I'll admit that even I am having a hard time following all of the questions/ suggestions about the Collective (CAlegends.com) on the various Cal message boards, so I thought I'd try to capture some of the more recent ones in one place for all of you.
In case it helps:
1. Collective is doing well. Will write a bit more on that in a separate post below. For those of you who have gone on to the site and made a donation, bought a subscription, purchased merchandise, or booked a shoutout, thank you! Your support is tremendously appreciated.
2. Still working on getting the players to create accounts on the site. This is a work in progress. Students are busy people and, aside from our starters, too many of the players on our teams haven't yet created a profile. And until they do you can't interact with them and I can't contact them. We're working on this - I plan to meet with the entire football team next week to encourage them to make profiles but just know that until they do we can't move forward with them.
3. We added (based on user feedback) the ability for fans to make credit card donations to fund NIL opportunities for specific players - we've added the starters by name to the drop down menu. Previously this level of flexibility to direct donations to players (as opposed to teams) was only available if you were sending a wire or a physical check. If you want to fund a position group instead you would still need to do that via wire transfer.
4 Still working on the ability for fans to be able to donate from within their profile (rather than having to log out or open a new window to do so). For some reason this is proving very difficult for our web developer to do. Still pushing - sent another message this morning. But in the meantime logging out or opening a new window still works. Sorry that's clunky.
5. If you aren't getting confirmations from us, please check your spam folder. 99% of the time when someone says they didn't get a confirm that's why. Even my confirms go into my spam folder. Gmail is not a fan of our service. Probably because Larry and Sergey went to Stanford.
6. Don't forget we have merchandise https://teamlocker.squadlocker.com/#/lockers/california-legends-collective
Honestly a lot of this is better than what UA is offering for the team. A good chunk of all the money you spend on merchandise will go straight back to the collective. So shop till you drop.
One of the more exciting things we are working on with Beastmode is creating separate clothing lines for individual players (jerseys, etc.) while allowing them to have some design input. This is a huge differentiator for us and something our competitors can't easily replicate. Will take some time (mainly because the students are busy with the whole school/football thing at the moment and their input is needed) but it's definitely coming. In the interim, we are going to do some fun stuff with Marshawn and our logo for the Hall of Fame dinner next month. Stay tuned.
7. Shoutouts. I will now write one of my lengthy, overly complicated and probably unnecessary rants. For those of you who find these tedious I'd suggest you dip out now.
One of the most popular things on our site is proving to be the shoutouts from players. They are also the bane of my existence since they require multiple interactions from the fans, the players, the fans again, the Collective and the payment processor. Ugh.
The way these work is you select a player and request they record some sort of brief video message. The player then has to accept the request. This is important to keep in mind. The player has to literally go in and say "yes, I'll do this." If they don't, the request will expire in four days. And if the request expires (they are busy, they are at practice, they are in class or studying, they are eating, sleeping, being a teenager, etc.) you will have to make another request.
How that system works is not within our control - the vendor who created this system sells it to a lot of other organizations so the "offer, acceptance, recording, fan acceptance of the recording, payment" thing is not something we can easily change. So if you have suggestions on how it should work better, well so do I. But neither of us is getting what we want there. So just realize that this isn't Amazon. You don't click "Buy it Now" and have a binding contract for delivery of a service. There's a lot that can go sideways or the player may just decide he or she is busy and not take you up on it. Don't take it personally. And keep your eye on the prize. The point of all this is to make the players feel some love and to allow them to monetize their name, image and likeness in a (hopefully) minimally taxing way for them.
Which brings me to the broader point on shoutouts. Shoutouts are cool for fan engagement. They are a good way to show some love to players down the roster in football or in some of the Olympic sports who otherwise would not have a lot of money sent their way from the Collective. Highly encourage all of you to book something from a player who you think might otherwise not be getting these opportunities. What they are NOT is a great way for us to raise significant money needed for our stars. Ott, for example, is getting hit with a lot of these. I think that's great as it's showing him some love. But he wants to focus on getting ready for the WSU game and will probably not be able to even address most of these until next week - at which point I'm guessing they may have expired (player has to accept within 4 days).
And of course all of this relates to the fact that shoutouts are relatively time intensive endeavors for the players. Requires them to log in, record, probably re-record a few times, upload, etc. So if you want to support the players I'll just say that the best way is to give targeted donations (https://basepath.co/collective_checkout/callegends?donation=true ) and direct that to a team or a player. I can then bundle them together and find a single event (commercial, speaking engagement, etc.) where the player can be paid a sizable amount of money for a one time event.
I don't mean any of this to sound ungrateful. I'm super appreciative of those of you who have booked a shoutout. Or bought merchandise, bought a subscription, made a donation, etc. Thank you! You are making a big difference. I just want to make sure the Collective accomplishes it's goal. Which is first, second and last to allow our players to profit from the name, image and likeness and hopefully allow these same players to get to the Rose Bowl.
