Maarten Paes: Ajax Goalkeeper on Investing While You’re Playing & Representing Indonesia (Ep137)

0:00Maarten Paes:I believe the whole country deserves a World Cup because then the whole world can see how football mad it is, but also how beautiful the country is. I made my debut, sadly, when my grandmother passed away. Saved the penalty on my debut. And when the national anthem was playing, we actually learned the national anthem together, me and my grandmother. So yeah, I was thinking about her all that time. When COVID broke out, I was playing football and suddenly we couldn't play football anymore. And then I was like, I only identify right now as a football player. I don't really have a lot. I was very much inspired by LeBron James.

0:31Maarten Paes:I learned a lot about how all these big ad leads use their platform in their investments to grow it. The more I got older, I started to realize it's more about us and less about me. My ego is not important. The team is the most important. And if we win, we all eat from the wins. I got a phone call from my agent and he said, we should be interested to leave training camp to go to Amsterdam. And I was like... Hello and welcome to the Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. Martin Pius plays for Ajax and the Indonesian national team as a goalkeeper.

1:08At least that's what most of the bios will say. But what they won't tell you is that alongside his career as a professional footballer, he is also building a career in business and investment. And the approach he has taken to making himself more than his performance on the pitch is a story we had to cover on the show. There's a shifting attitude in dressing rooms that, in Martin's own words, is moving away from the macho discussions on who has the best car or the most expensive watch into what they're up to away from the game. We've discussed it at length on preview shows with the likes of Petr Cech, Pat Cummins, Matt Smith, Brian Habana, but everyone's approach is different.

1:38Martin's football career alongside his ambition is equally interesting. He spent four years in the MLS with Dallas and has qualified to play for the Indonesian national team through his grandmother. Put it all together and we have another great example of a top sports person with a bucket load more to offer. So, we're delighted to welcome Martin to the business of sport. As this episode is brought to you by Airwallex, I wanted to share a piece of content created to announce Airwallex's partnership with Arsenal earlier this year. Fans, players, Henri, Spike Lee, with partnerships now having a huge content impact, this is one of the best you'll see.

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3:45All on their phone. No more hunting. No more surprises. no more end of window panic visit geminisports.ai and see how Gemini bring together everything a sporting director needs to see the complete picture before making a decision that could define the next two seasons. Martin good afternoon welcome to the business of sport in what is an incredibly nice and professional podcast studio by the looks of it we don't do many remotely but when we do I want everyone to have that backdrop.

4:13Maarten Paes:Yeah thanks thanks for having me big fan of the show what we already discussed before but I was actually listening to to an episode of yours when I learned about the opportunity I was listening to the episode with Mirwan of the CEO of Como so yeah big fan of the show I watch every Friday the breakdown and yeah big fan. Love it love it tell us about what you're up to right now. What I'm up to right now I'm playing for IFC Ajax since January after playing for four years in the MLS and I'm also international for Indonesia my grandmothers from there um since like two years i've been playing for for the national team there and outside of that i have uh yeah i've done several studies i did the harvard business school with was a crossover program with the mls i did a fifa study to become a gm after my career already i've done johan kraut university in commercial business those are some of my hobbies next to football so uh yeah that's it's been a great journey I always love to um yeah learn as much as possible within the game and also outside of the game so uh so yeah always curious to learn even more was it always football for you when you were growing up it was always football it was always football but the position I was not sure always I was a striker until I was 15 16 and then And I changed it to a goalkeeper, which was for me great because I didn't have a lot of passion for being a striker.

5:42Maarten Paes:I didn't have a lot of passion for running a lot. But I could look now into the head of a striker and know what they wanted to do. And I think that was kind of an edge that helped me. Plus, I found my passion. So I went from training one time a week because I didn't have any passion anymore to train three times a day. So there was a kind of wild time around 15, 16, where I just find so much joy in practicing every day and then started to get better. And in two years, I was playing for, at that time, the Dutch national team, but one age group older. So everything went super fast. And once I got a little bit more professional goalkeeper training, yeah, I started to go up.

