Youth Sports - Eternally Screwed Up

(I wrote this blog post in August and held off posting this just in case this year was different. it wasn't so I am now releasing this blog post with an update at the bottom)

     I'm not even going to talk about the parents of kids in sports. That is a blog post all on it's own. They are the worst people to be around or associate with. Parents promise to promote teamwork and to kee their mouth shut when it comes to coaching......until it comes to their little shining star of a son or daughter. Then all HELL breaks loose.

I am here to discuss the business/political side. Let's talk pop warner football as a great example, even though this blog relates to all sports.

For those of you who don't know what goes on, I will give you a peek at the insanity.

1. you pay anywhere from $300-$400 to play.  That includes your equipment which the last 10 years has been worn by pop warner kids and seriously needs to be burned and replaced. But the league continues to sew, tape, and screw back together the football gear. You also have to give them a $50 snack bar check, in case you don't do your snack bar duty.

2. you also are required to work the snack bar for two days, which raises money for Pop Warner. Pop warner works you, doesn't pay you and keeps all the money for themselves. Surprised the gov't doesn't grab on to that money.

3. you also must do 2 fund raisers which raises more money for Pop Warner. They don't pay you anything and keep all the money for themselves. At this point your asking what is the $350 I paid going toward if I am raising all this money.

4. your team is also required to get 2 sponsors for $250 each. Now this part I understand. This money is for the kids pizza parties, gear bags or jackets. This is totally cool, unless you get a coach that decides to keep the money and not spend it on the kids.

5. you also get to sit for 2 hours a day at practice and watch your son practice......Um......let me rephrase that. You get to watch the predetermined stars practice and your son either stands there and gets hit over and over or just watches plays he will never get to do.  Then your son gets yelled out for not paying attention to plays he will never get to experience.

6. Then the team schedules a a parents road trip to raise more money. Every kid's parent is required to pay in money even if they can't go on this trip, because......I don't know why. Sorry.

So now it's game day and if your president of the league or sit on the board or are a coach, then it's going to be a great day. Your going to see your son play the whole game in a position he may or may not know how to play well. The other kids are what we call "minimum player kids" This means that they have to play at least 8-12 plays depending on your league. Those are the kids that are not shown anything about football other than how to hit a player or how to avoid getting hit.

As in professional sports, you lose as a team, but when you win, it's a certain player that gets the game ball.

So if you are the parent of a minimum player you have spent about $1000 when it's all said and done and spent about 100 hours on the practice field watching your son practice to play 10 plays in a real game. Each play in a game is on average about 15 seconds long unless it's that special breakaway play when the guy runs the length of the field. So a minimum player plays a total of 25 minutes the whole season.

I know I don't have to write another word about this, but let's review:

$1000 + 100 hours of your time = 25 minutes of football for you kid.

go back a reread the above equation until your head explodes.

You swear it won't happen again next year and yet every summer your kids starts whining how he wants to play football, again.

So starting Aug 1st, 2012  if anyone needs me, I will be on the grass field, with my laptop, a mobile hotspot, and a TV tray blogging about how my son isn't learning a DAMN thing about football or how to play the game.

There! I said it and every parent feels it. What are your feelings or experiences with the insane world of unorganized youth sports?

UPDATE: 11/19/12:
So this year's football has come to an end and THANK GOD. Another year of the same crap. I thought it was different. I thought I wasn't even going to post this blog that I wrote months ago, but the same thing happened. The league is completely unorganized, they talk about teamwork and having fun and you still see the favoritism and it's all about winning. My son is so discouraged from standing on the sideline game after game being a minimum player. He never wants to do pop warner again. His team couldn't score 1 point in many of their games and yet for some reason they thought Jack was not good enough to play. My son can lose as good as any of those starters. LOL

If my son does change his mind like last year, I promise you I will not be apart...... okay, I WILL be apart of my son's life and support him in this stupid, unorganized, completely money driven and political event called Youth Sports.

MY SHARK TANK STORY

UPDATE DOWN BELOW

So where do I start..... I know. Let's start at the part where I thought I could get on the SHARK TANK.

My goal was to submit an application to SHARK TANK the show on ABC. I was going to resubmit once a week until I got notified that they wanted me on the show. Well they did notify my, but it was to tell me to stop submitting after my 7th submission. So, I stopped and waited.

Two weeks later I get a call that SHARK TANK is interested in me and THE BEST BBQ SAUCE YOU'LL EVER TASTE. So I get to speak with the casting department of the show and they ask me a gazillion questions. That all went well.

Then the producers of the show call me and ask for product samples. It seems the jars of sauce that I mailed to the casting department never made it to producers. Hmmm. What a shock. So, I send another package of 8 jars to the producers. They loved the sauce.

Then I am asked to fill out a 25 page contract with the show that says a few interesting things.

