Hello, it's Cejih (cue Adele music). If you're reading this congrats, you made it to the last Tuesday newsletter of 2020. In honor of everyone's OOO reply until Jan 4th (you know who you are), we will resume our weekly newsletter on Tuesday, January 12th. Until then, step into my office as we wrap up one hell of a year.
Crisis = Opportunity My Chinese mom has this saying, "In Chinese, the word for 'crisis' shares the same character as the word for 'opportunity." This was never more true for me than this year and I thought about this saying often.
She has another oldie but goodie, "Messy room. Messy life." This mostly applied when I was a teenager but still rings true today.
To me 2020 was the year where CG Sports learned what we are made of. It began in March with the cancellation of NCAA's, NBA/WNBA and all major sports competitions within the same week. In April the Olympic and Paralympic Games postponement followed. Things got dark, there was no playbook and we needed a strategy.
A simple strategy for the year As a company we had a decision to make that would dictate how our year would go: Slow down or Speed up. We decided to take a risk and speed up. Our strategy was simple: Go on offense.
We created the CG Sports Network which broadcast over 350 hours of live streaming content from April to June. Our media footprint further grew with strategic partnerships with Champion's Mojo Podcast, Career Competitor Podcast and SwimmingWorld/International Swimming Hall of Fame. We brought our publishing and merchandise business in-house with the creation of CG Sports Publishing and our partnership with Chlorine Deckwear. Our branding service, Brand Camp, allowed us to add more clients from new sports including our first USA Winter Olympian (shoutout to Mick Dierdorff). 2020 challenged our creativity to new heights and we learned a lot of lessons (mostly from mistakes) along the way.
Our athletes pivoted, we followed CG Sports is a company with highly entrepreneurial roots and team culture. In 2016 I started the company with one client, zero sponsors, my phone and decent wifi. It is no coincidence that many of our athletes go on to start their own ventures. We were incredibly inspired by the work of our athletes who also went on the "offense". A few include:
Lia Neal and Jacob Pebley creating Swimmers for Change and unifying the swimming community
Katie Hoff who threw down the 1-2 punch of launching a new business, Synergy Dryland, alongside her Amazon #1 bestselling memoir, "Blueprint"
Maggie Steffens successfully pioneered 6-8 Sports during a pandemic
Natalie Hinds launched her own business, Loominary, where customers can purchase custom handmade tapestries from the pro swimming star
Kara Lynn Joyce and the LEAD Sports Co team launched an online academy with thousands of users
Alexander Massialas stepped up to use his platform to fight to save the Stanford Fencing
McKenzie Coan got into law school and signed a book deal
And so many more
So to wrap up I am very much looking forward to 2021, but respect what 2020 taught me. While there will still be tough times in 2021, I do believe that we will all be the strongest versions of ourselves. Thank you for continuing on this journey with us and we look forward to putting on a good show for you in the many great years ahead.
