IAM1289- CEO Creates a Brand Tech Platform for Amateur Sports Team

Dom is the founder and CEO of CXSports, a technology platform that helps amateur and semi-professional sports teams develop and monetize their brand and media assets. CXSports is wholly owned by ChallengerX, a UK-based company that is preparing for a public listing.

A serial entrepreneur with multiple startup exits under his belt, Dom created the first online art auction back in March 1996. The platform was acquired by one of the largest auction sites in the world five months later. Dom then created Powerclick, a digital marketing agency with 500+ advertisers as clients.

• CEO Story: Dom started early in the digital marketing space building and selling websites. A lot of reinventions along the way but the mainstay was the client acquisition while regearing their toolbox benefiting the amateur sports team and sports athletes.
• Business Service: Driving incremental revenue to teams and athletes via the CXSports platform.
• Secret Sauce: Write your own storyline and craft what really makes you different. “What is deeply meaningful to your brand, what makes you stand out from everybody else, what makes you unique”
• CEO Hack: Find your unique value proposition for you or your team and make that ‘Aha’ moment. It is an emotional decision that you have to feel as your identity.
• CEO Nugget: The ability to say no. How you rate people, projects, and ideas. Rating people from a scale of 0-10, start with 0, and progress as they build up. So you won’t be disappointed.
• CEO Defined: Someone who never gives up, who persists all the way through to success no matter how many failures he comes across. In whatever he does, he always keeps his eyes on the price. The ultimate problem solver.

Website: cxsports.io

LinkedIn: @uniqorn

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Transcription

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00:45 – Intro 

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, start-ups, 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.

01:12 – Gresham Harkless 

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dom Einhorn of CXSports. Dom, it's great to have you on the show.

01:21 – Dom Einhorn 

Thanks for having me on the show. My pleasure.

01:23 – Gresham Harkless 

Yes. Definitely a pleasure, to say the very least. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about all the awesome things that Dom is doing so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

Dom is the founder and CEO of CXSports, a technology platform that helps amateur and semi-professional sports teams develop and monetize their brand and media assets.

CXSports is wholly owned by ChallengerX, a UK-based company that is preparing for public listening.

A serial entrepreneur with multiple start-up exits under his belt, Dom created the first online art auction back in March of 1996, and the platform was acquired by one of the largest auction sites in the world five months later.

Dom then created PowerClick, a digital marketing agency with 500+ advertisers as clients. So, Dom, super excited to hear about all the awesome things that you're working on and you've been able to do.

Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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02:12 – Dom Einhorn 

I was born ready. Let's go.

02:13 – Gresham Harkless 

Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock, hear a little bit more about how you got started, and what I like to call your CEO story.

02:21 – Dom Einhorn 

Yeah. Well, I go way back then to the very early innings of the digital space and the Internet. I was born and raised in France, half French, half German. Moved to the US at the tender age of 23 in 1993.

Back then, the internet was called the information superhighway, for those of you who are old enough to remember those terms.

And that's when I got started in the digital marketing space, initially, building websites and selling them to a B2B client-based. Again, at a time when people didn't know what a website was. So in this sense, it was like selling ice to Eskimos.

But we realized very early on that, we came up with a rule, the rule of one out of 37, because it took us thirty-seven calls and real pitches to actually sell a website at that point in time. The idea was to get to the thirty-seven, number 37, as quickly as painlessly as possible because that would mean another sale.

Fast forward 28 years later, obviously, the world has changed quite a bit, and we've gone through a lot of different reinventions of who we are and what we do along the way. But one mainstay has always been impact and, building impactful campaigns and having a common denominator, that common denominator probably being investor acquisition along the way, client acquisition on behalf of our clients.

And, in more recent years, obviously, we've regeared our toolbox to the benefit of the sports industry as a whole, and more specifically, as you mentioned early on in the call, towards the benefit of amateur teams, sports teams, as well as amateur athletes with a hard focus on monetization.

In other words, what we do, is unlike a lot of other companies because in the sports tech field, obviously, there are a lot of operators, thousands of operators. We have developed a value proposition that is 100% based on driving incremental revenue to teams and athletes via the CXSports platform.

You had mentioned, that it is wholly owned by ChallengerX, which is true, and that we intended to publicly list what has actually happened the day before Christmas. Nice. We're now officially a public company in the UK, soon to be dual-listed in Germany as well as in the US.

We're working on the process as well, but we are, as of December 23^rd, a public entity listed in London on the Aquis Exchange, probably in Frankfurt within the next two weeks sometime, and then in the US within the next eight to nine weeks.

