IAM177- CEO and Founder Breaks Down Barriers in Sponsorship Process

Ishveen Anand is the CEO and founder of OpenSponsorship, a platform that democratizes the $140B sponsorship industry, connecting brands to athletes. Following her near-decade long career in sport sponsorship, she decided to use her intel to create OpenSponsorship. Her vision was to break down the barriers and eliminate the headache that’s normal in the sponsorship process. The result? An award-winning platform that integrates IBM’s Watson’s AI technology to create a proprietary product that seamlessly connects brands to athletes.

After graduating from Oxford University, Ishveen has had no trouble making a name for herself. She’s been featured on the Forbes 30under30, has spoken at numerous summits, and has created a product that was named “One of the hottest sports startups” in Forbes.

• CEO Hack: (1) Reading books and articles relevant to the problem I intend to solve (2) Gmail and its extensions
• CEO Nugget: Be more aggressive and don't be afraid of trying again after failure
• CEO Defined: Empowering people within my organization to achieve our complete goals

Website: https://opensponsorship.com/

Twitter; @IshveenAnand

Full Interview

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Ishveen Anand of OpenSponsorship. Ishveen, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Ishveen Anand 0:36

Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:38

Definitely great to have you. And what I want to do is read a little bit more about Ishveen, so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Ishveen is the CEO and founder of OpenSponsorship, a platform that democratizes the $140B sponsorship industry, connecting brands to athletes. Following her near-decade-long career in sport sponsorship, she decided to use her intel to create OpenSponsorship. Her vision was to break down the barriers and eliminate the headache that’s normal in the sponsorship process. The result? An award-winning platform that integrates IBM’s Watson’s AI technology to create a proprietary product that seamlessly connects brands to athletes. After graduating from Oxford University, Ishveen has had no trouble making a name for herself.

She’s been featured on the Forbes 30under30, has spoken at numerous summits, and has created a product that was named “One of the hottest sports startups” in Forbes. Ishveen, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Ishveen Anand 1:33

I am. Thanks for the introduction.

Gresham Harkless 1:35

No problem, it's awesome to have you on here and awesome to hear all the awesome things that you're doing. And the way I wanted to start this off was to hear a little bit more about your CEO story. And what led you to start your business?

Ishveen Anand 1:45

Yeah, absolutely. I think you kind of hit the nail on the head when you said the heartaches and headaches of sponsorship. So I came as a sports agent back in 2009. After understanding that sports were a passion of mine. And I wanted to be more involved in the industry. I moved to India actually. And so that was a big move and fell in love with sponsorship as a form of marketing, I just thought was the coolest thing. It was great for the brands, great for the athletes and teams, but couldn't wrap my head around why the connection making those deals was so difficult and so archaic.

And so fast forward we're all using, whether it's dating sites or things like Airbnb or whatever, to make our life easier. And I thought why is there not something like this, our industry and so that out to create that about three years ago?

Gresham Harkless 2:32

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And it definitely seems like it's a really big thing. And especially have a lot of people that are quote-unquote, influencers in sports, and athletes seem to be the biggest influencers. So they're always trying to leverage their brands, their kind of networks in order to do that. So it's great that you were a visionary, and were able to kind of create something prior to all those things.

And so how to bring those industries together and technology together? So I wanted to hear I guess a little bit more about what you're doing. I mean, how's that helping to serve the clients that you're working with?

Ishveen Anand 2:59

Yeah, absolutely. So we're a true two-sided marketplace. So on one side, we have the athletes, sports agents, a bit of teams and events, but it's mostly the athletes. And then on the other side, our clients are the brands. And so we have to build platforms and technology for them both to make sure that they can meet two very different sets of people. So you've got marketing managers whose 9 to 5 or whatever it is to try and help drive sales. And then you've got these athletes who compete all day long.

And sponsorship is a form some of them it's a form of making extra money for many like in the NFL or the NBA, it's just it's a way to integrate into society, obviously make a bit of money, but also be more than just the athlete. Right. I think we've seen that a lot recently with the Nike Colin deal. LeBron, obviously.

And the whole point is, I'm more than just this guy who plays on the field. And sponsorship is actually a really nice way of making that come to life. So when we think about our business and how we do this matching, we do a lot of genuine relationships.

So we essentially are, we're always looking at what are these athletes genuinely interested in. Like, what are they talking about on social media? What do they align with? You know, have they got a family member that suffered from a certain medical condition? Or are they really into the movies or whatever else? And then we're trying to make matches based on genuine interest, which is very different to the way it was before, which was just like, how big is a paycheck and who can we find.

Gresham Harkless 4:23

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. You see a lot of people like you mentioned LeBron, you know, it talks about being more than an athlete. And you see a lot of more open access to everybody, including athletes, because you're able to see like what things they're interested in and not interested in. And as you mentioned, a lot of these brands are able to also do that as well. So to be able to make that connection where this person is passionate about this and as an athlete, and also they have a brand that also has those same foundational elements. It makes a perfect kind of connection.

Ishveen Anand 4:50

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 4:51

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, and this is what you feel kind of distinguishes you or your organization and kind of sets you guys apart.

Ishveen Anand 5:00

Yeah, I think like any good secret sauce, it's not just one thing, there should be a couple of things, a few things that go into it. So I'd say work ethic is really big. I just think it's near impossible to be successful unless you have a really good work ethic, especially at the beginning when you don't have enough money to hire amazing people. So you're doing a lot yourself.

And so obviously, work ethic comes with a passion for what you're building. Fortunately, it's an industry that I and the team can be really passionate about, it really helps when we'll get athletes dropped by the office, and they're like, we love you guys. This is amazing. Well, we'll get our brands being like, thanks to you, we were able to do these cool things with these athletes that we'd never be able to.

