IAM2291 – CEO and Founder Breaks Down Barriers in Sponsorship Process

00:00 - 00:27

Ishveen Anand: So when we think about our business and how we do this matching, we do a lot of genuine relationships. So we essentially are always looking at what are these athletes genuinely interested in? What are they talking about on social media? What do they align with? 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 the paycheck and

00:27 - 00:28

Ishveen Anand: who can we find?

00:30 - 00:54

Intro: 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 Harker 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.

00:55 - 01:04

Gresham Harkless: 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 Ishvin Anand of OpenSponsorship. Ishvin, it's awesome to have you on the

01:04 - 01:06

Ishveen Anand: show. Thank you so much.

01:06 - 01:38

Gresham Harkless: Great to be here. Definitely great to have you. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Ishvin so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Ishvin is the CEO and founder of OpenSponsorship, a platform that democratizes the $140 billion sponsorship industry connecting brands to athletes. Following her near-decade-long career in sports sponsorship, she decided to use her intel to create OpenSponsorship. Her vision was to break down the barriers and eliminate the heartache, headache that's normally in the sponsorship process. The result, an award-winning platform that integrates IBM's

01:38 - 02:01

Gresham Harkless: Watson AI technology to create a proprietary product that seamlessly connects brands to athletes. After Graduating from Oxford University, Ishvin has had no trouble making a name for herself. She's been featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30, has spoken at numerous summits and has created a product that was named 1 of the hottest sports startups in Forbes. Ishvin, are you ready to speak to the IMCEO community?

02:02 - 02:03

Ishveen Anand: I am. Thanks for the introduction.

02:03 - 02:13

Gresham Harkless: 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.

02:13 - 02:42

Ishveen Anand: Yeah, absolutely. I think you kind of hit it on the nail on the head when you said the heartaches and headaches of a sponsorship. So I became a sports agent back in 2009 after understanding that, you know, sports was 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, it was the coolest thing. It was great for the brands, great for the athletes and teams, but couldn't wrap my

02:42 - 03:00

Ishveen Anand: head around why the connection, making those deals was so difficult and so archaic. And so fast forward, you know, 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 set out to create that about 3 years ago.

03:00 - 03:24

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, Awesome. And it definitely seems like it's a really big thing. And especially you 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 saw how to bring those industries together and that technology together. So I wanted to hear, I guess, a little bit more about what you're doing

03:24 - 03:27

Gresham Harkless: and how is that helping to serve the clients that you're working

03:27 - 03:57

Ishveen Anand: with? Yeah, absolutely. So we're a true two-sided marketplace. So on 1 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 platform and technology for them both to make sure that they can meet 2 very different sets of people. So, you know, you've got marketing managers who's 9 to 5 or whatever is to try and help drive sales. And then you've got these athletes who compete all day long and sponsorship is a

03:57 - 04:24

Ishveen Anand: form. Some of them, it's a form of making extra money. But many, like in the NFL or the NBA, it's just a way to integrate into society, obviously make a bit of money, but also be more than just the athlete. I think we've seen that a lot recently with the Nike-Collin deal, LeBron, obviously, and the whole point being is, I'm more than just this guy who plays on the field. And sponsorship is actually a really, really nice way of making that come to life. So when we think about our business and how we do this matching,

04:25 - 04:51

Ishveen Anand: we do a lot of like 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 the paycheck and who can we find?

04:51 - 05:16

Gresham Harkless: Right, right. Yeah, exactly. You see a lot of people, like you mentioned in LeBron, 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 like 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 you know, as an athlete, and also they have a brand that also has that same foundational elements,

05:16 - 05:18

Gresham Harkless: makes a perfect kind of connection.

05:18 - 05:19

Ishveen Anand: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

05:20 - 05:28

Gresham Harkless: 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.

05:28 - 05:56

Ishveen Anand: Yeah, I think like any good secret sauce, it's not just 1 thing. There should be a couple of things that have a few things that go into it. So I'd say a 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 know, you don't have enough money to hire amazing people. So you're doing a lot yourself. And so obviously work ethic comes into that passion for what you're building. Fortunately it's an industry that me and the team can be

05:56 - 06:23

Ishveen Anand: really passionate about. It really helps when you know we'll get athletes dropped by the office and they're like we love you guys this is amazing or 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 then third is being like having this like today vision and tomorrow vision, right? So we're building a platform for people who

06:23 - 06:44

Ishveen Anand: haven't told us that they necessarily need it and we're constantly thinking about okay Well, what else do they need? 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 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.

