52 Weeks of Hustle with John Abbamondi

0:00Welcome to 52 weeks of hustle. I'm Travis Apple and I'll be the host of this podcast. I love the chair that I'm in and able to sit down with industry leaders as a way to give back to the listeners that want to get into this business and listeners that want to continue to be elite in this industry. Crazy to think we're in season 6 already which means over 260 industry leaders have shared their journeys, expertise and advice. We'll continue the same format, we will discuss the professional career path. Three key trends in the industry, three hustle hot seat questions and three key takeaways all under 24 minutes. Now under our guest this week, experience in the business setting the sports as crucial no matter what role you have or what role you want in the future. Our next guest has spent his entire career in sports in a variety of roles and I'm excited to share a story as we welcome John Abamondi, co-founder and CEO of Prospector Baseball Group. John, welcome to the show. Hey Travis, thanks for having me. John, I'm very excited to have you and dive into your career and first we'll get your

1:01overall career, but much of it has been spent in baseball and many people are always saying how do you work in baseball? So many games. What's your advice to listeners on that? Oh gosh, it is a lot of games. I think, you know, listen, you've really got to love it, but you know, it's not that different from from other sports when you really think about it. You know, it's certainly a Madison Square Garden, right? We had the Knicks, we had the Rangers and we had a very full concert schedule, but, but even at a normal arena business, when you add up the number of home games and the number of concerts, it's pretty close to a major league baseball season. Right. Absolutely. You know, and certainly baseball's flowing for you right now is just over a year ago, you co-founded and are the CEO of the Prospector Baseball Group, where you have three minor league baseball teams already in the Akron rubber ducks, Jacksonville jumbo shrimp and the Lancaster stormers. First, what's your elevator pitch for Prospector Baseball Group? Gosh, you know, it depends on who we're pitching to, whether we're talking to investors,

2:03whether we're talking to sponsors, etc. So, you know, you tell me. So like if we were a potential sponsor, you know, listen, here's what I would tell you. New league baseball is a uniquely, a uniquely local entertainment property. These are hyper local assets. They're not media assets at all, right? So, first thing to keep in mind is that when you're talking about the big four, you know, major league baseball NFL and NHL and NBA, you know, those are our first and foremost media assets. We did a study years ago when I was at the NBA and we found that when you look at fans who live in NBA cities and are self-described NBA fans, over 90% of them have never been to a game because it's a media product for the vast majority of people, right? We forget that because we're in the arena or at the stadium every single day, but for most fans of big league sports, it's something you watch on television or on your phone,

3:05right? Minor league baseball is not that. Minor league baseball is almost exactly the opposite. It is a live entertainment experience for our fans. And so when we're talking to sponsors, you know, we don't, we don't lead with the Prospector baseball group brand. In fact, we don't talk about it at all. We talk about the Jacksonville jumbo shrimp. We talk about the Akron rubber ducks. It is, it is very much a local sale. And listen, you're, you're at a lower level in the, in sort of the food chain of those sponsors, right? You're not getting a deal for the most part. You're not doing a deal with Chevrolet. You're doing a deal with the local Chevy dealer, the local dealership, right? And so that hyper local focus is, is really important. And it's why our local presidents and general managers of these, of these franchises are the, the key people in our organizations, right? Because they really are the face of the franchise in the local market. Yeah, and kind of the who's who of that individual market and you mentioned three teams already.

4:09How did the first few teams come about? Well, the first one was interesting. We were, it was a bit of a high wire act for us because we were raising money at the same time we were shopping for teams. You know, coming into this, I would have told you, my guess would have been that the way these things work is that first you go out and you raise a bunch of money and then you go buy stuff with it. Turns out that's not how it played out for us at least. We were raising money and buying teams in parallel. And literally, you know, negotiating purchase price on teams before we had actually secured the capital. They were happening in parallel. And the reason why that happened in parallel for us is because our investors really wanted insight into the kinds of assets that we were thinking about buying and the kinds of prices that we thought we could get them at. And so, the first team that we bought was the Lancaster Stormers. We bought them from four guys. It's a great story. Four guys, college friends from Lancaster who started a business together in college,

5:15made a bunch of money, did really well. And at some point, decided to buy their local hometown team. And now they're in their 60s and ready to move on to the next chapter in life. And they were ready to sell it. We were in the process and I was actually overseas in Europe doing some fundraising. And we got word that another bidder might be about to get the team. And it turned out that the one of those four guys, the one that I've been dealing with the most, was at his vacation house in Portugal, which was not exactly around the corner from where I was. I wasn't sweetened. And I called him up and I said, I want to come see you. And I flew to Portugal the next day. And we had a few dinners and a lot of laughs. And I really wanted to convince him that we were the next best stewards of his franchise. And that brings me back to where I started, which was that these are hyper local assets.

