Sean Flynn: Using Data to Improve Performance (Full Transcript)
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Ronen Ainbinder
Today's guest of the show is an absolute legend. This man has over 20 years of experience working in different teams and sectors in the sports industry, including the Miami Marlins, Miami FC and the Tampa Bay Lightning. He's a marketing expert. And today he's the CEO of sure athlete, a company that uses science data and technology to take athletes and coaches to a whole new level. It is my honor to host such a talented individual for a halftime snack. Ladies and gentlemen, Sean Flynn!
Sean Flynn
Hello there. Thanks for the energetic and exciting introduction.
Ronen Ainbinder
I'd love to start off by learning about your story and your background. How did you first got involved into the sports business? And so far, what has been the best side and the worst side of the industry?
Sean Flynn
My origin story in sports, goes back to my undergraduate days, I have an undergraduate degree in accounting, which I entered into the the working field as an accountant directly after I finished my studies. And I realized quickly that that wasn't the path I wanted to be on. So I didn't want to be an accountant. So having an accounting degree, I had to figure out. I'm going to make a dramatic switch here. So after working as an accountant for three or four years and trying to figure out what my next step was, I realized I needed to do something that I had a passion to create an opportunity to live a life of doing something that I loved, and that was sports, sports and entertainment really, which is the industry that I like to call it sports. This what I do is sports entertainment. So I decided to go back to graduate school, focus on sports administration, get a degree in a master's degree in sports administration and then kind of carried on my path. That first step out of graduate school was with a soccer league still in existence called the USL, which was in the mid 90s, when I joined, so many years ago, but my first step out of graduate school, my transition into this industry was with the, the USL as the director of marketing and sales for the league office.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's fascinating. And so, what do you think so far is the best side of sports industry? And what's the worst side?
Sean Flynn
Well, the best part, the best side of it is just the juice that you get from being involved in what we do. And that's being involved with live events, which hopefully return at some point, I guess they are limited capacity, as we deal with COVID. But just being involved in the energy and the excitement of sports in general. That's what I have a passion for, as a as an athlete and a sports fan as long as I can remember. So being involved in that and doing that every day is the best part of it being about something that I love. The worst part of it. I don't know if there's anything that's unique to the worst part of it. But the daily trials and tribulations that you go through, when when you're dealing with something as volatile as a lot of the variables that are that we deal with, especially on the business side, or not direct results of what we can handle and what we can choose what we can affect. So when you're dealing with wins and losses, you can't control that you can't control what's on the field, what's on the pitch, what's on the ice with the court, from a business standpoint, you can only control, the things that you have direct responsibility over. So you've got to learn to live with the ups and downs, right?
Ronen Ainbinder
Yeah, I love what you say about finding something that aligns with your passion. I think that that's when you feel that you're not working. You're just having fun with the things that you love. I feel like that's where you the energy comes from as well. So that's fantastic. And I want to ask you, because I'm really curious about SureAthlete. What's the purpose of the company? What pain point it is that you're addressing? What are you trying to solve?
Sean Flynn
SureAthlete is a psychometric and behavioral analytic data analytics platform for for app teams and athletes. It basically allows organizations and athletes to develop themselves based on science, psychometric and behavioral analytics. And it allows organizations to build culture. There are a number of different assessments out in the world and various stages and different aspects of what they do. But SureAthlete is a unique platform that utilizes data, insights, and actions to help make a difference and add value for both individuals and organizations as a whole. When you look at what's happening in the industry, teams are spending an unbelievable amount of resources on data analytics for for their, their athletes. The majority of that is physiological, wearables, and tracking devices and heart monitors, and all of these things measure, biometrics and things like this, there's not a lot of work being done in the data space on what's happening in someone's head. Kind of psychometric and behavioral area.
We're presenting a unique opportunity for teams to get a real, robust understanding of individuals that they're looking to bring into the organization or their current individuals, players and coaches, and helping put systems in place to develop them, and help them to succeed quicker and reducing the kind of trial and error that they may have to do without having the data and the science in front of them. Again, both as an individual level and as an organizational cultural level.
Ronen Ainbinder
It's my belief that the brain is one of the most under-studied elements of the body. There's so much about the brain that we really don't know about. And I feel like bringing data into it is kind of a step forward of understanding our cognitive process of making decisions. I'm really curious, given the emergence of such intersection between sports and science. In the case of SureAthlete, what would you say are the top five to seven events coming up in the company roadmap in the next few years that are super critical?
Sean Flynn
We've got a plan built in place. Everybody's got a plan, right? Until something happens! but we've got a plan. We're in our inaugural year, we launched this company in January of 2020. So we're eight months into this thing. Now. Obviously, the pandemic hits, so we've had to deal with that. Our step by step we're seeing a very slow, methodical approach as we introduce this to the marketplace. When you look at what we're doing in year one, basically, we're calling this our innovation here. So we're looking for one partner in each major league. And our focus right now is United States for the most part, or Canada, if there's leads, that kind of overlaps. We're looking for one innovation partner for signing those up in each league. So one NFL team, one NBA team, intercollegiate athletics. One team, or athletic department in each conference. For example, the University of Miami is a client of our innovation partner. Bauer, they're the exclusive innovation partner for the ACC conference. And then we're also looking at some other organizations. Outside of the major leagues or major conferences in college, like we're having conversations with the likes of the UFC, WWE, NASCAR teams, things like this. So the first phase and the first kind of our first step here is to find it, this collection of six or seven innovation partners, we'll run them through kind of the first year that we have, the platform is built in the platform is ready to go. When we look at what we have for year two, which we call our MVP year, that's when we'll again take a slow another slow, methodical approach to that we will add no more than two teams in each league or conference. So we'll live within our bandwidth and call these MVP partner so we'll have no more than three teams in these specific leagues. Once we go into year three, that's when we'll start to commercialize and just open this up to the addressable markets. In year three, that's when we start to kind of scale this, this thing. Ultimately, when we kind of look really long range, and we'll start to look outside of North American sports, and into a global approach to this, and that may be in year four, year five, because this platform is adaptable to any collection of athletes and coaches, wherever that may be, whether it's professional sports, Olympic sports, amateur sports, motor sports, intercollegiate athletics, you name it. SureAthlete can potentially help these organizations, whether that's a cricket team in India, football team in Mexico, rugby team in New Zealand, Formula One team in Europe, you name it! They're potential clients of ours. As we kind of grow this, from a business standpoint, that's the approach we're taking on the product side, we'll kind of have a parallel path, so now we have our foundation, but we'll start to innovate as we kind of step into year two as we kind of go down the road, and our innovation team is already working towards those those new offerings today that will have ready in 8-12 months, 18 months.