6:26And tell us about moving to the US. So you did, what, four years out there? Is that right?

6:31Maarten Paes:Yeah, so I played two years for NSA Nijmegen. They were almost in the Champions League, but they didn't make it this year. But there was a wild story last year. And then I went for three, four years to a club called Jafsie Utrecht, which is like a sub-top club in the Netherlands. And after one year, I became first goalkeeper. And as you can imagine, becoming a first goalkeeper at that age, with the history that I had, it was like a rollercoaster. You know, sometimes you had really high highs. and it was an emotional club so there were also some lows and um yeah it was kind of a good experience because you learn a lot you mature very fast uh into that world and then but also as as time goes on i was sometimes the first goalkeeper sometimes the second goalkeeper so i kind of was seeking for a little bit more consistency in the goal and then at one time i got a i actually played against Ajax I played a really good game I remember we won 1-0 in the Amsterdam arena and I became man of the match and then my agent called me the next day that a club from the MLS had interest and at that time it wasn't the right timing but in the winter some stuff happened and I rang my agent hey are they still interested and then yeah they were interested so yeah I made the the move to to dallas first half year on loan but i believe after five games they already triggered the option to buy so it became permanent and uh love my time there to be honest there was so much opportunity on and off the field i integrated a lot into the culture with which i believe helps a lot if you go to a new culture and then yeah started to play a lot i think i played 120 130 30 games in four seasons, which is what I seeked.

8:20Maarten Paes:And because I had some really good training there, I became super consistent. I was an MLS all-star also one year alongside Hugo Lloris. So that was also a great experience. So yeah, that was a little bit my side on the field there. I'm really interested in the routine of an MLS player, because it's not like what I'd imagine a domestic player in the Netherlands is. no it's it's quite wild to be honest um especially around june july when they you play like nine or ten games and it's traveling everywhere and you have the texas heat you go to the elevation in colorado then you go to the west side two hour time difference then you go to the east side where it's maybe super humid in miami and you constantly have to transition and only have two games of of rest or two days of rest so yeah it takes a lot of professionalism I think not every player from Europe can adapt really fast there but yeah I enjoyed and embraced that challenge and yeah learned a lot so it was great what's the football culture like from your experience there the noise that has come out of the country since the world cup has been very much about you know wanting to build on a lot of that excitement that was brought to the country from those few weeks.

9:41How did you find playing domestically as part of the MLS from the kind of fan culture element?

9:48Maarten Paes:Yeah, I think when I got the opportunity in 2022, I saw the long-term growth in the MLS. It was before Messi was already there. So that was a nice extra bonus to spike it up, of course. But you saw the World Cup coming up. There was a lot of investment in soccer-specific stadiums too there. and for example from a business perspective you saw the valuations yeah they grow like exponentially over the last years i believe and new clubs will come in and yeah it was kind of wild but um i think the fan experience is is pretty good there's a lot of fan stadiums sold out all the time of course if you live in texas and where american football is so big there's also a big part of the community that is still don't want to hear anything about soccer so it will grow over the years a lot, I believe.

10:36Maarten Paes:But I think there's still a little bit of a problem in the youth with a pay-to-play system instead of a right-to-play system. In Europe, you have the right to play and you have a chance to go from maybe a rough neighborhood to the dream is to go through football, right? And play on the streets. And from that, maybe like the movie Gold we saw in the past with Santiago Munoz in Newcastle. In America, it's very hard because it's very expensive for the youth to play for good programs and have good training. So I think that's why some childs there prefer to go to a basketball or American football, because there's a lot more opportunity for young kids to go earlier into those programs.

11:23Maarten Paes:And I think if they can look to find a solution for that, I think the future will be much brighter within football or soccer or however we're going to call it today. But I think that is something that they still need to work on because they always said, yeah, the World Cup is going to compound the interest, but it will only compound the interest if you make the right adjustments into those kind of key factors, I believe. Yeah, I completely agree. anyone that follows this show knows that we are huge advocates of athletes doing work away from the pitch and exposing themselves to industries that you wouldn't necessarily expect them to but they will also be aware of the challenges that it can present even just getting into this world but when you know when we when I first started to look at the background that you'd had and I saw the interest that you had in business and you look at the time you spent in the U.S.

