to really be, um, thinking about is where the curve of technology is going versus the, the business that you're building. That's really, really important. And when, um, the people who made Siri before it got purchased by Apple, they were asking themselves a question, how long will it take us to develop, um, our platform? They thought it would take about two to three years. And then they said, okay, uh, I don't care where the technology is today. I want to know where the technology is going to be two to three years from now. And let's build our application for that. So we're not going to build the application for what would work on a phone of, you know, that year. We're going to build an application that will work using Moore's Law, which predicts the rate at which, um, technology will come down in cost and size. So we're going to predict it for what we believe is going to be, or we're going to

• 22:43Speaker 00

  build it for what we predict is going to be, um, the reality of technology in two to three years, which with tech, it's relatively predictable. So, um, I would really encourage you guys to map that out, to be talking to experts, um, about where they think this is going to be so that you know, you know, where is machine learning going to be? Where are neural networks going to be? Where is the technology to actually trace the movements and analyze that going to be? Um, you know, however long you think that it's going to take you to be ready for it. So if that's two years, if that's five years, um, so that you have the, the technology being built to hit that part of the wave. And then also, because I think if you do that, if your real bet is AI, um, man.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  My sort of layman's guess about where you're probably gonna need about five years. That means you've got a five-year gap to bridge with your business model. And so what I want to understand is how you guys plan to use the mechanical Turk, which we're back on Facebook. Excellent. Welcome back, Facebook. It's good to see you. Just to bring you guys up to speed, first of all, this is Startup Theory. We're still in beta and we are here today with Alex Tuccio of Scout though, which is an application that is trying to help young athletes. Right now, they're starting in baseball, but I have a gut feel that eventually they will transcend baseball and be covering all sports. Their goal is to ultimately use AI and deep learning

• 24:09Speaker 00

  to be able to feed video footage into their machine learning and get automated critique of that person's performance to tell them what to do. In the meantime, they're working, they already have some relationships with Major League Baseball scouts and they're trying to become the ultimate resource to those scouts. And even when they go to the AI model, they want to avoid scaring off the MLB scouts by saying, "We're going to take your job from you." And they want to become the resource to the MLB scouts to basically do what no human being can do, which is see everybody out there. So anybody that can upload footage, they would be scanning and looking for, based on predictive algorithms that are based on having uploaded lots of other historical data. They have not done this yet, but that would be their ultimate plan

• 24:54Speaker 00

  to then build that resource out so that they can predict who's really the next crop of talent. So every year, they're delivering to these MLB scouts. All right, so the question that I have that we're really trying to pin down is, how do you cross that chasm? My layman's guess about how long it will take AI and deep learning to get to that point where it can actually assess video footage movements is five years. Total layman's guess. I want everybody to understand that. While I consider myself a junior futurist, I think we're a little heavy on the junior.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  But no matter what it is, right, we've got that chasm. So Alex was about to tell us, from just a pure business model revenue generation standpoint, how they plan to use the, what's called a mechanical Turk model, which is where they're using the humans, the real live MLB scouts to build the business model.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so our revenue model is pretty simple. So the player pays for the evaluation after he submits his video. Uh, the scout does the evaluation.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  And do you cut the scout in on that?

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Yes, that's exactly how the economics of that work out.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Uh, and then the next, the next step of the revenue model, um, right now there's no revenue model for the college coaches, uh, for their membership. Just because, you know, their engagement on the platform is super important. We're also only in beta. Um, but once we, um, finish up our mobile product and launch it for the app store, um, it'll be all subscription based, um, for the player. And then eventually the coaches, um, for having access to the app and certain, uh, features that, uh, we're working on that are top secret.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Okay, uh, fair enough. And do you like, how many MLB scouts are there? Like, what, what number do you max out at?

• 26:37Speaker 02

  I mean, it, it's tough to say because our, so our target MLB scout is at the associate level, um, which is basically a part-time. Uh, and the reason being is, uh, one, avoiding any potential contract issues, um, for, you know, scouting supervisors and scouts like that. Um, two, they're, they're more available to do these evaluations. Um, so the exact number, I'm not really sure, just because the, the network is so deep. Um, but there's definitely a, a good number.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Ballpark me, is it, um, a thousand? Is it a hundred million?

• 27:09Speaker 02

  No, it's not a hundred million. Uh, thirty MLB teams, let's say each team has scouts. What is that?