6:19A lot of minor league baseball team owners really care about who owns their team next. Who's kind of the next in line. They really do. And I think as funny as it sounds, making that trip to Portugal and spending time with a guy and breaking bread together, that's what got us the team. And after we got our first one, we were off and running. It all comes back kind of like sales 101, right? Relationship self. Like you've got to build that rapport and you don't want to be that transactional seller and that holds true. John, for you, what does a day-to-day look like for you in the organization? I know the easiest answer is no day is the same, but what does that kind of look like? Maybe rather than saying day-to-day, because no day does look the same, you're right. I spend my time in basically three buckets, right? Fun raising is one. Fortunately, we're close to the end on raising capital. So I'm spending less of my time on that. But certainly over the past year, a significant amount of my time was out there raising capital.

7:22The second big bucket would be M&A. So finding teams that we want to purchase, evaluating them, going through that whole diligence process. And then the third one is operations, right? You know, you and I are similar backgrounds Travis, like I'm an operator by trade. And so I've been spending a fair amount of my time diving into the weeds with our team presidents and their staffs to help try to improve these businesses and drive them forward. I'm very clear. I am not the CEO or president of any of our teams. We have excellent team presidents that are running them. But you know, I've been around the business a long time and hopefully I can be helpful to them in some small ways. And so that's the third big bucket. Awesome. Well, you will certainly dive in more into the Prospector Baseball Group. And for you, you graduate from MIT in political science, received an MBA from Stanford, and then worked for the US Navy as a lieutenant and naval flight officer. Why did you think you wanted to do career wise?

8:23I'm a little older than you, but when the first top gun came out, I was in like seventh grade and it made a big impression on me. So that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to fly jets from boats. And I did that for about 10 years and it was an amazing experience, an incredible way to spend your 20s. And it was really, it was a formative experience for me and taught me a lot about leadership and influence the type of leader I am today. Yeah, along those lines, much of the sports business, both on the court field or ice, as well as in the business side, is about training and development. And I know that is a big part of the military. What was that US Navy training process like? Well, I was in a very narrow subset of the Navy. I was in naval aviation and specifically carrier based naval aviation. And I think that there are a few things that it taught me that I carry with me to this day. Sort of a maniacal attention to detail. And I don't always live up to that, but I sure do try and just when you're flying airplanes

9:30off of carriers, I'll give you an example. You'll inspect your aircraft very thoroughly every time before you go fly and you may look at a part as part of your inspection. You may look at this part on the airplane every time for a whole career and it's never broken, but you check it every time. And so that sort of hyper-attentioned detail is something that gets ingrained in you through that experience and I have it for better or worse with me today. And I'm sure sometimes it drives people crazy. I was in our premium club here in Jacksonville yesterday and I noticed a broken light that was broken the last time I was here and was still broken and I wasn't very happy. So I probably get on people's nerves sometimes, but for better or worse, I noticed stuff. Yeah, that's been detailed. The second thing I would tell you is that you really learn to be part of a team.

10:31We were, the air crew were the ones flying airplanes, but there was a whole group of people that were responsible for maintaining them and making sure that they were safe to fly. You just don't have the knowledge to be able to do all of those jobs yourself. You have to work with and lead people that are expert in things that you're not an expert in. And getting comfortable with that at an early age was a really good experience. You know, I think in our world now in sports, a lot of times what you'll see is people come up through a track, right? And so you'll be an inside sales rep and then maybe an AE and then eventually an inside sales manager and you know, you will spend 10 years of your career where you're managing people whose jobs you've done, right? And the first really big challenge I think that a lot of leaders face is when they step into that CRO type of role and now maybe they're managing people that have done jobs that

11:35they haven't done before, right? Because now all of a sudden you're sitting over sponsorship and you've never sold sponsorship, right? But you've got to lead those people. So you know, I was getting those experiences at 22, right? Where I was leading sailors who were fixing airplanes that I didn't know how to fix. And that's just changes the way you think about leadership at an early age. No, absolutely. And John, your first role, you know, after a decade there goes into sports with the Major League Baseball as the Senior Director of Labor Economics. How did that role come about, especially after the previous decade? You know, it was right place, right time kind of thing at the honest with you. I was in business school and the book Moneyball had just come out. And you know, I went to Stanford as you mentioned and being in the Bay Area, Billy Bean came and spoke at one of our classes. And I was a big, big sports nut, hadn't really thought about it as a profession.