12:19straight away is the opportunity started to click into place. Now, of course, you still have to have the interest, but I would imagine being in and around an American sports environment, a US sports environment, gave you opportunities that you may not have had if you had been in Europe, for example, to explore some of those interests that you had away from the pitch.

12:38Maarten Paes:In 2020, when COVID broke out, we all had that realization, what do I have if my main job falls away, right? So I was playing football and suddenly we couldn't play football anymore. And then I was like, I only identify right now as a football player. So I don't really have a lot. And also in my investment portfolio, for example, there wasn't really something. I didn't have a lot of hobbies outside of football. So that was kind of a realization point for me of like, maybe I should do some other stuff outside of football too. To also sometimes early in the weeks, stay away from that very fluctuating emotions of the football world, if that makes sense.

13:20Maarten Paes:Because it's really fine margins, and sometimes it's a very big portion of luck, which can be after a win, you can have a really big Hosanna atmosphere and the feeling that we're going to become champions. And then after a loss, it's going to be like, we have to be really moody for four days, and then nobody wants to talk with each other. And I kind of seeked for certain consistency and also maybe a little bit of stoicism where I wanted to control what I can control. And if I did everything I can control, I did control. I felt good about it, you know. And then I got a book during COVID from a teammate of mine called Cyril Dessers.

14:01Maarten Paes:And it's called The Bankrupt Football Player. and I was reading through this book and it described a lot about the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary broke I don't know if you've ever seen or heard about it but it explained why at least in the NFL Premier League NBA why such a big percentage go go bankrupt or have financial trouble after their career and yeah and that's why when I started to study why was that and it was like three main points one was two risky investments live up to your salary at the time of being a footballer so let's say you will earn 100 000 net a month and you will save 50 000 you think hey i'm saving a lot of money but you're also spending 50k a month which is not really realistic in the future right so um i think yeah be aware of your spending and then of course there's So yeah, other factors that go into that.

14:59Maarten Paes:But yeah, then I was looking into why, what should I do? And then I started to buy my first house for myself instead of renting really expensive in the middle of Amsterdam and then took the next steps. And when I had like a real estate portfolio, I was looking into the VC and private equity world of, I was very much inspired by LeBron James, who has this platform called Uninterrupted. And he has a podcast called Needing Doe. and then I learned a lot about how LeBron James did it how Kevin Durant did it how all these big ad leads use their platform in their investments to to grow it and then I was like I'm not a LeBron James yet but if I partner up with with other ad leads in funds or in SPVs we can have the same effect into companies that for example a LeBron James had with Beats by Dre which is maybe yeah it's a great story where he i think he handed out all the beats by drace in the plane to the olympics at 2008 in beijing and then when they walked out of the plane it was one of the biggest hype the next day uh in the next day and stock uh went went up a lot and he had a great exit when they sold it i believe to apple but um yeah i was looking how can i do that in in my world and And then when the opportunity came for me to go to the US, I saw there was way more opportunities to that.

16:26Maarten Paes:So there was, it's a little bit more, they're a little bit more open there to already to do it. I think if you look now, I'm for example in a fund called Petrikov right now, where I team up with some of the biggest NBA, NFL athletes. And yeah, we're doing a lot of fun stuff. So yeah, that's been a little bit the journey where it all started for me and when it clicked. And why is it so important to do that while you're playing? I think there are certain boardrooms that will be open now. But if you retire, probably they won't be open anymore because you're basically not as interesting anymore for them.