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Three thousand? Three thousand. Um, so, okay, so one thing that would be obviously really interesting is for you guys to run the economics. So there's going to be so many, and, and this is really important, um, for anybody watching along is you want to run a scenario where, let's say, if I were to capture eighty percent of the market, what does that look like? And the reason that I think that's important is you're going to quickly see whether that's an interesting number or whether it's a number that's like, okay, well, even if I get eighty percent of the market, which is virtually impossible. Um, I mean, even if you're doing this by yourself and no one else ever enters the space, getting eighty percent of people to do anything is just. I mean, it's virtually impossible. So if at 80%, the numbers aren't interesting, then pick another business model.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  And I have no idea, I don't know what your metrics are, but I would run those numbers and say, okay, there's 3,000, what's 80% of that? If we got all of them and they were on a monthly subscription, I guess it's the players who are on a monthly subscription. But you're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before every call, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After it, it drafts your CRM updates to review and approve. So there's less admin and more selling.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact and you can be up and running in minutes. The reason that the math is important on the scouts is that it'll work backwards. So every scout can handle, how many players? Is it 10? Is it 100? Is it 1,000? Whatever that number is, like every live associate MLB scout can handle, let's say

• 29:29Speaker 00

  it's 100, and so I've got my 3,000 times 80% times 100, that gives me the raw number that I'm dealing with and then times my monthly fee. Now, if that's an interesting number, great, we have a business. If it's not an interesting number, then we either find an alternate revenue model, which I mean, you could create scouts, you could branch. And when I say create scouts, I mean, that could be a whole nother revenue model where you go through a certification process and you certify associate scouts. And so MLB teams are turning to you to certify their scouts because you can give them, you know, so many hours of watching video and having, you know, amalgamated all of the information from the other scouts that you have. And so, you know, I mean, whatever, I'm making this stuff up on the spot. But you could do something like that. Alternately, you can go into other sports.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  And, you know, if we sat here and brainstormed for 10 minutes, I'm sure we could come up with three or four other.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Viable revenue models, but so run the math, run the math, run the math. That's my take home message to you guys. All right, so um.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  We talked about the value, we talked about AI and connecting. What do the, so how many, uh, byepark me, how many associate people do you have signed up right now?

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  It's all that we need being in beta, um, it's more than enough, so.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  Sure, and what's?

• 30:49Speaker 00

  I was just gonna say, what's your method for acquiring more? So if we're aiming at 3,000, we have eight, we have a lot of runway, which is awesome. But what's your plan to attract?

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's mainly word of mouth. I mean, it's, it's pretty similar to what Looper does with drivers, you know? People are driving around, so Uber gave them a platform to make money while they drive. And baseball scouts are scouting, so basically giving them a platform where they can baseball scout. So, um, you know, once we get to at least some sort of commercialized product in the App Store, you know, at that point, I'll definitely be more aggressive, kind of with the, uh, me personally or Scout Day, the company, you know, targeting the scouts. But right now, it's just word of mouth.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Okay, um, Chris, so I have a bunch more questions, but I know that you have 10 questions. How much time do we have? So I know where we're at. Ah, all right, well, you guys love it when we do questions rapid fire, so.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, so one, I'm just a huge believer in teamwork and like anything and like a marriage, the most important part of selection, or the most important part of any relationship is selection. So you have to make sure that you're selecting people that think like you think. They need to share your vision for the mission. They need to be as passionate as you are. And then from there, it's really defining terms and values. And so making sure that everybody understands, here's our mission, here's how we view the world, here are priorities, like me forcing you to choose between education and, um, you know, a successful major league career, like that's critical. And that's gonna help you determine who to bring on. So you can imagine if you brought on a founder,

• 32:32Speaker 00

  a co-founder and you're leaning towards, I really wanna help these guys be professional. And I think education is a really powerful path to that, but it's not the only path. And the other person's only interested in that. Now you just have a fundamental disagreement about values. And so that's gonna be a nightmare. So defining that stuff on the way in is super critical. When something flares up, there's the easy way and the hard way. And so I'll give you an example of what we did here at Impact Theory. I told everybody, look, I'm interested in being a part of a team, but I wanna be really clear. If we can all agree on something, it's easy. If we disagree, my decision is final and that's it. And so everybody coming in new, like, hey, when we hit log it, like, I want to know what people think.

