We take a look at some of our recent content on the podcast Tom Richardson and I do at Columbia each week, and Noah Zaret is good enough to highlight for us. Two recent listens concern the college space, with two super smart entrepreneurs talking everything from netal health to NIL and building a business.
First up:
Patricia Deldin On College Athlete Mental Health & Mood Lifters
With Patricia’s expertise in the field of mental health and her personal background as an ex-college athlete, Patricia started Mood Lifters. Mood Lifters is a mental health program that organizes member groups that are led by peer leaders. Specializing in the mental health of college athletes, Mood Lifters has support groups consisting of college athletes, led by (ex-)college athletes who endured all the trials and tribulations themselves. Camille Davre is such a peer leader at Mood Lifters. She joins this podcast to talk about her role as a peer leader and college athlete, and how college athletes’ mental health issues are best understood by other college athletes. In this episode, we take a deep dive into all aspects of the mental health of (college) athletes.
- Patricia started Mood Lifters, a mental health program that organizes member groups that are led by peer leaders.
- Mood Lifters was built out of frustration; says that there was not enough impact in the field of mental health for college athletes
- Patricia says that she used many aspects of Weight Watchers (a program that helped her tremendously) and implemented them into Mood Lifters in terms of mental health context
- She says that there is a biological, psychological, and social component of mental illness
- Most treatments only treat one of those
- Her goal was to create a program that addressed all of those
- 15 week program, 3 weeks covering each topic (biology, thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and relationships)
– If you were/are not a college athlete, you cannot understand the pressure that college athletes endure
– she says it’s a unique and different type of pressure
– The vast majority of these mental health apps are not scientific evidence-based
– Most provide false hope
–She created Mood Lifters because she wanted a program that was affordable, available, accessible, and acceptable
– Mood Lifters is about PEOPLE, more meaningful than a regular mental health app on your phone
– Mood Lifters has around 1500 people, around 120 groups, and 40-60 trained leaders
– Mood Lifters is in the process of offering a class for undergraduates at the University of Michigan
– Listen to the whole episode here.
Jim Cavale On Athlete Brand Building & Managing NIL Business Opportunities
Jim Cavale, CEO and Founder of INFLCR and Chief Innovation Officer at Teamworks Inc. INFLCR is an athlete brand-building and NIL Business Management app used by over 250 institutions. A student-athlete and now a serial entrepreneur, Jim talks about how at INFLCR, they help student-athletes build their brands on social media by delivering content and personalized engagement metrics. He discusses INFLCR’s ability to allow institutions to customize and manage their NIL reporting while providing approved businesses, collectives, and individuals a customized portal to communicate with student-athletes and fulfill transactions. Additionally, Jim describes how they offer tools to student-athletes to access third-party marketplaces through their verified exchange platform. Jim discusses the importance of three critical pillars, namely performance, influence, and exposure, in helping student-athletes navigate and maximize their NIL opportunities. He also shares his interesting insight into the potential risks of the NIL, pointing out the downsides of treating athletes as employees and its negative impact on their mental health. Finally, Jim shares some invaluable wisdom on balancing life as an entrepreneur and how he continues to stay informed to generate innovative ideas.
Some things to listen for…
- The app gives student-athletes the opportunity to promote their own personal brand and get noticed
- There are three categories where Athletic Directors must invest
- Building the brand of athletes
- Must have a system for athletes to connect and process payments with whoever wants to work with them (that is where INFLCR comes into play)
- Must have on-campus support
– Categories of valuation for a student-athlete
-Performance (5 star recruiting rating, performance on the field, stats on the field)
– Influence (social media following, amount of engagement when one posts, how often one posts)
– Exposure (what school, conference, city one plays for)
– The exposure aspect of an athlete on social media based on their popularity/following and who they play for is vital…he also points out that a sport like gymnastics in the SEC can generate 10x the opportunity of other sports…and that women’s sports with strong loyal, niche followings are the place to look for ROI…
The whole episode can be heard here.
Enjoy the listening and learning!
