I got to run our athlete brand-building, deal-sourcing, and sponsorship workshop this week with USA Artistic Swimming — and the more of these I run, the more convinced I am of how valuable they are, and not just for the athletes in the room.
These sessions work because they get everyone speaking the same language — the athletes, sure, but also the organization around them, whether that's a pro team, a national governing body, a college program, or an athletic department. Athletes are always going to be the front line of the market for whoever they represent, so the better you can teach them to market themselves as actual ambassadors of the sport, the better the organization does commercially too. That's the whole pitch, and it's a good one.
Honestly, I still think the industry is only scratching the surface here. Not enough organizations are leaning into this the right way — teaching everyone involved, top to bottom, the same strategy and the same story. That's what makes the workshop click: everyone walks out aligned on the market strategy, the story we're trying to tell, and the understanding that a deal — whether it's an individual sponsorship, a social post, or something at the team level — isn't just a win for that one athlete. A rising tide lifts all ships. When your athletes are doing well and landing more commercial opportunities, the organization gets a bump too — the market starts paying more attention to you, full stop. The more I run these, the more that long-term byproduct shows up, and it's genuinely exciting to watch.
One more thing that's stuck with me: the feedback from athletes who've gone through this program and have since retired — into speaking careers, or just regular working life — has been some of the best validation we've gotten. They tell me, unprompted, how much the branding work we did together helped them in job interviews, or in figuring out how to rebrand themselves for the corporate world. These lessons outlive the athletic career by a long shot. Our athletes get to sharpen these skills while they're still competing, and it just keeps paying off long after.