And so I think passion for what we're doing is easier. Because it's such a great industry to solve. But I think that's super important. And that is being like having this like today vision and tomorrow vision. Right? So we're building a platform for people who haven't told us that they necessarily need it. And we're constantly thinking about, Okay, well, what else do they need?

But then you do have to react to the customers today. And so just being able to sometimes sit down on like, a Saturday night, and think, Okay, what am I building for a year away? And then on a Monday morning, you're like, Okay, what am I doing today to solve my client's problems? So I'd say both of those.

Gresham Harkless 5:00

Yeah. And that makes perfect sense, you have to be able to kind of balance the present for the future as well, too. Because you have to be able to understand, like, this is where we want the industry is going this is what clients need even before sometimes they say they need it. And you have to be able to kind of build that and be there by the time they're actually looking for it.

Ishveen Anand 6:31

Yeah,

Gresham Harkless 6:32

That makes perfect sense. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Ishveen Anand 6:44

So I'd say let's do a learning one. So your books and whatever else. Yeah, I'm obsessed with, reading different books. So whatever your problem is at the moment. And so, recently, we've been thinking about hiring a lot. So I'll just reach out to my network and be like, guys, what's the best hiring book that you've read? I think it's really important to not be reading things because someone's like, Oh, this is a great book. But yet, like, what's it great for?

And then what, do I have that problem today? Because otherwise, you end up reading things. And it's like, you know if I read this hiring book when I'm maybe seven months ago, when I was hiring was my biggest problem. It's pointless, right? As you skim through, you might write notes, but by the time you get to it, you've forgotten. And so as a big thing, in today's time, when you can Google anything right at that point, is really focused on not like, people often send me articles.

And I'm like, then and I'm not going to just read your articles, like when the time is right, then I'll read it, I'm not just going to take on lots of knowledge when it's not relevant to the problem I'm seeing today or what I'm focused on. So that's a learning thing in terms of just being productivity-wise, use, if you're using it, I think most people are in Gmail, or whatever your client, your email client is, there are so many epic plugins today, like three extensions that you can plug in that just make your life easier.

And so I use things to find emails really quickly, I use things to push them back up to my inbox really well. What else are some of my favorite ones? Like, obviously, people integrate things into their calendars. And whatever else is there, I'd say use for me, it's Gmail, like use Gmail to the max, because your email inbox is essentially like a version of your life, right, like a virtual version of your life. So be super productive and research, like, what are the top 10 extensions for Gmail? And see if any of those are relevant to what you would want.

Gresham Harkless 8:33

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, I think my email actually is my life completely. Not even like my life is completely my life, because you have so much information there. And I definitely agree with you, because extensions allow you to kind of make it into like a Swiss army knife because you can do so many different things. And if there's not an extension that has been created, somebody probably is creating it. So it definitely helps out a ton.

Ishveen Anand 8:53

Absolutely. I spend a lot of time being like, is there a way to do X and see what comes out? Yeah,

Gresham Harkless 8:59

Exactly, exactly. Gmail and Google. So definitely, definitely some great CEO hacks. And you might have already touched on this. But I wanted to ask you for what I call now is CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Ishveen Anand 9:16

I'd say be more aggressive. In the beginning. I think a lot of people like you fear failure, and you're all about like figuring it out. And then once because then when you figure it out, you don't move fast enough. And so for us, if I could go back, I probably would have been like, at that point, more aggressive. And I'm not scared of failure.

But sometimes when you hire the wrong person or something doesn't work out, you may set it may set you back three months, you should just bounce back right on tomorrow, rather than like having to think about it and whatever else. Yeah, probably be more aggressive.

Gresham Harkless 9:50

Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of like that, and correct me if I'm wrong, that concept, but by kind of failing fast, because if you fail fast, and you're able to kind of redirect yourself after the fact you're not thinking about oh, what did I do? What should I have done? And then you're wasting another three months sometimes.

Ishveen Anand 10:03

Well, I think you can fail fast. But the point is that you should then try again, much quicker. You should be constantly thinking about, okay, growth, growth, growth, rather than just stability. And I think there's a really fine balanced. But for me, when I think about men, either maybe it's because I'm female and British or whatever I was, like, probably not being aggressive enough in the earliest stages.

Gresham Harkless 10:29

Right. Right. That makes perfect sense. And I know that I know, there's like a founding principle that Nike has that is always like, we're on offense, always. And I find like, that's a great reminder for anybody that's kind of running a business or creating something new and innovative.

Ishveen Anand 10:41

Yeah,

Gresham Harkless 10:42

That makes sense. Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Ishveen, I want to ask you what being a CEO means to you.

Ishveen Anand 10:54

To me, it means empowering people within my organization to achieve our company's goals.

Gresham Harkless 11:00

Awesome. That makes perfect sense. And yeah, it puts everything in perspective. So, Ishveen, I truly appreciate your time and I wanted to pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and then how best people can get hold of you.

Ishveen Anand 11:13

Yeah, use athletes for your marketing schemes and do it through OpenSponsorship, the best way to connect with athletes and if you if you've got guys who are running marketplaces and want to talk about the dynamics within that that's super interesting. I think marketplace founders and CEOs have Have you ever in like different challenges? So yeah, like if there's anything you ever want to share with me or pick my brain and again, touch but otherwise spread the good word about what we're doing at OpenSponsorship.

Gresham Harkless 11:39

Definitely, definitely, definitely. And I truly appreciate you for taking some time out and all the awesome things that you're doing. I'm a sports nut and a sports junkie at heart. So I truly appreciate it. I enjoy this conversation and this interview, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Ishveen Anand 11:51

Awesome, you too Gresham. Thanks so much.

Outro 11:54

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

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