17:03Maarten Paes:And I also think we have a very small window. Luckily, as a goalkeeper, my window is a little bit larger. But for example, an NFL running back maybe has a five, six-year span where their income is the highest. a football player maybe has 12 years i think me as a goalkeeper i have a little bit longer but yeah i think this is really the time where where we can make use of that interest that other people have in us basically and also where we can have the most impact into those companies right now yeah i mentioned uh we chatted with pedacek before when we were talking to him about his business interests beyond the game we were asking questions around how he divided his time because we've spoken previously to whether it was managers or athletes and there was sometimes a friction between the time that was being dedicated to activities away from the pitch versus you focusing on what is still your core which is playing professional football and he highlighted the if you put it to good use the amount of time that is available to a professional athlete away from training away from matches you just have to have the discipline to use it properly so have you did you have to learn I guess when you found these new hobbies did you have to learn how to fit them into the routine of being a pro player a really good question um of course you you need to learn that along the way how you do that but i love to make a team around me who's taking away all the stuff that is really costing me energy i always focus on what what gives me energy i think keeping the main thing the main thing is is one of the most important things as an athlete if teammates probably ask who's the longest on the club it's probably me because i'm the first in last out but I think there's still so much time that I have when I go home where others might grab the PlayStation or the Xbox to a game where I read books or learn business cases of Harvard Business School which is more of my interests and especially what I do is earlier in the week when we have for example only a weekend game it's earlier in the week on the Mondays Tuesdays and maybe sometimes the wednesdays i use the late afternoons to to really um yeah work on it and the rest of the time one once i go closer to the weekend i love to empty my head a little bit more and uh yeah put more the tactical emphasis for for the weekend out there so that's how i do it and for me for example in the us it were very long seasons where there was every three days game and for me it feels like that was the way how i kept my head the uh the fresh as possible if that makes sense yeah i want to make this as accessible for any athlete listening that's interested in this as possible and you uh very um honestly but kind of casually transitioned from reading a book to suddenly being able to to do all of this a lot of people will read something and they it may resonate with them acting on it and going and doing something about it is a different thing so when When you came to that realization, you're going through COVID and you suddenly think, I need something additional here, to then actually having additional things, what happened in between?

20:09Did you have people around you who you could lean on immediately? Did you go and literally the next day decide to register a domain name for a company online and set something up? How did you actually make that a reality?

20:22Maarten Paes:Yeah, I had a really good financial manager at the time who helped me a lot and inspired me a lot and had a different way of thinking. I was investing in funds at the time because for me, that's especially in VC or private equity. If you get a pitch deck, everyone has a good story, right? So at the beginning, I thought every project that I got presented was an amazing opportunity. But then if you invest through funds, they do the due diligence. They diversify the investments for you. Yeah, you have capital calls maybe every one to one and a half year. so it also gets divided the commitment that you give to them so i think that was a great start for me to getting to know in that world or getting introduced in that world and then every half year we get a nice report of yeah what the companies are doing the wins that they had the things that they still need to work on and also where we can add value and i think that's a great introduction into that world and especially for example i did a lot with apex at the time uh maybe you know the investment fund with antonio and yeah and kun one of our first investments was tgl and now i'm a big big fan of golf and they are adding the wtgl now they're adding another team from detroit and brooks kubka just announced that that he's gonna yeah join too so um yeah it's great to watch i was actually at the first uh opening uh night there in in florida and it was amazing i was sitting next to tiger and rory and then it also yeah shows you what type of boardrooms but also other athletes you uh yeah you can put yourself in with so that was just an amazing experience so it's gold for it's gold for hobby for you for sure i lived in uh i lived in dallas texas but i lived in frisco it was a little bit north of Dallas and I live next to the PGA headquarters and I did a lot of lessons there uh every Thursday I was on the part three course during the season I love more part three because uh it kind of uh yeah it doesn't make me as injured as as I can be you know so um part three uh I don't feel as much tension around my hips or my hamstrings or my groins but But in the offseason, I love to go and walk nine or 18 holes.

22:44Maarten Paes:And then I love watching it on TV too. The Ryder Cup. Of course, full swing helped a lot in terms of storytelling around the players. Now I watch all the majors, even the FedEx Cup last week. So it's a new hobby of mine. And I love to be outdoors. I love to walk around and just put my phone away. We have a big group at Ajax who play. It's just a great aspect. And great deals can be done there too on the golf course. So that's also great. It's a good place to do that. What about emerging sports then? So is that something you're interested in from an investment side? Are you looking when you're making these investments to have a stake in companies that you're passionate about that you can directly relate to?