1. If I strike a deal with the Sharks then the production company of the show gets either:
                                a. 5% equity in my company or
                                b. 2% royalty on my product that I am pitching
and they get this amount as long as the product/company exists

2. If I speak about this to anyone before air date, it's a $5 million dollar fine.

3. If I strike any deal with any of the Sharks within a year of the air date then the production company gets the above choice.

So now I have to keep my mouth shut and I have to re-evaluate my pitch. I can't allow the Sharks to get more than 44% of the company, if the production company is getting 5%. This is for fear of the Shark and the production company combining their shares to sell the company out from underneath me.

So I told the producers that I wanted $100,000 for 20% of my company and in my head I was willing to give them as much as 44%.

The producers had me film my pitch and send it to them. They loved it. Here is the video: https://vimeo.com/43305636

Great. Now I just need my film date.

The producers told me I'd be filming in July. So the producers and I practiced every week on my pitch and I nailed it every week.

Then the producers ask me tough questions like the Sharks might ask, to see how I would answer. I passed that with flying colors. The last thing the producer's asked me was, "This is just hypothetical, but if MARK CUBAN offers to buy your entire company, what would your price be?"

I answered, "$4 million" without missing a beat. They were surprised I had such a firm number in my head. I told them that has been the price since the day I started 12 years ago.

So a few week go by and then I am told they have pushed me to the September filming group. Okay, I am patient. I will start practicing my pitch at the end of August and strike a deal with the Sharks in September.

At this point I have no doubt in my mind that I will get a deal or get bought out when I get on that show. I am sure they will realize that I have many promising factors that will make my sauce #1. In fact, in my back pocket I was keeping the information about my Walmart meeting. I am going to be meeting (God still willing) with Walmart in the fall about taking my sauces nationwide.

The other thing I was holding in my back pocket was that I have the COOKING WITH JACK SHOW that promotes my sauces in over 95 countries and I have been seen over 8 million times. I would only tell them about these promising aspects if it looked like the Shark deal was falling apart.

Now, let me tell you what happened today.

I am getting my haircut at Mt. Zion barbershop telling my barber Scott that I have some big things coming and that God's will will be done. I tell Scott that if God doesn't want me to have what's coming he will take it away from me.
Not 2 minutes after I said those words, my cell phone rings. It's the producers of SHARK TANK calling. They tell me that they are sorry to inform me, but the show is cutting a lot of the September people and that I would not be going on the show. Now comes a really long awkward silence.

Since, I am no longer on the show, I can inform my barber Scott what just happened. His jaw hit the floor. Poor guy didn't know what to say. I tried to keep a smile on my face as long as I could, until Jack Jr sitting in the barber chair next to  me said, "What happened, dad?"

Now the lump in my throat had erupted, my heart hurt and my brain started screaming in my head to "hold it together and be a positive example for your son on how to behave when you lose." So I told Jack Jr. what happened and said that I was okay. 

Jack Jr then said, "Sorry, dad."

I replied, "As long as I have you in my life, my life is already heaven."

I drove straight home and went to this blog to share with everyone what just happened.

I started typing this blog post hoping it would help me get over the pain of rejection. I am now done typing.

It didn't help.

UPDATE: 12/14/12

I flew out to Walmart and met with them in Arkansas. They flipped over all my sauces and I will be going into Walmart starting April 2013. I will be in California Walmarts to start. I should get at least 100 stores. Then if it does well, I get to grow across the USA. I am very happy and it all turned out for the best. Thank you God. You know better than I do what's best for me.


UPDATE: 3/22/13
My first and biggest order ever just shipped out to Walmart. I will be in 180 stores on the west coast. I will be on shelves the week of April 7th. Here is a list if anyone cares: http://TheBestSauces.com (just click on the Walmart logo). Thank you God for your will being done.

UPDATE 7/30/15

So I was asked to appear on a show called West Texas Investors Club. The new show launches on CNBC August 4th at 10pm. Not sure what episode I am on. Funny thing is, 1 week after I signed to do this show, SHARK TANK calls me to invite me back to appear on the show. I turned them down and went with this show because they reached me first. That is just how I work. 

The Internet is Unpredictable

Some governments have tried to control it. People are getting rich off it. Music and movies are stolen from it. Taxes can't efficiently be collected from it. No one can stop the growth of it.

I was apart of the Internet from the beginning. I had a service called PRODIGY.
I would sit for hours with Prodigy waiting for a flashing square to alert me that someone wrote me an email. It was very much like Google+ back I'm the day. It was an incredible service, but nobody was there so it took awhile to find another person to write you.

My brother Charles and I have tried to understand how to market yourself and get noticed on the Internet. We have yet to nail down a formula for success. We believe there is no rhyme or reason for how some things become big and others don't.

I do know this. Money breeds money even on the Internet. Take the successful KICKSTARTER project OUYA gaming box. The details don't matter. What matters is that once the project started earning money, more people jumped on for the ride. The faster it grew, the faster it grew. It's a snowball effect. The problem is how to start a snowball.

