I’m big into podcasts. My wife is too.
My favorite group right now is Gimlet Media. They have shows ranging from history, business, crime, and fictional stories.
One show I love is called Start-Up, it’s the story and documentation of how the CEO started and built Gimlet Media. He actually has audio recordings from his early days of pitching investors to family conversations around launching the idea.
The reason I love the show is that it’s very relatable. The pain, struggles, and small wins are something we all experience when we are pursuing a vision with conviction and purpose.
In one episode he was struggling with delivering his pitch. He was stumbling over his words trying to explain his concept. At one point the investor actually started coaching him on how to deliver his pitch…..rough, right?
The investor asked the CEO a question that he didn’t know how to answer until a later episode. The investor asked him, what is your unfair advantage over other podcast shows?
At this point it made me go from a passive listener to an active one. I stopped the episode, thought for a moment and asked myself the same question.
“What are the Tigers unfair advantage amongst all the baseball clubs?”
Here is where my mind raced too:
- dedicated facility
- development plan
- training that is forward thinking
- using technology for player development
- partnerships amongst the biggest brands in baseball
- support system for coaches
- expert instructors
- online training
- app communication tool
- plug-in-and-go fundraising opportunities
- VIP site
- product discounts
- full-time staff
- strength of schedule
- networked extremely well in the baseball community
- advanced college recruiting advice
…and then hit me. How do you say all of this without saying any of it?
The Tigers are different because we are more than just teams. We are a program with tools and resources that gives our players an unfair advantage over other teams which ultimately provides opportunities that they otherwise would not have been given if they were outside the program.
In short, we have a stable system which provides the opportunity to grow if the right choices are made by the player throughout the year.
The CEO of Gimlet had an interesting answer for this section of his pitch, he said, “The unfair advantage we have over other podcast shows is that we understand listeners from our experience at NPR and have made successful shows from “This American Life” to “Planet Money”. We know our listeners and we know their behavior.”
I feel like we take a similar approach. We know our players and we do our very best to give them the resources that will make them successful not just in their athletic careers, but when they decide to leave the uniform for good.
The last the thing I failed to mention…we are constantly learning, re-evaluating, and thinking about how we can make our program better.
So, I want to leave you with this…if you’re a parent or a player, what is your unfair advantage?
Spiker Helms |Rawlings Tigers
PS
We had Tony Vitello at our college night in 2018. He had a monumental anwser on players who are under 6ft tall.
Can they play and start at the division 1 level?