23:27Maarten Paes:In terms of emerging sports, I look a lot around my hobbies. So a good example, for example, is Paddle or Paddle or how you want to call it. Yeah, Paddle's fine, yeah. Yeah, when I came to the US, I saw there was only pickleball and no paddle in Dallas, for example, and only in New York and Miami. You had a couple of locations where you could play. And in Europe, it was the biggest sport, the fastest growing sport. So I saw a great, great opportunity to invest. But I don't have the time to open a lot of courts myself. So I started to invest in Paddle House. I started to invest in Ballers. And then at some point, the PPL was growing.

24:12Maarten Paes:And I got an opportunity to invest in the New York Atlantic alongside Francis Tiafoe. We did it together. And then, yeah, since then, I've seen the growth of the sport in the US has been also amazing so far. And we can't wait to see more of that growth. And I think I saw a sports business journal stat today where it's the fastest growing sport in the US right now. So that's great confirmation. Really? So paddles is matching up to pickleball, is it? Yeah, it is. It is. And I think there was just no awareness. So for example, at Ballers in Philadelphia, we have a beautiful old power plant who has transitioned now into a multi-sports location.

25:00Maarten Paes:but we actually use pickleball to introduce people to paddle because they never heard about it and once they start paddle they never stop paddle so i think that's a little bit how it's going right now and uh in boston we have the same in in the boston seaport with ballers we have the same location and we're opening up now in los angeles and chicago so i think you saw a big transition from new york and Miami where there's a big already European and Latin influence. And now we're also taking over the Midwest and the West Coast. So that's super fun to see. A big problem, Martin, for athletes that we speak to sometimes is just understanding the quantums of money required to do this.

25:43And I think they often think that you need far more than you may do to just begin your investment journey, to begin looking at opportunities beyond the sport. When you've done all of this, were you able to do it purely based on the money that you were earning from football or were you leveraging other things around the game uh to to generate more income that allowed you to do this yeah i think good question

26:03Maarten Paes:um of course the main uh yeah money what goes goes into my investments is from my earnings but also i love to build passive income around real estate or passive income from royalties or however I do certain structures. That's very useful for after your career too, to build certain income streams and you can live off that instead of the 100K that you're earning or whatever. So I think, yeah, it's very important to build different types of income streams. Do you have football representation very specifically geared towards looking after your playing contracts and maybe commercial deals and then the business support very much focused on the work beyond are they separated in two separate camps for you yeah yes correct correct and it's really important to do that i think it is i think football agencies or soccer agencies in europe aren't really uh how do you say that uh they don't have yeah set up for that so maybe that's a great opportunity for those companies in the future to hire someone who can do that but i think maybe in america that's more common to have an agency in that but in europe we're just a couple steps behind in terms of long-term place i think i'm a huge believer on equity over endorsement because if people give you endorsement most of the time the people who have equity they grow from it so i'm a big believer in equity i don't need the money of endorsements right now because I have my football contract so I can do the long-term play where in 10 years if everything goes right I have a lot more than than I would have now yeah how um how do you select those companies that you want to do do you look to do a certain number a year of investments are you very much opportunistic as to what comes across your table how do you strategize around it yeah the goal the goal normally is to do once each quarter and sometimes it can be two sometimes can be zero i don't want to do a deal to do a deal it has to suit my personal brand it has to suit my personal hobbies or health and wellness for example is something that i invest heavily in because for me as an athlete that's very important and I can integrate it organically into my lifestyle.

28:30Maarten Paes:And that's very important for me. And then if that aligns, I'll send it to my team. They will do the due diligence, look at the numbers. If that makes sense, then we start to see, hey, what kind of structure do we do in the deal? And then, yeah, if that all makes sense, then we have a deal. The skills of professional athlete in business are enormous, right? Hugely significant. And I think that's becoming more and more apparent as more athletes get involved in business. But I'm always interested in what individuals who have performed at the top level think the most valuable thing they bring to companies are.