My favorite thing to hear is when clueless companies say, "we need a website" or "let's do an online promotion. Millions of people will see our product". No one sees you! Your in a universe of millions and yet no one knows you exist. You have to cultivate whatever you do on the internet. Share with people. Post on websites that care about what you do. Scream your full head off until a few people say, "Hey. Look at that guy jumping up and down on the internet. Let's take a peak and see what is has."

When you do have a few eyes on the internet, you better have something worth while to show them, whether it's a product or blog or show. You need to always be on the top of your game.

I tell every one that asks that it will take a full year to get a small audience together for whatever your working on. If you can't put that time and energy into your venture then don't bother starting.

This is just the beginning of this discussion.

I'd love to hear what your thoughts and feelings are about become someone or something on the internet. How do you think people get discovered on the web?

How To Make Money On Youtube

At least 3 times a week I speak to someone about my shows on YouTube. It goes the same way every time. So I thought I would write it up and tell everyone for one final time. You can make good money on YouTube.

If you have a camera and a voice, all you have to do is to film something and upload it. Then mark the monetize button and your now on your way to making money as people view your videos.

I have told kids that live on youtube watching videos and told older people who can't even spell youtube and all ages are completely flabbergasted that there is really good money to be made on YouTube.

Here are some astounding facts about my COOKING WITH JACK SHOW and my JACK ON THE GO SHOW:

• I have almost 40,000 subscribers combined
• I have been watched over 7.5 million times
• I am seen in over 95 countries
• I am almost making a full time salary on my videos
• The revenue is increasing each month

Let me tell you what it took to get to this point:

• Bought a $1000 camera. I bought the HF10 Canon Vixia and it is now only about $500 to buy the latest model.
• Bought two 500 watt photo flood lamps with white umbrellas for $250
• Bought the Sennheiser lavalier clip on microphone for $500. 
• Filmed one cooking show a week for 5 years
• Filmed one restaurant review a week for about 3 years

You don't need any of this stuff. I chose to beef up the show when I could afford it. Start with nothing but a camera and work your way up to this level.

Now trust me when I say anyone can do this. Here is how you get started

• Decide what you like to do. (fix cars, crochet, bake, draw, archery, piano, etc.)
• Get a camera. Borrow a camera. USE YOUR DAMN PHONE LIKE I DO
• Film a video no longer than 3-5 minutes. DO NOT USE COPYRIGHT MATERIAL AT ALL. (music and movie clips are not allowed to be used. If you want your own music leave me a comment on how to get some safe music)
• Use editing software. No need to buy it. PC's have movie maker and MAC's have iMovie. Either will do. There are other free ones but these are the best free ones. When editing cut out any dead air. Try to just give the meat of the video. No rambling. Short and sweet information on what your doing. If you don't know how to edit your video then watch training videos on YouTube. How ironic, huh?
• Open a YouTube channel. If you don't know how, watch a Youtube video that shows you.
• upload your video to your channel and make sure you put lots of tags and a great description.
• Be sure to mark the box that says monetize. 

That's it. I will be honest. It's going to take about 6 months to a year of work before you see results. Make sure your content is interesting. Make sure you don't ramble. Editing is your friend.

If you have any questions and are really interested in being apart of something great, leave your comments and questions below and I will reply. I will help anyone with advice and direction who truly wants to learn. No one would help me and I don't want anyone to go through what I went through. 

Dream it. Make it. Share it.

How To Bring Vacation Home

I am sitting on the balcony, overlooking the waves of the Pacific Ocean, sipping a sugar free vanilla caramel coffee in my flip flops and shorts.  How awesome this is. The I got to thinking. If my regular life was like this, how wonderful it would be. To be able to experience this at home.

So the goal is to bring vacation home. Where can I get work done that's not in my stuffy bedroom office. I could join all the office trolls at Starbucks but that is so not me. I want piece and quiet. Too much foot traffic.  Some other places to bring my laptop or ipad with me to get work done would be any bagel shop, any McDonalds (yuk) or any ma and pa coffee place.
Here is the cool thing. Find a nice place to sit like a park or quiet little boutique area that is adjacent to a McDonalds or Starbucks or even a library. Use your free wifi app to help you find all the wifi locations to work at. Here is my favorite thing. Go to the lobby sitting area of a big hotel. The always have open wifi in the lobby area for guests. There never is a password since no sane person would show up to the lobby that wasn't a guest.

Now get your coffee wherever. Mcdonald's coffee is not bad. Starbucks is over rated so I choose the local bagel shop or Mcdonald's or get free coffe at the lobby of the Hotel your net surfing at. In fact, go to the pool area and sit under an umbrella. You may not get into the pool immediate area but there is plenty of outside seating elsewhere.

If your not one to venture, try working on your patio or your front yard. All we really want is fresh air and sunlight to make us feel spoiled. That is what we do on vacation and we never do it at home.

So today, everyone try to get out and get some work done with the sunshine on your face. It's pretty refreshing.

BTW, If you work for the man in an corporate office building your screwed. Just quit and start your own business. You can be an Entrepreneur even if you can't spell it.