A founder outlines how to scale a nose strip company by signing athlete ambassadors like UFC fighters and NFL players. You either pay them cash upfront, like Nike did with LeBron, or offer equity in future profits. The brand has to be bigger than any one person's fanbase.
If I wanted to build a nose strip company, what I would do is beforehand I would go to 5 UFC fighters, my favorite NFL players, and be like, when we launch this brand, I want you all in the picture with me and I'll be on the side. And this is our brand because I want the brand to be bigger than anybody. I don't want it to be about a subset of Alex. I want this to be something much bigger because then it's not just Alex fans, it's any of these guys fans. And so then you start that way. That being said, to do that, you either need money to get those guys to do it. Well, really, you just need money because otherwise you have to, you know, convince that you're going to slice the pie 10 ways and then it's like, well, now what? You know what I mean? It's like the business only has this much to work with and everybody else is getting spiffed. This is how big brands do it. LeBron didn't get, I mean, to my knowledge, doesn't have shares of Nike. He just got $1 billion in cash.