06:44 - 07:06

Gresham Harkless: 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 the industry is going. This is what the 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. Yeah. 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

07:06 - 07:12

Gresham Harkless: 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.

07:12 - 07:43

Ishveen Anand: So I'd say, let's do a learning 1. And let's do like a non-learning 1. So for learning, so your books and whatever else, I'm obsessed with reading different books. But 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 yeah, like what's it great for? And then, you know, what do I

07:43 - 08:07

Ishveen Anand: 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, you know, maybe 7 months ago when I was hiring wasn't my biggest problem, it's pointless, right? You skim through it, you might write notes, but by the time you get to it, you've forgotten. And so I'd say a big thing in today's time when you can Google anything right at that point is really focus on not like, you know, people often send me articles and I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not going to

08:07 - 08:34

Ishveen Anand: 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, what I'm focused on. So that's a learning thing in terms of just being productivity wise, use if you, I think most people are on Gmail or whatever your client, your email client is. There are so many epic plugins today, like 3 extensions that you can plug in that just make your life easier. And so I use things to find emails really quickly. I use

08:34 - 09:01

Ishveen Anand: 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 calendar and you know, whatever else. And so 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 the virtual version of your life. So be super productive and research, what are the top 10 extensions for Gmail and see if any of those are relevant to what you would want.

09:01 - 09:21

Gresham Harkless: 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 know, you have so much information there. And then 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 of time.

09:21 - 09:27

Ishveen Anand: Absolutely. I spend a lot of time being like, is there a way to do X? And then seeing what comes out.

09:27 - 09:43

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Gmail and Google. So definitely, definitely some great CEO hacks. And you might've already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call now a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

09:44 - 10:12

Ishveen Anand: I'd say be more aggressive at 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 and then when you figure it out you didn't move fast enough and so for us I if I could go back I probably would have been like at that point be more aggressive. And yeah, 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 3 months. You should just bounce back right on

10:12 - 10:18

Ishveen Anand: tomorrow rather than like having to think about it and whatever else. Yeah. So probably be more aggressive.

10:18 - 10:31

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, that makes sense. It's kind of like that, and correct me if I'm wrong, that concept of like kind of failing fast, because if you fail fast, then you're able to kind of redirect yourself after the fact, and you're not thinking about, oh, what did I do? What should I have done? And then you're wasting another 3 months sometimes.

10:31 - 10:56

Ishveen Anand: Well, I think you can fail fast, but the point being is that you should then try again much quicker. You should be constantly thinking about, okay, growth, growth, growth, rather than just like stability and, and I think there's a fact of really fine balanced. But for me, when I think about, I mean, you know, maybe it's because I'm female and British or whatever else, like probably not being aggressive enough in the earlier stages.

10:57 - 11:09

Gresham Harkless: 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.

11:09 - 11:10

Ishveen Anand: Yeah, yeah.

11:10 - 11:22

Gresham Harkless: That makes sense. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition for what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Ishvin, I want to ask you what does being a CEO means to you?

11:22 - 11:28

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

11:28 - 11:41

Gresham Harkless: Awesome. That makes perfect sense. And yeah, it puts everything in perspective. So, Ichfin, 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 a hold of you.

11:41 - 12:07

Ishveen Anand: Yeah. Use athletes for your marketing schemes and do it through open sponsorship, the best way to connect with athletes. And 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, CEOs have their own different challenges. So yeah, if there's anything you ever want to share with me or pick my brain and get in touch, but otherwise spread the good word of what we're doing at OpenSponsorship.

12:07 - 12:19

Gresham Harkless: 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.

12:19 - 12:21

Ishveen Anand: Awesome. You too, Gresham. Thanks so much.

12:22 - 12:50

Intro: Thank you for listening to the I am CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at imceo.co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blues16media.com. This has been the I Am CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.