This is Adam. He turned a school project into a $40 million sports media empire. And he did it by focusing on one thing that most founders neglect. >> That's the one thing that people probably underinvest in that I would certainly overinvest in if you can. >> And by the way, if you don't know, Front Office Sports, it's a sports media company. It's basically like Wall Street Journal, but for the business of sports. People like Mark Cuban, Alexis O'hanian, and a bunch of other fancy sports executives, as well as diehard fans read it to get all the behind-the-scenes information on the business of sports. Last week, we went to Adam's office and he shared two frameworks that he used to grow his company. And I've done thousands of these founder interviews, by the way. And I have never heard these two frameworks before. But first, before we get to those two, let's talk about the number one thing that he used to make everything else possible. Brand. Brand can make you feel bigger. Like, if you do it right, like I think that was our whole thing is people often times will be like, "I thought you guys were so much bigger." And I'm like, "No, no, no. We're 65 people." And they're like, "Oh, I would have thought you were 100 because of the stuff you put out on social and things like that." We want to look and feel and come across as much bigger than we are. >> Adam did two very important things from a brand perspective. The first thing that he did, and this is something that a lot of people ignore, is he made the brand incredibly cohesive and incredibly premium. >> Another entrepreneur told me like he really invested heavy early in design and his sales decks because it's like for us like you have to kind of fake it till you make it. Early on, we always told our team like even if it's not a million-dollar proposal, the deck needs to look like it's a million-dollar proposal because that's the first touch point these people have with us. >> And the second thing that he did was he intentionally associated Front Office Sports with other brands that people already trusted. >> And so I think it's not even just look and feel. I think it's association. When we really started to invest in the editorial, right? Like you look at even font styles like Sarif font versus non Sarah font. And like typically Sarah font is like more associated with editorial. So, how are we integrating that into our graphics and our design to feel more elevated? You look at a Wall Street Journal or a New York Times or whatever it is, their social graphics usually are in Sarah font, right? Because it provides a level of elevation and things like that. So, one really savvy thing that Adam did, and this was before Front Office Sports was a brand name at all. It was just him as a project, is he decided to copy the Forbes 30 under 9030, but for young people in the sports industry who are up and coming. >> So, everyone told me, "Oh, we want more awards for young people. We want more news coverage. We want more digital stuff. all these young people in sports make no money. They work really hard, right? So like what if you did like rising or what if you did something? And I was like, "Oh, rising 25, like 25 people under 25." >> Adam told us in year one, people thought the award was fake. And I think they actually only had 50 applicants. But by year three, Annheiser Bush was a presenting sponsor. >> That was like our first big partnership. It was a six-f figureure deal. I distinctly remember getting it closed and like, "Wow, if I can sell Annheiser Bush on this platform and product, I can sell anyone on this platform and product." But for Adam, brand does not just end in the digital space. It also is where you show up in the real world. >> The reason why we do an executive retreat in the Hamptons is because we want our brand to be associated with the Hamptons, right? We were in Miami for the College Football National Championship and we had like a plane that went around the um the stadium. It was 1,400 bucks and it said college football is big business and it circled the stadium for 2 hours. the amount of like texts, tweets, like all these things that I got, people posting about it. >> $1,400 for a blimp to carry a flyer. Great deal. But for Adam wasn't just a stunt. It was about placing the brand where the audience already was. And because of Adam's obsession with making Front Office Sports, a brand that's elevated, premium, and timeless. They were able to grow the company to a $40 million valuation around $25 million in revenue with less than 100 full-time employees. I told you I was going to show you the two frameworks that Adam is using to grow his company from $25 million all the way up to $100 million a year in revenue. This first framework Adam's been using since he was 23 years old when the company was brand new. And when he told me about it, I became obsessed and I thought about it all night after I did the interview with him. And I actually decided to call him while we were editing this video and make him screen share with me. And when I called him, which was just 30 minutes ago, Adam was actually at the Super Bowl. Adam, what's up? Where you at? Oh my gosh. You're you're in San Francisco right now at the Super Bowl. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, you made a comment to me as I was leaving your uh office. You said basically Jeff Zucker, who's the former CEO of CNN, you said that he was on your board. Jeff said, "I'm in the business of making sure everything is predictable, meaning he wants your operations to be great." You were talking about these meetings that you have every week and every month. What are those meetings and what happens at them and how has that impacted you? We have our weekly, you know, kind of performance pack we call it. And that weekly performance pack is what we review uh myself, Jeff, and Bo on a on a weekly basis. >> Jeff reviews that with you on a weekly basis. >> Yep. And because we are meeting on a weekly basis, we can very quickly see, okay, hey, we're not we're doing this, we're not doing this. You know, we can adjust very quickly. We can pivot very quickly. >> I would think that this would stifle creativity a little bit. If you have to like report on a weekly basis, >> I think it's helped inform creativity, right? And it helps us say, okay, like, hey, maybe we should lean in more on this and lean out more on this. We've probably been operating more like a company that has 500 employees and a company that has 70 employees. These are people who ran arguably some of the biggest media companies in the world who are on our board who deal on a weekly basis. So I, you know, I trust their their judgment on these things. >> Can you actually show me the sheet that you use on the weekly meeting? >> But essentially, like, you know, again, we're breaking it out by quarterly basis here. you kind of see immediate content events and other our different line items. The way we operate the business is three different goals from a revenue standpoint. We have our budget goal. We we take think about this in confidence levels. I saw this from on Twitter. Jason Yeah. He I I saw this. He he manages his business off of three confidence levels. C90, C60, C10, which I thought was really interesting. And like he budgets the business off what they're confident 90% that they're 90% confident that they're going to get. And then he has other things. And so for us, we budgeted off of three numbers. Our budget number is like what we call our C90. Our kind of like stretch but confidence number, we're still positive, is like our C60 number, which is our management target. And then our sales goal is a little bit more elevated than that, which is our C10, uh, which is, you know, kind of a stretch goal, but one that we're like obviously if we if we hit great, we're we're in a great spot. That's kind of how we think about it. >> What's the second sheet? >> And then this is again just a it's a good trend. So for us like we've been tracking all businesses are are different in a way but like we've been able to see over time 24 25 and 26 kind of like our week overweek bookings and like I said earlier this is how we were able to identify early on it's like hey like we have a big rush in the beginning of the year and then towards the you know kind of summer March we actually realize okay like it becomes a little bit more bare because advertising agencies are out all these different you know things. >> Thank you so much for taking away uh from the Super Bowl to talk nerdy business stuff with us. Happy to do it. >> That was good. >> Yeah. >> Now, the last framework that Adam used, it allowed him to triple the size of his company in terms of headcount and in revenue in the last 5 years. And it's all about hiring. Hiring the best people is such vague bad advice. >> Y sometimes people think that means hire the expensive people, but you don't always need the expensive people. Sometimes you need the expensive person. Sometimes you don't need an expensive person. That means you know what does the best mean? >> There's this thing called culture index. Uh, and we'll never hire anyone without it ever again because it basically tells you who the people are um, at work. Before we even hire anyone, you have to fill out like what we call as a C job. And that C job is essentially kind of what is the ideal profile for this person. And then everyone who goes, we don't even interview people until they take the culture index. >> Culture index, it wasn't just a tool for hiring, although it was great for that. It was a tool to show Adam what work he personally should and should not be focused on as the company grew. So this guy who was our culture index administrator is a guy by the name of Mike Stratty. He's in Phoenix. I took the culture index myself before we had signed up and uh and then he came to New York and we went and had whatever it was dinner and he literally sat across from the table from me without ever knowing me, speaking to me, anything. Just purely reading my culture index and told me exactly who I was. And I was like yo what the I was like this is like some black m he's like this is how you operate. This is how you execute. this is what you like to do. This is what And I was just like, "Okay, all right." And I I never met the guy before, never talked to him. It was purely off the test. So, a quick behind thes scenes look at making this video. It's 2:15 on Thursday. I just got back from recording this interview with Adam. I was supposed to be there for 45 minutes, ended up staying for 2 hours because after the interview, I couldn't record this part, but we each talked to each other about stuff that we are facing growing our own companies. And I'm kind of buzzing from it. And the reason I'm making this video is because Hampton, which is my company, that's all we do. We get entrepreneurs who are doing on average $25 million a year in revenue into a room where they can talk about problems that they can only talk about with other entrepreneurs. And so, if you are a founder or CEO of a startup and you're interested, there's a link below you can click to apply. And by the way, Adam White, that's why I met him in Hampton. He's a member. All right, I'll see you next week with some more