Mention the name Vince Lombardi and images of a hard-nosed, demanding and driven football coach with a distinct gap between his front teeth, come to mind. Add to that, the Green Bay Packers, which he made famous worldwide, multiple national football championships and the same name on a trophy that now bears the name, and…
Tag Archives | NFL
5 NFL Twitter Accounts I’m Thankful For
Ah, Thanksgiving… Family. Turkey. Beer. Pumpkin pie. And football. For me, Thanksgiving is a day to spend with people I love, and to take a step back to think about all the things I have to be thankful for. What are you thankful for? At the top of my list are good health, happiness, family,…
Interview with Retired NFL Player Levar Fisher on Business and Family
Levar Fisher is a retired NFL player for the Arizona Cardinals and New Orleans Saints. He now travels the country as a motivational speaker for youth, business, churches, and sports venues. While working with Levar and his wife Jacinta as their copywriter, I have observed how beautifully supportive they are of each other and how…
Top 5 ‘Back to Business’ Basics
Remember the Rocky III movie in 1982 when Rocky goes back to Apollo Creed’s “old” gym to train for the big fight with Clubber Lang? Of course you do. Apollo takes Rocky back to basics to polish his fighting style and prepare him for the “big” match in which he knocks Clubber out in the third round.
The same thing happens in the NFL. The hours of mindless, but necessary, stretching, drills, and weight training. The team meetings pouring over playbooks. Sports massages and physical therapy. These are the basics that teams and their players positively need to do regularly to prepare for the “big” game. It’s in the crucible of basics that we poise ourselves for victory.
If the fictitious Rocky Balboa, and the NFL, benefit from the basics, then as business owners and entrepreneurs, we absolutely need to do the same.
Here are my top 5 ‘Back to Business’ tips that will take you back to basics and will set the tone for future success:
Run Your Business Using Referee Signals
They are referred to as zebras but their ‘real’ title is official or referee. They stand right in the middle of the chaos and decide when someone breaks the rules, goes out of bounds, or catches the ball.
Referees all follow the same basic signals which tell us what went wrong or right. As entrepreneurs, we can learn how referee’s signals can help us in our businesses. The various signals let us know when something has gone wrong, when we’re making progress, and when we’ve made a touchdown.
Crowd Noise Signal
Are you spending too much time on non-business related conversations or out on errands when you should be working? Do you spend half your day opening, reading, and responding to emails? Excessive crowd noise in a game creates a virtually impossible situation for the visiting offense to communicate. It may be time to hush the crowd noise in your home office by focusing on tasks at hand first. This same signal can also mean dead ball. When you foolishly waste your most productive time doing non-productive tasks, it can mean a dead ball as far as your time. Quiet crowd noise and focus on your priority list.
How the Carolina Panthers Use Social Media
The Carolina Panthers are challenging their fans to compete in the ‘Panthers Purrsuit’ social media contest, the first of its kind in the NFL, on Saturday, October 23.
Fans will pair up into teams of two and compete against other fan teams in an all day “Amazing Race” style contest which will take place at locations throughout greater Charlotte. The Purrsuit begins at Bank of America Stadium at noon. Teams will then follow a series of clues and instructions and complete challenges at locations throughout the day.
Secrets to Working with Pro Athlete Clients
In my work with current and retired pro athletes, I’ve made a few discoveries along the way. Basically, working with pro athletes, specifically NFL athletes, requires the same principles and ethics as needed for any other client. If you are currently working with, or have aspirations to work with, pro athletes in any sport, here are a few tips I’ve learned and regularly practice in my own business:
Social Media And The NFL, Plus New Web Show!
I started a new web show. I teamed up with the great crew over at The Pulse Network for a weekly half hour show to give you more content, expert interviews, and insider tips in sports, social media, marketing and more. I’m still in the early stages and updating the format each week, but my…
How Fantasy Sports Unites Fans All Over the World
While sitting in a New York bar watching the New Orleans Saints successfully open the football season last week, it struck me that there is one thing that unites sports fans all over the world. Whether it is the NFL here in the US, rugby league in Australia or the English Premier League (EPL) soccer, today’s sports fans want to be engaged and actively interact with their favorite sports. They satisfy that desire by playing fantasy sports or by getting involved in forecasting weekly results. In Australia we call that tipping. Technology, fast-speed internet access and our increasing use of social media is making this engagement even easier and more fun for the fan.
Missed Opportunity for the NFL on Opening Weekend
As I write this post on Monday afternoon, the day after Opening Sunday (and six hours before kickoff of Monday Night Football), the NFL is being mentioned on Twitter at an extraordinary rate. In the past hour, “NFL” has been tweeted 1,500+ times.
I want to take this as a chance to highlight a missed opportunity for the NFL. In the past four days (Thursday was the first game of the season and yesterday was Opening Sunday), the league has received thousands and thousands of mentions and @replies, yet they’ve failed to respond to a single fan. It’s about time for the league to stop using their account as a news feed. To be fair, the MLB doesn’t do much better, but the NBA and NHL both respond to fans all the time. And you can bet if it were opening day, their feeds would be full of @replies.
Sponsorships Gear Up for New NFL Season
Visa Kicks Off Another Season With NFL Sponsorship
Visa is going into its 15th year of sponsorship with the NFL and has new marketing plans including greater emphasis on local teams.
Visa has become the exclusive payment services sponsor of the Jacksonville Jaguars, Minnesota Vikings, Indianapolis Colts and Tennessee Titans — adding to its roster that already includes the Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers, Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, New Orleans Saints and San Francisco 49ers.
Visa is the preferred card for ticket sales, concessions and merchandise and will have point-of-sale branding online and at all team payment terminals within the stadiums, including concession areas and team shops of 13 NFL teams.
The Recipe for Post-NFL Broke Athletes
The ingredients are simple: Take one talented young athlete. Add one agent, one team owner, dozens of family members not heard from in decades, a few dashes of self-entitlement, several bushels of undisciplined spending habits, one unscrupulous financial advisor, a couple of shakes of bad business investments, and a handful of injuries. Yield: One post-NFL broke athlete.