Ronen Ainbinder
I find that very intriguing. The way you structure it makes total sense, in my mind starting even with one athlete prove that it works, and then, go to the to the team, and then partner up with a team. The way you have it set it up is I feel like, a very structured way, and it makes complete sense. I'm curious, also to ask you, given how things are changing so fast in the world right now; consumers are suddenly looking for different things. And I'm really intrigued to ask you, what is one belief held by your typical consumer, or customer that you would like to change? And why would we would you like to change?
Sean Flynn
This is a new approach for some folks. Our goal is to change the mindset that this is a development tool that will help, across the organization, like individuals as well as the entire team. I think some folks who are not familiar with these type of assessments, or have had experience in the past, and may not have been a great experience, need to understand that, we're taking data, we're taking data, and we're writing insights on that data and providing actionable steps to take, after you have that data and insights and really putting a plan in place to help you with development of individuals and development of the organization. When we're introducing this to potential clients that that may come at this maybe a tainted point of view from some experience in the past that they've had, and we've got to walk them through and explain why this thing is really an opportunity for them to build a high performing team culture and have success.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's awesome, Sean. I think the key thing when you have such an innovative idea, is that proving that works, proving that the science makes sense, and that the technology works, and that you can actually help them to get better, isn't it that one of like, the challenges?
Sean Flynn
Yeah, I think that we've got to prove that it works. We know, our our platform is built on an assessment that was it's an algorithm that was in development for 30 plus years. That all algorithm that assessment is now called prism, and that's the secret kind of sauce to this foundation. The platform has been in practice with our sister company, called SurePeople. For the last five years, they've had phenomenal success in kind of the business space, the commercial space with clients such as Boston Children's Hospital, iRobot, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Comcast, really quality partners, that have fallen in love with what they do. And they, in fact, they've renewed at 100% they haven't lost a client in the first five years of their existence, which is just phenomenal. We know that this thing works and provides value, and clients, adopted and really embrace it and use it to its fullest. What we need to do is now show people that we could do that in sports, it's essentially the same, the same principles and the same science behind it. We kind of reposition how it looks from the front end. We speak in different vernacular, sports vernacular, there's a different tone and a different feel to it. But we know the core of it works. So our challenge today, as we sit here is to find innovation partners implement it, and prove it does what we say can do. And we know it will, and we're going to come work out, we will come out of this first year cycle, having proven that, and then, the market will really sit up and say, "Wow, these guys, they proven, they validated, that this platform is truly something that can come into an organization and help."
Ronen Ainbinder
That's awesome, Sean, I'm sure it's gonna be big in a few years. It's gonna be everywhere. And I'm looking forward to it. My last question is more personal, Sean. I'd like to ask you what advice would you give to a young graduate that is passionate about sports as well, and it's passionate about maybe technology and wants to work in the industry? What advice would you give to a young graduate? Or put it in another way: What would you do if you were starting from from scratch, from zero?
Sean Flynn
I'm an adjunct professor at St. Thomas, University of Miami here, and I teach one class in the fall sports marketing at the graduate level sports administration program. So I think the key you've used the keyword already is passion, you need to have a passion for this industry. Because I don't consider a job or a career, it's a lifestyle, it's pretty all consuming. It's interwoven with your life. If you don't have a passion for that, it's just not going to work out. Because it's just, you will be miserable. So you need to start with that. And once you identify that then then you've got to be fairly aggressive in going out and making a name for yourself in the industry, or whatever ways you can, whether that's just starting out as an intern, or an entry level position, but you've got to build your network. And it's really more important, who knows you than who you know. So you've got to at every touch point and interaction along the way, whether that's in an interview process that you don't get or get it, you're an intern or an entry level position, or you're working on projects, you've got to leave a favorable impression and add value in everything that you do. If you have passion, you add value. And you start to build a network of people who know you, then you're integrating yourself in. And then as you as you're doing that, and starting out and starting to build a skill set that brings value to organizations, then you're on your right path. But again, number one is to have passion, then start to build your network and add value in every interaction along the way, then you're you should be on the right path.
Ronen Ainbinder
I think that's a great place to wrap today's conversation. I'm so grateful for having the chance to speak to such an icon of the industry. I'd like to thank you for your time for your insights and for your kindness. I hope we get the chance to interact in person sometime soon, Sean, but for now, thank you for coming to the Halftime Snacks.
Sean Flynn
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for the time and yeah, hopefully, whether it's in Mexico or here in South Florida would love to meet up in person!
Transcribed by Otter.