Advice from an 8-figure entrepreneur, Economics of Sports, Adam Neumann

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My name's Connor, I'm the author of this newsletter. Every week I'll send you an email covering ideas, lessons & tools to help you start or grow your business.

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Today's Outline:

• When to Explore vs. Focus

• The Saudis are disrupting a monopoly

• Adam Neumann is a G (unpopular opinion)

• Call Centers for E-commerce brands

📚 Business Lessons

When to focus vs. when you explore.

If you’re subscribed to a newsletter called BizBrainstorms, you probably have a little entrepreneurial ADHD.

I get it.

So do I.

Well, last week I decided I needed to do something about that.

So I spent $750 to have a conversation with an entrepreneur I know who runs multiple companies (e-commerce, agencies, real estate, etc.) all in the 7-8 figure range.

The goal of the conversation was to answer the question:

Where should I focus my time over the next 5 years?

The biggest idea I walked away with was identifying whether you’re in a focus or explore period of your life. And acting accordingly.

Here’s how to know which you’re in:

When you should explore:

This is a period of trying new things. There are two times this makes sense:

1. When you have nothing working.

College new grads. Someone trying to moonlight a side project after their 9-5. Or someone who has spent the last 12 months tinkering on different projects that still aren’t profitable.

Starting new things is really really hard.

The more at-bats you can have, the higher chance you’ll have of finding your win.

Set limitations and restrictions (usually in the form of time and dollars) that you’re willing to put in to begin seeing results.

1. When the things you have that are working are stabilized. And maybe only growing 10-20% annually.

This is a new take I hadn’t heard before.

But the growth rate of your business should determine if you’re open to taking on new opportunities. And when growth slows down, determine if you should be hiring a GM to run the show.

BTW – He suggested a business be earning ~ $500,000 in EBITDA before considering the GM route.

When you should focus:

1. When something is growing and working.

This seems obvious, but even if you have multiple things working, ask yourself:

“Will I see a higher upside by going all in on the thing that’s working the most?”

If the answer is yes, start hiring for your companies, or even sell some off to win back your head space.

Diversification is a trap when you’re getting started in business.

🍿 Business Story I've Been Following

I took a class on the Economics of Sports in college.

And there are 2 things that I learned.

1. Sports are one of the only legal monopolies

2. There are trillions of dollars in this industry

So when Saudi Arabia pulls out their checkbook to start a new league, I listen.

LIV Golf got started in the middle of 2021.

It’s the first true rival to the American PGA tour which does nearly $110M in annual revenue.

This is genius.

Because compared to the Rock who’s competing against the likes of the NFL (which did $17B+ in annual revenue in 2021) the PGA is a much more beatable target.

They’re also paying golfers exorbitant amounts. Phil Mickelson alone received a reported 200$ million JUST to join LIV golf, Dustin Johnson a reported 125$ Million.

This comes at an interesting inflection point too.

Golf for the last 17 years has seen a decline in popularity. But during Covid, the sport had its first uptick of 2% more people reporting having played.

So it seems like LIVs strategy of offering players huge signing bonuses is… kind of working.

And if they can continue growing the sport, they’ll run with the tailwinds and build their own little monopoly.

By the way, unless you’re hockey, sports teams are considered an insanely good investment:

🤯 Crazy Business Fact

I was at a cocktail party in November here in NYC.

Met a former WeWork exec that worked directly with Neumann.

After asking him what he was like, his response was:

“Do you remember in College, the craziest partier you can think of? Imagine that. But is also a super genius and has access to billions in capital. That’s Adam Neumann.”

God Damn.

📱 Business Idea I like:

Slight variation of this idea:

Setting up call centers for e-commerce brands to do phone support.

If you sell a technical product or your customer demographic skews over 50+, you could probably build a solid agency business hiring and staffing english speaking call center reps for e-commerce brands.

Until Next Send ✌️

-Connor

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