29:03So, you know, if you're looking at what you've learned in a career and the discipline that you had to bring into your life to become a professional footballer, what has been the most transferable? What's been the most relevant, do you think, when you started bringing in a business interest and actually then making investments and working with companies?

29:18Maarten Paes:I think for sure worth ethic is something that's very important, but also know that that rest for example is very important so don't only focus on working very hard but have that kind right balance is very important for me in in companies community is very important to build the right community to build the right storytelling for example i have a very big platform on on social media where i can add a lot of value for example through eyeballs or through credibility or whatever it is but if the storytelling and the community aspect isn't right it's not really transferable to sales I believe do you in a dressing room do you have conversations about this type of thing now have you seen a broader interest from athletes talking amongst yourselves about this type of work away from the performance I see that there's a growing interest i see there's more and more individuals who were willing to talk about it and i think it's good because it was always talks about the newest cars watches clothing etc and i think there was kind of like a macho battle or however you want to call it yeah and now yeah in every locker room there's always one two or three persons who have the same interests as I have, which is already more than five, six years ago.

30:45Maarten Paes:For example, in America, my best friend at FC Dallas also did similar things as me, and we could learn from each other. We were in some SPVs together, so it's fun to learn. And yeah, he actually became one of the first player in the USL who also has equity in the team. So it was kind of full circle for him, but it's super nice to see and learn from him. and uh so it's really really cool look can we talk about a huge part of your story which is now your indonesian citizenship the goalkeeper for the indonesian national team your grandmother that allowed you to to qualify for that it seems like a very cool uh story yeah i think it's very cool um i think i already had for a long time um yeah the option so i already knew for a long time that I had the option and then when I was in the off season in in the Netherlands I believe three seasons ago my grandfather just passed away and my grandmother was nearing the end and they called me another time like Martin do you do you want to yeah represent the national team and and then I spoke to it with my grandmother and at that time she was mourning a lot about my grandfather and then she lit up and she smiled so much and yeah she started to we started to bring like old memories of us together she was also my history teacher so she learned me a lot about her time there about also the little bit less nice things that she had there because she was there also in the second world war and her mother passed away in a japanese punishment camp at that time so So, but through my youth, she was my godmother.

32:35Maarten Paes:And every other week she would cook Indonesian for me. And I would learn the dishes too, to cook it, to cook rendang and nasi goreng and everything. So when she lit up, when I told her, I knew this sense of, yes, I'm going to do this. And let's make this a great adventure. And then, yeah, for the first time, I went there in January and still the off season. and spoke to Eric Toh here, who's president of the PSSI. And then, yeah, after that conversation, I was so convinced that I wanted to do it. And then I made my debut, sadly, when my grandmother passed away. But I made my debut in September in Saudi Arabia, saved the penalty on my debut.

33:25Maarten Paes:And when the national anthem was playing, we actually learned the national anthem together, me and my grandmother. So, yeah, I was thinking about her all that time. And then, yeah, from that, it's been super, super nice adventure. It was very challenging with the traveling from Dallas to Indonesia all the time because it was, I believe, a 24-hour flight, 12-hour time difference. And then you needed to play two days later with a lot of pressure, I felt at the time. But I learned so much from it. And yeah, I'm going there again in two weeks and I'm already looking forward to it because it's just a big family there.

34:02Had you actually spent much time in the country before?

34:04Maarten Paes:I've been a couple of times in my youth, visited the grave of my grand grandmother. But it's not easy because it travels that far to go there a lot. Also, there's a big Indonesian community in the Netherlands because of the past. So every year we went to some events and yeah, that was really cool. and it must be cool now when you go there I mean I'd imagine they seem football mad I said to you previously how successful our show with Mirwan who runs Koma who's Indonesian has been and you know the interaction that we've had since then with Indonesian fanbase and for football they just seem mad for it no it's definitely very underrated amongst the global sphere I would say of how crazy it is I believe it's similar to Argentina or Brazil in terms of football madness.