How Kaiden Got 5 D1 Offers (Full Interview)

All right, well, yeah, so I'm here with, with Richard. I really appreciate taking time to hop on here. I guess you want to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about, you know, how you got started with us.

Well, I'm Richard Confer. Obviously I followed you on Instagram and listened to your advice. My grandson played football at IMG for a couple years and dealing with, with recruiting, not knowing how to handle it and how to pursue things. I learned a lot by listening to you. And I only had wished I had reached out sooner because there's a lot of missing elements that affected our ability to get Caden more well known. But that's, that's why I'm a grandpa retired and I spent two years recruited, you know, helping my grandson get recruited to play college football.

Yeah, 100. No, I'm, I'm glad we, we got to work together. Obviously you worked more closely with Luke, but I still got to, to be in there and have some good conversations as well. I guess tell everyone about like kind of the result that you guys got, what the outcome was, how, how, how things finished up.

Well, what one of the big obstacles was was Caden's interaction with coaches and you know, being a teenager, he had a reluctancy to listen to Richard grandpa. So my thought was that he might listen to yourself and Luke more because we didn't maintain those relationships. And what I learned from you guys, most importantly was by following you how important obtaining relationships and once you had a maintaining relationships were for the recruiting process. So that's where we struggled. I might be getting off topic a little bit. That's where we struggled. I, again, I had mentioned it earlier. I wish we would have been able to find you sooner, but you came at a time where you helped me help Kaden, and I think you also helped Kaden begin to engage in some conversations. The biggest help was cleaning up his ex account. And between you and Luke, posting film properly, getting him noticed, weekly tagging coaches and programs, all of that you guys taught me. And I think by the end of it we had a pretty good ex account.

So, yeah, you're becoming quite the expert at that point. Yeah, 100%. So, yeah, you touched on some of the things, you know, the social media obviously was a big aspect. The maintaining the relationships is a big aspect, I guess. Was there any, like, critical points in the recruiting process that you felt like, you know, really, really where like we helped out with? I know you touched on some of them right there, but was there anything specific that you felt like you really gain some Knowledge from or gain some good feedback from or something you felt like was helpful?

Well, X was very helpful. Both you guys taught me how to operate on X, which it was a platform I wasn't familiar with and didn't use regularly. So it was challenging to me. Neither Luke or yourself hesitated to help me. And, you know, at the point in time where we became engaged was critical to Kate. We were in a time crunch, you know, as you know, Kaden was hit hurt in the spring and we lost contacts and relationships that we had established because he wasn't able to go to the camps and the valuable camps he was invited to. So where you guys came in was we were able to hit a lot more universities programs quicker with the emailing with the XDA dms, getting the video posted, the tagging, it took about three weeks. And then after about three, four weeks, we started getting a lot more engagement. You know, Kaden had maybe seven or eight posts prior to us getting involved with you. And then it turned out that we were posting regularly, sometimes twice a week. We. We began a lot of conversations with a lot of programs as a direct result of your guys's marketing skills.

Yeah, appreciate that a ton. And to be fair, you guys were very proactive. I know you were. You were getting pretty active. And Caden was obviously able to do some things as well, which was all very helpful and obviously performed very well in the field as well, which was extremely helpful to make up for some of that stuff that happened across junior year, which of course is a big part of it as well. But no, that. That again, working with you guys was a blast. And you guys were very aggressive and proactive with that, which. Which led to a lot of those actions as well. But obviously, yeah, like, you touched on, you know, putting himself out there, putting the X post out there. I mean, there are some days, you said twice a week. I remember there was probably a day or two where you guys would post like twice a day. Just really getting relentless with it. So that was. That was very awesome to see and see the results associated with that as well.

Thank you.

Yeah. And then I guess with that, you know, obviously we. We work together. We, you know, we beefed up the social media. We started sending out some messages to the coaches. Obviously that led to some engagement, I guess. What kind of. What happened in terms of. You mind telling everybody what happened in terms of interest offers just some of the outcomes that happened with that?