But, you know, what's been interesting in the journey, what I call the twenty-eight-year journey now between 1993 and, 2021, now 2022, has been, to see that a lot of things obviously have changed, and it's very difficult to be a trend chaser because none of us have a crystal ball that allows us to predict the future.

So, what we tend to do is focus on what does not change. That's a lot more predictable than what does change. It's surprising to me that most, companies and individuals always, try to change and chase a trend. They don't know where which direction the wind is blowing, when in fact, it's a lot easier to just figure out what hasn't changed.

So let's take an example. Let's take Amazon. Yes. Obviously, they've changed quite a bit since 1995 when they first launched. They're no longer selling, books and only books. They're selling everything known to mankind, but they're still selling, and they're still selling to a relatively predictable customer who is expecting a certain level of service that's been improving along the way, is expecting a wide range of options and selections when they actually go shop.

Obviously, he's expecting quality, ratings when they go to, when they use, for example, Prime Video today. You know, you see IMDB ratings, for example. Like, personally, if a movie is lower than 6.5/10, I won't even touch it because my peers have told me that they didn't really appreciate that movie, and I don't like wasting my time.

So I'm not gonna sit down and initiate a stream that, will be disappointing to me. Not that it's foolproof, but it gives me a good indication. So I think those are some of the things that, will never change. People have expectations that need to be met.

A customer, a client has a certain level of expectations that need to be met or exceeded. In our scenario, in our business, we've realized, very, very quickly that, in the sports business, you have on one side professional teams that are usually professionally managed.

And then on the other side, you have a gap between them and the semi-professional and the amateur teams where you and I could sit down right now and look at a hundred logos of a hundred amateur teams, and we would instantly know that our amateur just by looking at the logo.

That is a major, major problem. If we could only solve that problem with CXSports, it's a multi-billion dollar problem. In other words, if you run a small baseball team, basketball team, hockey team, or whatever it is, you need means to survive and develop your little brand.

Ideally, get better equipment, get better staff, better players, and all that costs money. But if you're starting with a ten-yard, twenty-yard penalty, a bad logo, and you're approaching a decent-sized sponsor in the hopes that they will actually financially support your team, very often for them, it's not about the money, right?

It may be if the sum that you're asking from them is extravagant. But if it's a reasonable sum, the first thing they will look at is to see if the relationship makes sense. But if your logo, your image, if your brand is pulling them down, they will not take that risk for branding reasons, not for monetary reasons.

So, usually, the first thing we advise to, teams again, we took over our local rugby team a little less than two years ago here in Sala Rugby, which was founded in 1903. So it's a 118-year-old team, and the logo had been revisited, I believe, in the late 50s, or early 60s.

The local team emblem is a Salamander. And when I looked at the logo, I couldn't tell whether it was a freshwater eel or a grass snake, right? So, clearly, there was a disconnect there, for people and for sponsors when you explain to them, well, our emblem is a Salamander. Why is it really Salamander? It looks more like a snake, Right?

Well, it's not a snake, and then you're wasting your time. And, in fact, it becomes a major obstacle in getting to where you need to be. So everything starts with most things, right? And no matter what it is that you're selling, even if you're a solo practitioner, if you're a person, an athlete, a singer, a performer, you're a brand at the end of the day, right?

And that brand either has a positive or a negative connotation, or it's just plain vanilla, okay? But in order to break through, you need to be different. That's the key term. If you're not different, you're not standing out from the crowd.

I take a perfect example, Dennis Rodman, who, by the way, used to be one of my clients. So Dennis Rodman clearly stood out, right? When everybody was bald or had black hair, he had blue, pink, white, yellow, any hair you could clearly, people watch the game. Like, oh, this is Dennis Rodman, right?

Everyone needs to develop a hook, whether it's a team or an individual. We all have something deeply meaningful inside of us that makes us unique and authentic. That's the voice that we need to express as marketers. And that's something that is a mainstay going back to the original discussion we had, but it hasn't changed.

None of that has changed. People still react to storytelling. That's the difference between a great movie, an average movie, and a bad movie, right?

10:22 – Gresham Harkless 

That makes a lot of sense. And do you feel like, because I was gonna ask you for your secret sauce, and it might be actually that, which it could be for yourself, the organization, or a combination of both?

10:31 – Dom Einhorn 

The first thing you need to do is write your own storyline and really craft what makes you different, knowing that if you're staying within the mold of everybody else, you're dead. Nobody is interested in something average or below average.

So you have to first and foremost, before you go out and make a splash, before you go out and secure a million followers on social media, you have to know what your message is. What is deeply meaningful to you, to your brand? What makes you stand out from everybody else? What makes you unique?