12:37Wasn't, you know, it was probably a little too shy to go up and talk to him after class. But somebody asked him in the class what he would have done with his life if he hadn't been a baseball player. And he said, and I didn't know this about him. I read the book, but I didn't know this about him. His dad was a naval officer. He grew up in San Diego. And if he hadn't been a baseball player, he would have wanted to fly airplanes in the Navy. And I said, well, now I've got to go talk to him and we became friendly. And he was an early mentor of mine. And there was a position open, as you mentioned, in Major League Baseball. A guy named John Rico had just left that job to go be the assistant GM of the New York Metz and Billy recommended me for the job and one thing led to another. And here I am all these years later. That's awesome. Well, from there, you know, from the MLB League office, you then moved to the team side first with the St. Louis Cardinals as the assistant general manager and then the San Diego Padres

13:41and strategy and business analytics. And then from there, you know, you kind of next journey took you to the NBA League office with Team Bo, MSG, then the Brooklyn Nets and BSE. And so you spend 10 straight years in the NBA, not only with the league, but two of the major and larger teams and organizations. How did those experiences in the NBA compare to your baseball experience? Well, most of my time in baseball, I was in baseball operations, right? Both at the league where I worked in the labor relations department. And then, you know, my time at the Cardinals was the assistant GM. So I was very much on the team upside of things. And I would say, you know, frankly, the bigger difference wasn't changing leagues. It was going from being on the team upside of things to the business side of things. And you know, that was a, that was a, you know, certainly an interesting decision for me personally, you know, a lot of people try to go the other way, right? But you know, I really felt that, you know, my personality, my skill set, ultimately, you

14:45know, I got close to being a GM and just decided it wasn't what I wanted to do. I was more interested in the overall business of these franchises. And frankly, one day wanting to get into ownership. And so it was, it was, that was the reason why I went to the NBA because I felt like if I was going to learn the business side of sports, there was probably no better place to do it than a team bow. And yeah, absolutely. And as you think about John, your time, not only in New York, but also now, like as you talked about with Prospector Baseball Group and getting investors, you've been a part of, and you're still currently part of very large deals and negotiations. What's your advice to listeners on being best prepared to meet with some of the top executives? That's a great question. You know, I think you have to do your homework. And it's really, you know, it's never been easier. There's never been more tools that are disposable to prep us for, for, for meeting people. You know, we, we have AI now really embedded in our organization and, you know, before

15:47we meet with a sponsor or, or an investor, we have a profile on that person and know a lot about them. And it's, you know, you can generate that with clawed at the snap of your fingers. Right. So just being really prepared for those meetings, you know, I think, you know, the other thing that keep in mind is that, you know, there's a lot of randomness in this business, right? A lot of luck. And so you just got to, you know, at some level, you just have to keep putting up shots. But you want to make them as high percentage shots as you can. Looking to book more qualified meetings without lifting a finger, meet Wolfcycle, your AI-powered virtual assistant that never sleeps or complains and automatically engages your leads with smart, human-like conversations over email, chat, and SMS using cutting edge natural language processing. Wolfcycle finds and nurtures your best opportunities 24, seven. Please let me know if you're interested in learning more. Again, we're here on 52 weeks of hustle. The guest today, John Abamondi, co-founder and CEO of Prospector Baseball Group.