Well, we. We started as a result of your marketing and, and for lack of better terms, the education you gave me For X, we developed a lot more relationships. What I noticed right away is we started getting quite a bit of Division 2 offers, Division 2 interest, and there was some offers that came out of schools that surprised me most the cadence offers come from former NFL players that saw him play in his film. So he was fortunate in that. And then it's ironic that that's where a lot of them come from. But we've seen a lot of activity now. We, it did help with engagement with some of the FBS and FCS schools as well. I think what ended up happening and it, it's, I think in some of your Instagrams you talk about it without the camps, the injury in the spring and limited exposure and relationships. Our FBS was limited. We. But Kaden wanted to play D1 football so we kept pushing that and I think by the end of it, you know, I think we ended up with four or five fully committable D1 offers. You know, I think FCS, which based on our whole scenario we were grateful for and three of the four were pretty much full scholarships. So we came through. What I threw in your guys lap was what less than we had three, four months. And we did a lot in three, four months. So my encouragement is people start doing this early, learn how to do Twitter, engage with you guys early freshman year, maybe even sooner. I don't, you know, I don't, I personally don't believe, you know, we, we can recruit eight graders but start developing the Twitter or X, start developing the X, getting the profiles out there. When they start playing freshman football, nobody may pay attention, but at least you get in the habit of doing that and that creates, hey, I seen this kid somewhere before. And I think that's significant. You know, not everybody's fortunate enough to go, you know, go to regional rivals and be ranked and you know, that's a whole other subject. We'll just stay out of the star ranking spectrum. I don't even, I don't know, I

guess, I guess for. Well, let me ask this question. I guess.

Okay.

Did, did Caden. I mean obviously Kaden got multiple FCs committable offers. I think that if, you know, you know, obviously there's what if scenarios but you know, FBS was on the table at some points, obviously some serious interest to some level. Did Caden at any point get any stars, get any rankings, anything to that extent?

No, we, we, we got, we got a big write up from a recruiting entity that looked like they did national attention which basically said, I think it was six star. They were watching Kaden we started getting Florida prep attention, but we never got any formal star rankings. And all we would have had to done in cadence situation based on what I see, size, film ability, combine skills drills, is if he would had a time, you know, anywhere from a 44 to a 4 8, he would had stars. And that's where we were with it. But the Florida prep or excuse me, not for prep, this I think was six star put out a big thing that Kaden was one of the most under evaluated safeties, not just in Florida, in the country. So that he slipped under the radar. And some of it, you know, we'll never know was it a good thing or bad thing? You know, we were being heavily recruited by usf, talking to them. We had a relationship. And their head coach, l, you know, we went over and spent two days at Coastal Carolina. Their head coach got fired. So, you know, we're up at bsu. We have what, seven former NFL players as coaches. They have attention and publicity. It's smaller, you know, for some reason I believe that's where we're supposed to be. As a direct result of working with you, we did get a lot of attention. We had schools pop in like Presbyterian College, Gannon, Missouri S&T, you know, all of them, if you look at it was top notch. And I would encourage people, if you can go somewhere and you say it too, Trenton, you can go somewhere where you're going to get field time, Go play there, go get the experience, go play, get the film. I don't, you know, the portal, we'll talk about that again. But go get the field time, go get the experience, go play football. Then if you're good enough, you can go elsewhere. But just everybody gets caught up. And a lot of your stuff says this on D1, go play football. And that's ultimately what we decided to do. We took the best offer that we could where we felt we would get the most exposure. I mean, we're coming to play USF on the 19th of September in Tampa Bay Stadium. Ironically, Tim back to coast Coastal Carolina is the offensive coordinator at usf. We like Kate. So, you know, there it all comes full circle. So you got to go play football ultimately. But yeah, the, the stars and all that, you know, if you can get them, great. Makes your journey much easier. People want to sign the stars. I don't know what all the hoopla is in the background, who gets paid, what, but you know, that's part of it. Trent.

No, I do know. I, yeah, I do know.

You know, yeah, I don't Know how much you want me to touch on this?

No, no. Yeah, Just. Just wanted to. Just wanted to make the point of like, you know, people often think, hey, you need stars and rankings to go Division 1. It helps.