• 33:17Speaker 00

  And I think that these people are here because they're incredibly smart, they're incredibly driven, that nine times out of 10, their idea is better than mine. And that's the joy, right? Like, you want people that have great ideas. But at the end of the day, I'm the ultimate filter system. And so you've gotta believe in my vision, you've gotta understand my vision, I've gotta over-communicate that. And then having laid the ground rules on the way in makes it a lot easier. Then, if you're in a conflict and you've laid the ground rules, then you go back to the ground rules, right? And you say, well, remember, we said that this was while education was an awesome path. It's not the only path. And when in doubt, we were always gonna err on the side of helping these guys get into the major leagues. So that's gonna influence our decisions.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Obviously, I can get more specific if there's like a specific thing, like here's what we're fighting about. But those are the general ideas.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Got it. No, perfect. So my next question, just describe the challenges behind creating a new market, kind of like what you did with Quest. You know, I feel like the protein and protein bar market wasn't where it was. I feel like you guys kind of pioneered that space. So like, how'd you break through those barriers that I can imagine were there?

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Well, it's interesting. So we didn't pioneer the space and where our, what Peter Thiel calls a zero to one was pretty interesting because we came into a really crowded market and there were sixteen hundred other protein bar company flavors on the market when we came in and our whole thing was, yes, this is a well-established market. Yes, it's actually declining. It's even though it's overcrowded, it's been going down for several years. But what we've done is make the first bar that tastes like it has sugar, but doesn't actually have sugar in it. So you can, I think you may actually be really defining a new industry, which is taking technology to scouts. And so it really does become a zero to one, especially when you get into AI.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  And so I think you're gonna have slightly different obstacles. So for us, it was convincing people that, like, imagine if your problem was, people said, I don't scout, scouting is total BS, right? That's where we were. And so we had to convince people because people were telling us, I don't eat protein bars. So we had to go convince people, no, no, no, all the other protein bars are this way, but if you try this one, hi, I'm supposed to remember to look at you guys. Ah, poor Alex, you greedy bastards.

• 35:35Speaker 00

  That if you try our protein bar, you'll see that it's very different. And that became the hurdle for us was to really just get people to try it, right? So but you're not in that situation. You're in a situation where your value proposition is very different. I think it's very exciting, which is you've got all these players, remember, he's trying to monetize the players. So you've got all these players that are so hungry and so desperate to break into the MLB's, anybody that can provide real value, like if you can actually streamline that process and put them in contact with either coaches that'll get them into college or scouts that are gonna get them into the major leagues, like, that's the fantasy land, right? So I really think you have something super powerful because you're tapping into behavior that already exists.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  And that's what it costs. We're trying to remind ourselves and that's what we're doing here at Impact Theory. We wanna leverage behavior. We don't wanna try to change behavior. So you're, it scares me a little bit with the scouts because the scouts are gonna be resistant to change. But the, uh, the players, I think, are really gonna be super excited about what you have to offer. So that really, like you said, it becomes about getting

• 36:36Speaker 00

  The word out and the way that you're gonna do that is with influencers and man you go get like I mean let's just get ridiculous for a second if you go get um A-Rod to say dude if this had existed when I was a high school player I'd be even more successful than I am now right you get a few people like that to say something uh which is way more valuable by the way than the scouts uh because they just don't have name brand recognition but if you go out and get some influencers and obviously I'm kidding I'm not kidding about A-Rod that would work phenomenally well but uh the likelihood of getting him to do that um without some major cash component is virtually zero but if you go out to all the influencers that have five thousand to fifty thousand you know relatively small people um but they'll be super excited to work with you if there's any kind of rev share anything or if you can gamify the system um could also be really cool so that the I mean imagine that you have a leaderboard for the number of people you get a certain number of points for getting somebody into a college you get even more points if they go into the MLB right and that there's a leaderboard and so it's like hey all these um associates who've gotten somebody into college or to the majors like you can go look at oh man like I really want to get a hold of that scout and so you can use those guys that are that all these players are listening to on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter to say like hey there's this new thing I'm a part of go check it out upload your footage I think you grow very very quickly

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Awesome alright so my next question is what's the right balance between selling the execution of today and versus selling the vision for tomorrow like in a conversation like ours or you know for a lot of startups investors or advisors um like what's the right balance of like the small picture versus the big picture

