How NFL Players Are Raking In The Dough As Creators

0:00All right, so we're going to talk about how NFL players are raking in the dough, not as players necessarily, but as creators. So Neil, have you heard of the podcast with the Kelsey brothers? Nope, never heard of it. You know who the Kelsey brothers are? No, I know the Paul brothers are Logan and Jake. Oh, dude, okay. That's not, they're in entertainment, not sports. Okay, so check this out over here. So those of you that can see the screen, so you can see this is Travis Kelsey. So he's one of the, he's the best tight end in the NFL right now. He plays for the Kansas City Chiefs. And you have Jason Kelsey, who's his brother.

0:33He plays center for the Philadelphia Eagles. They both played in a Super Bowl against each other last year. But a lot of people don't know, or at least, you know, like combinators like Neil and I don't know that they have a podcast. And combined, they have 3.5 million social media followers, six-figure merchandise drops, consistently a top five podcast in sports. I see some of their stuff on YouTube, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views or so. And the show charges up to 100 % higher CPMs than the industry standard. And they have worked with brands like DraftKings, LinkedIn, Athletic Greens.

1:05So this is broken down by Joe Pompliano. We're not going to talk about that, but we have talked about Neil. Do you remember when we were at that dinner a while back about there's just going to be more and more creators rising because everyone sees the power in becoming a creator? Dude, for sure. Especially if you already have an audience, it's easier to leverage your audience than it is to go get a nine to five job. I think that's a big mistake people make in which they don't A, start early enough in building their audience and B, once they have an audience, they don't monetize it. Monetization doesn't have to be selling an ebook or going on, what's that site that charges the subscriptions?

1:41OnlyFans. It doesn't have to be going on OnlyFans. It could be as simple as doing a podcast, creating a product that you're white labeling. So you don't technically have to create the product, but you're slapping your logo on it. The possibilities are just endless. Yep. So look, there's going to be a lot of people listening to this are in B2B. And even on Twitter, you can see or X, whatever you want to call it, you can see right now, a lot more people are talking about there's gonna be a rise in B2B creators. And so there's no right or wrong time to get into it. They say, well, the best time was yesterday.

2:12And the best time was 20 years ago, but then the second best time is today to plant the tree, right? Yeah, I think the best time was 10 years ago. The second best time is now. Yeah. And like we've talked about this on the podcast for years and years. If you want to start to compound an audience, it typically takes about two to three years to do so. Most people give up because they expect to see the results of people that have been doing it for 10 years in two, three months or so. And that's a form of entitlement. This type of stuff takes a long time to work out. But once you have the flywheel moving, it's something that you don't really want to give up.

2:44And I'll give you another example here. So I was interviewing Mark Manson. He's a bestselling author. He wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F and sold 60 million copies. And we're talking about how there's a lot of creators out there that are getting burnt out. So Jake Paul back, I remember I was at a dinner and we're talking about how Jake Paul, he had 20 million or so YouTube subscribers, which is a lot, right? It's like top 1%, maybe even higher than that. And he's like, okay, it's like, so why did you stop doing YouTube? He's like, you know, I realized I can't really compete with like the Mr.

3:14Beast out there. And I just want to focus on what I'm really good at and what I can be world-class at. And so I was like, Hey, so Mark, like, why do you think these creators are burning out? Cause it's such a high leverage thing. And he's like, well, like, look, Eric, you and I, we've been in the game for a long time. It's like, have you experienced burnout? Yes. How many times I experienced burnout multiple times. Right. And so that's the example of the younger people right now experiencing burnout for the first time. That's not saying that being a creator is a bad thing. So just because you see these top creators backing out, a lot of them end up coming back into the game later, right?

3:43And so all this to say is like, it's worth it being a creator. You're probably going to burn out at some point. So you have to manage your emotions. You have to manage your mental capacity. And at the end of the day, it ends up being a fun thing. I mean, look at this. Like Neil and I, we've been doing this podcast for seven years. I think we're going to seven or eight years, something like that. And we've been very consistent with it. It's fun to do. And we end up having people that we get to meet at these events. We get to speak at cool conferences. And it's led to business as well. Anything else, Neil?

4:10Well, the last thing I would add is you don't have to be an NFL player to do what these guys are doing. You don't have to be one of the Pauls or a Kardashian. Anyone can do it. Eric and I are doing it in marketing. You know, the other day I was meeting someone who's doing it in bikinis. No joke. They sell bikinis and they built up an audience of like, hey, I make custom products. Kind of like the Etsy type of creators, like people are selling on Etsy. and they're just like, yeah, I talk about bikinis and what's good and what's bad and what's in style and what's comfortable and what's not and what's the best bikini after marriage or not marriage, after giving birth, what's the best bikini for different types of events like, you know, 4th of July or whatever it may be.

4:51And they were making six figures from it, literally six figures. There's so many ways to monetize. But the big thing that people lack is they don't just go out there and create a following. And you don't just want to create a following, you want to create a following or whatever you're passionate about. Creating a generic following is really hard to monetize in any category. It needs to be a following for a specific theme or topic or subject. Yeah. Most people have it the wrong way. It's like, well, I want to grow an audience. Well, okay. Well, what do you want to talk about? It's like, well, I don't know.

5:20I just want to grow an audience. So it should be, I want to grow an audience because I've done something. I have something interesting to talk about. I have something I'm passionate about. And then you start to grow the audience because you start to develop a point of view. Yes, and it's unrealistic to just grow a broad audience like Christian Ronaldo. It's not going to happen. It's very rare. So focus on the industry and then create an audience around that. All right, so that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. It helps us grow. And we will see you tomorrow.