You touched on it. Kaden was very good. Kaden's a very, very, very solid, good football player. He has the size. He's a prototypical big safety for NFL size. He's one of the 10 biggest safeties in college football right now, so. So he had all that going for him or made our journey a little tougher not having the stars for sure. But if you do stuff marketing wise, you build relationships, someone that knows football is going to find you, but you got to get in front of.

Absolutely. Absolutely. No. Yeah, exactly what I would say too. It just comes down to. Doesn't come down to some random guy that writes some article or publishes the stars that come back to the college coach evaluating you and going, hey, this is the guy that we want to take at the end of the day. So. No, exactly. Hit on it. On it right there. So I guess going back to the beginning, obviously you guys, you know, started working with us and I guess you, you know, you found me through Instagram. I know you. You booked in a call with us, I guess. What was that kind of process? Like, what, what made you decide, hey, this is something that we're going to do? I know it can be. I'm always, you know, I'm always, like, very amazed by the families that come and work with us because it can be a little bit of a jump in faith when you look at, you know, obviously there's, you know, some bad actors out there, I guess. What was that process? Like, what, what made you decide, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and do this?

Well, our, our experience started with other processes. So I knew my call with you guys went well. And what you presented to me was what I felt we needed to fill the whole thing. For lack of better terms. It brought the whole process together. You were the missing piece, and I needed you guys to help Kaden develop relationships, maintain relationships. I had hoped he'd listen to you both. I needed you guys to help me with the ex. And the, the biggest thing, the biggest thing is your character. I knew you were a class hat. I knew you cared. I could tell you wanted to help these kids. There was something I. I listened to your tapes, but there was something in the way you went about your business that I knew you cared whether these kids get offers and get to go play college football. So that's ultimately why we chose. You got it. Oh, yeah.

I appreciate that. I mean, I was obviously in that. I was in that position. I was in a tough position and, you know, it's. I get it. So, no, I appreciate it a ton and I'm glad we were able to help you guys out, I guess. What would you say to any families that may be on the fence about joining or thinking about maybe working with us? Is there any kind of message you would have to them?

Don't wait. I don't. I don't believe, based on what all I've seen, if you, if somebody has someone that can put out and help with a little bit of the marketing and design piece and with your guys's expertise with Twitter X. I keep wanting to go say Twitter X and that social media, the dms, the emails, I don't think they need anyone else. But I didn't learn that right off the rip. It took me to go through the other processes. So if, you know, I don't. People have their own journeys. But my journey was if I would have had some help with some marketing materials and designs and putting out the. All the hoopla to gain attention. But basically what you got to get out there is to film, build relationships, go to camps where you're just not paying money to go to camps and keep sending stuff out. It can't be just once. Nobody's. You may get lucky, but any marketing campaign, you know, from my business background, takes six to eight weeks and you got to stay on top of it. And then if you get attention, you can't just assume it's going to stay there. You got to keep encouraging that attention. But if I were to do this all over again, I'd have hired you guys three years ago and it would have been much easier process, even with the hurdles and obstacles we had. Yeah, but that's me looking back at things. So, I mean, I. I don't do many recommendations. I don't praise people for no reason. But you guys are a class act and I. I hope more people come to you guys to help with their kids because you. You genuinely have a good heart and you care.

Appreciate that. Time.

No.

Means a lot. Means a lot to us for sure. Anything else you want to say? Any other words of advice? Any other. Any other stuff that you want to hit on?

I mean, again, I. People need to kind of. And I don't know if you've touched on some of this. You know, you get a lot of mass mailings. If it's something that says you can unsubscribe to it's not really invites. So yeah, if you get some hat, you know, handwritten stuff or some emails that are real emails with somebody's name get on them. But you know, if you get a bunch of camp invites that say unsubscribe, Adam, you know, you need to develop relationships before you travel 400 miles, spend 300 bucks to go to that camp, be strategic with it, get on x, get some help, all you guys and go play college football.

Awesome. No, I appreciate it. Time, Richard. If you guys are watching this and you're thinking about working with us, go ahead and wherever you're at you can book a call with us or maybe you already booked a call and we're going to be seeing you soon so hopefully I'll get to meet you soon. And again, Richard, appreciate the time.

No problem. Thank you.

Cool, Cool.