And once you really, feel that and you feel it in your gut, and it's a very emotional thing, this is me. Clearly, I can live with that. I don't have to play an act. I don't have to be an actor. It has to be truly representative of who you are and what you stand for.

Only at that point can you really go out and start communicating. So someone from the outside with a fresh perspective needs to come in and say, oh, I get it. Right? Let me is this who you really want to be?

Is this how you're currently positioning yourself? And then by way of coffee discussion, you find out what that unique value proposition is, and you get a moment.

When you have the moment, you realize right away because the team manager, the president on the other side, or the athlete is gonna say, oh my god. Never looked at it myself this way. I get it now.

This is truly me. I can run with that message, but you first have to get to that gut instinct, okay?

It's an emotional decision. It's not an intellectual decision. You feel it once you actually put it in the right words, and that's part of the process. Only at that time does it make sense to then reverberate that message and get it out to the masses because you really feel good. It's hitting the right court.

12:09 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah. That makes so much sense and that's so powerful. What would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice.

It might be something that you mentioned to us that you would tell your your favorite client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:25 – Dom Einhorn 

The biggest nugget probably is just from my personal experience. The ability to say no is one thing. And closely related to that is how you rate people, projects, and ideas. When I was my younger self, when I was half my age, when I was twenty-five, I was rating it.

I had a discussion with my dad who is a very wise old man today. He's eighty-two years old.

And he told me one day and sat me down. He said you're doing the right thing and wrong thing at the same time. And I'm rolling my eyes. Okay. What is it, Dad? He said, well, we're both rating people on a scale of 0 to 10.

However, you're starting everybody off at ten. I start everybody off at zero. You're setting yourself up for disappointment. I will I am never disappointed. I only have good news because I'm not expecting anything from anyone, and they're just slowly climbing up the ladder if they're actually doing the right thing.

I was like, okay. I can take that. That's a nugget that as I grew older year after year, zero to ten, just start off at zero and you cannot be disappointed.

13:26 – Gresham Harkless 

Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate you so much for sharing that. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

We're hoping to have different quotes, and unquote CEOs on the show. So, Dom, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:38 – Dom Einhorn 

We might sign like a platitude. The definition of a CEO is someone who never gives up, and who persists all the way through to success no matter how many failures he comes across. And in whatever he does, he always keeps his eye on the prize.

And when I say the prize doesn't necessarily mean a monetary prize, it's the overall objective.

I think money comes by way of fulfilling an obligation to the people who are buying from you.

A CEO is the ultimate problem solver. Again, if I compare how easy it is and how cheap it is today in 2022 to start a business versus 1993, let alone before, come on. You have no excuse not to focus on something that's really important to you.

Figure out the first question you should ask yourself is, again, going back to authenticity and writing your own storyline, how do you wanna be remembered? So, if you wanna be remembered as someone who invented the solution to cancer, any type of cancer, okay, focus on that.

If you want to be remembered as someone who brought enjoyment to kids for via music or arts, focus on that. That's a huge problem as well, right? Don't even have problems. We have plenty.

14:51 – Gresham Harkless 

Dom, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, appreciate all the insight knowledge, and impact that you're having as well.

What I want us to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional.

I just wanted to let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best people can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:08 – Dom Einhorn 

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the show. I think I love the title, by the way, of the show, I AM CEO, because we are all CEO, even if it's only of our own lives, right? It takes the same approach to managing our own lives, and our own families as it takes to actually run a business.

Be that father, be that mother figure, be that uncle, be that aunt, the big brother, big sister, etcetera, etcetera. It is super important, not only for them but for yourself. So I think those are some very, very important lessons that we can take away.

And that is why great fathers, great mothers, great uncles, etcetera, etcetera, usually make great CEOs. As far as I'm concerned, you can find me on LinkedIn, Dom Einhorn, D- O-M.

My last name Einhorn, E-I-N-H-O-R-N. It means unicorn in German, hence, the UNICORN Incubator, which I'm running here in Southwest France. LinkedIn is the best way to get a hold of me. CXSports.io.

If you have a team or if you're an athlete, you're looking for incremental ways to monetize the team, or you're influenced as an athlete, feel free to reach out. We've developed a number of very simple modules that are free, so we're not charging you anything to get started with us. We're gonna help we're here to help you make you succeed.

16:24 – Gresham Harkless 

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Dom, for all the awesome things that you're doing. We're definitely gonna have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you and connect with you.

Thank you so much for reminding us of that, for of course, doing that in your life as well too, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:39 – Dom Einhorn 

Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure.

16:41 – Outro 

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 I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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