• 38:13Speaker 00

  Um well any uh oh god any investor in my mind worth their salt is gonna wanna see what you're doing today um I really want to believe that we live in a world where people remember the dot com boom and bust and they know that just buying stuff pie in the sky is ridiculous but nonetheless people still do it so know your audience um know if they've invested heavily in the future before or if they're like a meat and potatoes fundamentals and they wanna see like where your business is but I will promise you this if you're profitable you can stay in business no matter what anybody thinks if you're not profitable then now you're beholden to your ability to tell a grand story about the future and I just want everybody to understand no matter how much VC money you get eventually if you're not profitable you go out of business

• 39:00Speaker 00

  We all clear on that? Like, that, like, that's crazy to me that we've lived in this weird world of technology where companies that never ever become profitable will stay in business for like 10 years before anything real happens, which is why, like, people were making fun of the guy at Instagram for selling for a billion dollars. First of all, I'm gonna punch you in the mouth. If you ever make fun of somebody for selling for a billion dollars, it's crazy. Like, that's so much money. Whatever you want to do in life, you can do at that point. And then also, he had no revenue. He sold something pre-revenue for a billion dollars. It's crazy. So, anyway, that's like a one in 500 million chance. Focus on the fundamentals.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Convince people about what you're doing right now. Your job is to get influencers and other MLB scouts and players to believe in what you're doing, and they want to be helped today, right? So if your mission, you didn't tell me your mission was to get rich. You told me your mission was to help people get into the majors and that the power of athletics is something you really believe in, to see people optimize their life and live like this really powerful existence where somebody helps them really become great at something. And I think that's awesome, and I think that's admirable. And so if that's real, and that's really what you want to do, then focus on today, man. Focus on actually helping those kids get good at baseball and to feel good about themselves and really manifest their destiny. Yeah. Right?

• 40:27Speaker 00

  There we go. If I had, if I, I can't drop the mics, hell, otherwise I'd drop it.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. All right.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  So my next question, so we talked a lot about mission at the beginning of the show. But how do you really involve the mission from a branding perspective? Like, you mentioned our Instagram page.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  What I'm really trying to do right now is brand, considering we're a technology company in beta, there's not much to sell. So how do you really involve that mission in branding? Is it through content or like?

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's definitely gonna be largely through content, and I think that we're living in an era where somebody like yourself should really be stepping out, out front. You should be creating content. So if you guys look at our page, by the way, it's Scout Day. Is it Scout underscore Day on Instagram?

• 41:17Speaker 00

  Don't worry about it. So scow underscore day on Instagram. Check them out. They're really growing rapidly. It's really great. You guys are using contests well. I see people really, really respond when you give away swag. But right now, your page looks, it doesn't have, like, I don't see you. You know what I mean? There's no sense of the people behind it. And since you have a mission, you want to lead with that mission. So the reason, like, at Quest, I used to be invisible. I wanted to be invisible. And they were bugging me from, like, the first eight months of being a company. They wanted me to start creating content, stepping up front. I was super uncomfortable with that. And I lied about my birthday on Facebook. I think to this day, it's a fake birthday because I was so freaked out about social media.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Like, I understood it as a business tool, but I did not jive with it as a personal tool. And it really, really took me a long time to embrace it. Now, obviously, I've gone full tilt in the other direction. And I literally, I'm, you know, filming stuff all the time. And we're releasing content daily. So I think you step out front. I think you tell people about the mission. I think you preach the mission. I think you really help some kids improve their game, get some testimonials. Let people see that you actually believe in what you're doing. Let people see that you're really delivering people value to people's lives. And then use those testimonials to get more people. Because if you can give away the product and build a business, you've really got something. And if you're actually helping people's game improve, if the scouts are like, "Holy hell, like, you're really helping me scale my efforts."

• 42:42Speaker 00

  And I could never touch this many people when I was having to fly everywhere. And now you're allowing people to submit to me. And I can look at these videos and I can really tell what's going on. And you streamline that, simplify it, give me an awesome UI UX for me to interact with the footage. And now my efforts are scaled three, five times. Like, whoa, they're loving you. They're doing testimonials to get other associate people into the scout side. The players are like, "Oh, my God, I'm getting real feedback from an MLB scout. That's crazy. I actually know this guy. And he was the one that got so-and-so, you know, into the Mets or whatever." And now they're like, "I can't believe I'm getting feedback from this, and it's real value." Then people are just gonna go crazy. We've had people submit rap videos that they did about our company.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  We get people offering us equity in their company routinely. Because we're putting out this content. We're telling people how we want to help the world. We're doing it all for free. And so people can see, like, This is real, like, we actually want to do this. And we actually want to help people, and it really works. And if it really works, people are gonna come. All right, we've probably got about two minutes left at this point. One more question, all right? Pick a doozy.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  This is probably a good one for the audience. I'm sure a lot of other entrepreneurs are still saying, but uh, so as a founder, how do you overcome moments of self doubt?

