How the GOAT of athlete brand building built her business

Sam Green perfectly describes what she does on her website - NILWithSamGreen.com.

“I teach student-athletes how to quickly create content to build and monetize their brand without taking time away from their sport.”

She now travels the country, partnering with leading brands like JBL, Marriott, Meta, and NIKE. Georgia, Louisville, Michigan State, Texas, and UCLA have trusted her to put on branding workshops for their athletes.

Sam’s journey is fascinating, from NBA dancer to self-made social media expert.

She’s leveraging her knowledge to provide a valuable, much-needed service.

And she’s built a business on that knowledge.

She recently took time to join me on the Underdog Sports Marketing podcast, and I learned a lot.

This will be quick, but here are two takeaways from our conversation.

Filling a void with “random skills”

Learn how to do stuff. Lots of stuff.

Sam’s main initial skill was audience growth on social media, which she learned before she built her actual business.

When NIL went live in the college game in 2021, Sam used what she knew to help athletes who were now in a brand new world.

What Sam says: "All these random skills that I had been accumulating and all the random interests that I had from media and content creation to sports and working with athletes and brands kind of all collided overnight into a brand new industry."

Adapt.

Since 2021, Sam has learned a lot more.

At one point, she deleted her account and lost her entire audience because of burnout.

Back then, she never envisioned starting AthleteCon or having UCLA fly her out to meet with their athletes.

She saw the need and added value. And now she has major brands and institutions coming to her to ask for her help.

What Sam says: “Keep going. You might pivot. You might take breaks. You might quit and come back. I’ve worked hard at accumulating new skills and pivoting and just kind of figuring out what the needs are in the industry.”

Watch the full interview here:

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