Go Bears!
In case it helps:
1. Collective is doing well. Will write a bit more on that in a separate post below. For those of you who have gone on to the site and made a donation, bought a subscription, purchased merchandise, or booked a shoutout, thank you! Your support is tremendously appreciated.
2. Still working on getting the players to create accounts on the site. This is a work in progress. Students are busy people and, aside from our starters, too many of the players on our teams haven't yet created a profile. And until they do you can't interact with them and I can't contact them. We're working on this - I plan to meet with the entire football team next week to encourage them to make profiles but just know that until they do we can't move forward with them.
3. We added (based on user feedback) the ability for fans to make credit card donations to fund NIL opportunities for specific players - we've added the starters by name to the drop down menu. Previously this level of flexibility to direct donations to players (as opposed to teams) was only available if you were sending a wire or a physical check. If you want to fund a position group instead you would still need to do that via wire transfer.
4 Still working on the ability for fans to be able to donate from within their profile (rather than having to log out or open a new window to do so). For some reason this is proving very difficult for our web developer to do. Still pushing - sent another message this morning. But in the meantime logging out or opening a new window still works. Sorry that's clunky.
5. If you aren't getting confirmations from us, please check your spam folder. 99% of the time when someone says they didn't get a confirm that's why. Even my confirms go into my spam folder. Gmail is not a fan of our service. Probably because Larry and Sergey went to Stanford.
6. Don't forget we have merchandise https://teamlocker.squadlocker.com/#/lockers/california-legends-collective
Honestly a lot of this is better than what UA is offering for the team. A good chunk of all the money you spend on merchandise will go straight back to the collective. So shop till you drop.
One of the more exciting things we are working on with Beastmode is creating separate clothing lines for individual players (jerseys, etc.) while allowing them to have some design input. This is a huge differentiator for us and something our competitors can't easily replicate. Will take some time (mainly because the students are busy with the whole school/football thing at the moment and their input is needed) but it's definitely coming. In the interim, we are going to do some fun stuff with Marshawn and our logo for the Hall of Fame dinner next month. Stay tuned.
7. Shoutouts. I will now write one of my lengthy, overly complicated and probably unnecessary rants. For those of you who find these tedious I'd suggest you dip out now.
One of the most popular things on our site is proving to be the shoutouts from players. They are also the bane of my existence since they require multiple interactions from the fans, the players, the fans again, the Collective and the payment processor. Ugh.
The way these work is you select a player and request they record some sort of brief video message. The player then has to accept the request. This is important to keep in mind. The player has to literally go in and say "yes, I'll do this." If they don't, the request will expire in four days. And if the request expires (they are busy, they are at practice, they are in class or studying, they are eating, sleeping, being a teenager, etc.) you will have to make another request.
How that system works is not within our control - the vendor who created this system sells it to a lot of other organizations so the "offer, acceptance, recording, fan acceptance of the recording, payment" thing is not something we can easily change. So if you have suggestions on how it should work better, well so do I. But neither of us is getting what we want there. So just realize that this isn't Amazon. You don't click "Buy it Now" and have a binding contract for delivery of a service. There's a lot that can go sideways or the player may just decide he or she is busy and not take you up on it. Don't take it personally. And keep your eye on the prize. The point of all this is to make the players feel some love and to allow them to monetize their name, image and likeness in a (hopefully) minimally taxing way for them.
Which brings me to the broader point on shoutouts. Shoutouts are cool for fan engagement. They are a good way to show some love to players down the roster in football or in some of the Olympic sports who otherwise would not have a lot of money sent their way from the Collective. Highly encourage all of you to book something from a player who you think might otherwise not be getting these opportunities. What they are NOT is a great way for us to raise significant money needed for our stars. Ott, for example, is getting hit with a lot of these. I think that's great as it's showing him some love. But he wants to focus on getting ready for the WSU game and will probably not be able to even address most of these until next week - at which point I'm guessing they may have expired (player has to accept within 4 days).
And of course all of this relates to the fact that shoutouts are relatively time intensive endeavors for the players. Requires them to log in, record, probably re-record a few times, upload, etc. So if you want to support the players I'll just say that the best way is to give targeted donations (https://basepath.co/collective_checkout/callegends?donation=true ) and direct that to a team or a player. I can then bundle them together and find a single event (commercial, speaking engagement, etc.) where the player can be paid a sizable amount of money for a one time event.
I don't mean any of this to sound ungrateful. I'm super appreciative of those of you who have booked a shoutout. Or bought merchandise, bought a subscription, made a donation, etc. Thank you! You are making a big difference. I just want to make sure the Collective accomplishes it's goal. Which is first, second and last to allow our players to profit from the name, image and likeness and hopefully allow these same players to get to the Rose Bowl.
Go Bears!