• 43:57Speaker 00

  So to me, this is like, it is exactly like getting great at baseball, right? If you want to be a good pitcher, you need to be pitching a lot. You want to be good at batting, you need to bat a lot. You want to be good at fielding, you gotta take a lot of ground balls. So that is the same about self doubt. Like, it is a process of getting control of your mind and getting control of your emotion and understanding what practicing that looks like. Um, mantras are maybe a little silly, but they are incredibly powerful. And your mind will um, wire around the things that you obsess over the most. And so if you think about your doubt and start getting panicky and nervous, um, then your mind is gonna wire for that. If you catch that moment of self doubt and you say a mantra, even if you don't believe in it, like, if you say, "I'm the kind of person that will learn whatever I need to learn from this."

• 44:41Speaker 00

  Like, let's say that before we started doing this today, that you were feeling anxious. And if you said, "Look, I'm the kind of person, I'm gonna learn from this no matter what." You're gonna notice your anxiety levels drop just from saying that. Just from saying, like, "I'm gonna learn from this no matter what." You're gonna begin to wire your brain and your identity, which for me is everything. You're gonna create that identity about being the learner. You're gonna reinforce that in your mind. And then because you said that to yourself right before you came on and we started talking, you now put yourself in the frame of mind of learning. It makes it feel more like practice instead of performance. And you're going to get the gyrations of the mind working around that. You're gonna focus on the improvement, you're gonna focus on the learning. And then that doubt is reduced because what are you gonna doubt? Your ability to learn, right?

• 45:24Speaker 00

  So it's just reframing the situation, focusing on practice and grinding it out for the win.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Basically, I was just giving you real ones. So those are mine, right? So I switched my self-esteem from being right, being smart, to identifying the right answer faster than anyone else and always being a learner. And in shifting that and thinking about life as practice instead of performance and thinking about what I can learn instead of what I can get out of, you know, any given interaction, it just changed everything and lowered my anxiety levels, lowered self-doubt, because my thing is, there's only something to doubt, like if you're trying to be great in that moment, if you're trying to look at yourself right now, today is the pinnacle of your evolution,

• 46:11Speaker 00

  instead of like a point on a very long timeline that extends long beyond where you are today. So I don't look at myself as the end of anything, right? So I'm in the middle of a process of learning. And so if I suck today, that's okay, because I can get great tomorrow. And all of that just really helps me overcome doubt.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Cool. Well, guys, if you haven't already during this feed, taken a look at Scout Day, go check them out. It's really interesting. And ask yourself how the fundamentals that we've talked about today, once abstracted from the specifics of their business, how could it apply to yours? I'm always trying to keep this universal, so don't get lost in the specific words, all the things. If I'm able to bring value to something that is a business that I don't know anything about, it's because it's a universal principle. Also, Alex, I think the questions that you asked were fantastic, because they really were very universal for people. And so I'm grateful for that. And hopefully, that really helped you guys out. And guys, go support what they're up to. It is really, really interesting. And I love supporting the people that have submitted here to Startup Theory.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  And by the way, if you guys would like to submit to Startup Theory, go to impacttheory.com and you'll see the submission form there. Where would they see the submission form exactly? Contact page. So and you can also write us at [email protected]. And that deep soothing voice that you heard off is the one that will be replying to you, that is Agent Smith. And then of course... The ever amazing Cindy will also be there to support. So submit it in guys and we will do whatever we can to help make your business a success. So thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Startup Theory. We are in beta. So let us know what you think that we could be doing better. We are very, very eager to get your guys' feedback. And everybody, thanks to Alex

• 48:03Speaker 00

  Tucci for joining us today and for his company. Yeah, buddy. We're really excited for you, man. Absolutely. Thanks for joining us. All right, guys. That's it for now. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. This is a weekly show. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace out. Everybody, thank you so much for listening. And if this content is delivering value to you, please go to iTunes, go to Stitcher, rate and review us. That helps us build this community. And that is what we are all about right now. Building this community as big as we can to help as many people as we can, deliver as much value as possible. And you guys rating and reviewing really helps with that. All right, guys. Thank you again so much. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.

• 48:48Speaker 00

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