16:49And John, let's get into three hot topics. You know, question one, we've talked a lot about your, your baseball experience. And then now within minor league baseball and that true kind of overall experience, what's one thing that you feel like minor league, minor league teams do well that you believe most professional organizations should try to implement as well? You know, I mean, it's, that's a great question. I'll give you two different answers. One is, you know, we are just at a lower price point than big league sports, right? And so in our motto, our slogan internally at our organization is affordable family fun. And that allows us to put a focus on the fan and creating fan experiences for a really broad base of the population that, you know, frankly is difficult to do in the big leagues. You know, any of the big four, they're very expensive properties and and a lot of families

17:50can't afford them. So, you know, I, I don't know what the answer is, but, but, you know, I am for the big leagues, but I would tell you that one of the things I love about my like baseball is, is how accessible it is. No matter what. You know, the other thing I would tell you that is really different, I'm taking your question a little bit of a different direction, but, but it's different than I had experienced in the big four is that in modeling baseball, everybody wears a lot of different hats, right? And so, you know, I was just on a, on a conversation with one of our ticket sales people who's also our, our TV broadcaster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I, and I tell you, like, it's really good training for, for these folks. I, I, I, I'm impressed by how well rounded even our junior folks here are because they get exposed

18:51to so many different type parts of the business rather than being focused on one track. And, and that's a, that's a real advantage of modeling baseball. So look, if, if I were to go back to the big four, I think one of the things I would try to do is, you know, is, is figure out a way to expose people to more parts of the business earlier in their careers. Early on. Yeah. Absolutely. And finally, you know, recently you, you and prospector baseball group were able to acquire strategic and financial partnership with private equity group, Arctos Partners. And what does that mean for prospector baseball group? And what does that next five years look like for you guys? Arctos has been a tremendous partner, you know, Dock O'Connor, who's the founder and co-managing partner of Arctos was, was my boss at the garden, he's, he's an incredible guy. They have a great team there, Jordan Solomon, Aleister Seaman, there's a, there's a lot of really, really talented people there. And we feel very fortunate to have them as an investor and as a partner, they bring a

19:54lot more than just capital to the table. They have deep expertise in, in operations. They understand the business really, really well. And they've just been great thought partners to bounce ideas off of. So it's been a real privilege working with them and, and you know, I'll tell you, we, we turned down a pretty sizable check from somebody, another private equity firm before partnering with Arctos and I'm glad we were patient because we absolutely found the, the right people to partner with. That's awesome. John, ton of great advice, certainly fun to hear about your journey, both personally and professionally, to close it out, I'd like to put our guests on the hustle hot seats. You ready for this? Let's do it. What's the last thing you completed on your bucket list? The last thing I completed on my bucket list. That's a great question. I should have prepped for this. Let's go to the next one, I'll come back to that. If you had to eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

20:55Pizza. If you hosted a late night talk show, who'd be your first guest? Oh, that's a great question. Cherry Garcia. Yeah. Okay. Have you thought any more about this? I know he's not with us obviously, but that's who I want. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it could be dead or alive. Yeah. Have you thought any more about your bucket list? You know, it's, it's a great question. I try to keep my bucket list really short, man, like, you know, like life is short and I don't, you know, tomorrow's not promised to any of us. So maybe I'm not trying to duck your question, but like, I don't have a long list of things that I'm dying to do because I've already done them and when it hits me, and when it hits me that I want to do something, I go out and do it, right away. No, I'll get it done. I get it done. Don't let that, don't let that bucket list back up on you. Yep. Exactly. It's a great advice. John, to close it out, what are three key takeaways you would give every listener to be in your shoes one day? Let me distill it down to one thing, which is, you know, don't don't overlook the, you

21:58know, don't overlook the role of luck in your career. And I say that because, you know, we've all been through times when you maybe get discouraged, things didn't don't go your way. I've been fired before. I didn't get jobs that I wanted. And so, you know, one of the things I tell people, especially young people who are starting out in their career, you know, I've had multiple big breaks in my career, where I was the second choice for the job. And the only reason I got the job was because somebody else turned it down first, right? And you can't plan for that. Yeah. But all you can do is keep putting yourself in the right situation, give yourself the best chance you can, and then you got to be patient and wait for some good luck to come along. And sometimes that happens quickly and sometimes it takes a little while. But, but it can't happen. And you put your point to your point, just keep putting yourself in a good position, right? That's right. That's what happens to good people. John, thank you so much. What a great career. Always a pleasure talking to you. And I certainly appreciate your time and expertise.

22:59Travis, thanks for having me on and, you know, Kudos to you for all that you've achieved in your career. I've really enjoyed watching your success and this podcast has been a lot of fun to listen to. So I'll keep listening. Thank you, John. I certainly appreciate it again. This is Travis Apple. Thanks for listening to 52 weeks of Hustle. Please be sure to follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok. We'll be back next week with another industry leader. Have a great week.