Kyle Auffray | SFO Oct 2024

Same here, Kyle. Tell them how long you played in the NFL.

Yeah, so my name's Kyle Offrey. I was an NFL player for four years, over four teams, in and out of teams and practice squads, and camps. Did that whole deal.

How'd you stay super disciplined, ultra-healthy, and consistently outpacing others?

For me, it was always about having goals and writing them down. I always had goals on my mirror every morning, and I still do to this day. Every morning when I wake up, I have goals I want to focus on: daily, short-term, long-term. It’s about reminding yourself why you're doing what you're doing every single day, and that’s been a big key for me in the success world.

What do you invest in? What business holdings do you focus your energy on?

Right now, I’m mostly investing in myself and our fund. I’m a principal at Champion Venture Partners. We are a sports asset class private equity fund. Marcus is one of the co-founders, and you guys will hear from him in a second. But that’s our main focus right now. I pretty much like to invest in myself and what I believe in, and right now that’s the sports asset class.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

We launched a sports asset class fund at the beginning of this year. We are finishing up a raise right now for our $100 million founders class A preferred share in our fund. We’ve already filed with the SEC to roll into an interval fund in January. Our fund is sports asset focused—investing in sports teams, sports leagues, ownership in major sports, minor sports, women’s sports, and the whole sports ecosystem. We also invest in sports-adjacent properties like sports medicine, sports media, and sports technology. So that’s the thesis of our fund. The background of everyone in our fund is mostly former athletes who also have a background in finance, venture capital, and private equity.

What visualization, affirmation, and goal-setting rituals and strategies do you use to be a top 0.1%er?

One quote I have, which I really love, is: "You won’t always rise to the level of your goals, but you’ll always fall to the level of your standards."

Can you say that one more time?

Yeah. "You don’t always rise to the level of your goals, but you’ll always fall to the level of your standards."

For me, throughout my sports career, it was always about raising the standard. When you go from high school to college, the standard as a student-athlete raises. When you go from college to pro, the standard raises again. The same thing applies in business. When I came out of sports, I was new to business, and I didn’t know what I was doing at first. But as I learned and grew, I raised my standards and took the next step up. For the last four years, I’ve been running the Venture Capital Arm for Comcast Sports Tech out of Atlanta. They have a sports venture arm, and I was running that program as a managing director. I loved it, but I wanted something bigger, something better, something where I could raise my standards even more. That’s when the opportunity with Champion Venture came in. It’s always about raising my standards, and rising tide raises all ships—it raises the standards of the people around me.

What’s a million-dollar lesson you’ve learned from being a pro athlete?

Your network is your net worth. I know some athletes make a lot of money, but most don’t. Ninety-six to ninety-eight percent of athletes don’t make a million dollars in their career. In my four years of playing, I was on minimum wage in the NFL. Right now, minimum wage in the NFL is about $800,000 a year. So as a practice squad guy and camp guy, it was always about networking and meeting people. I wasn’t on the field with the Patrick Mahomes or Tom Bradys; I wasn’t the face of any organization. But over time, I built a big network because of my playing career, and that’s how I got to where I am today—because of the people in my network. For example, I played for the Cleveland Browns in 2014 for only two months. Jamil Northcutt, who’s in this room right now, was the director of player engagement for the team. Eight years later, we’re working together in the same fund. So, the network you build as an athlete is your net worth. When you're done playing, you should really capitalize on it.

What is the most costly financial mistake you’ve made or seen other pro athletes make?

Not investing in themselves. Specifically, athletes don’t always invest in their bodies. There was a guy from Utopia here earlier talking about health. I think a lot of athletes don’t take the best care of their bodies, and their bodies are their careers. In high school, athletes might be eating fast food and maybe working out, maybe not. In college, it gets a little more serious, but athletes still like to party, drink, go out, and be part of that culture. I think they miss the opportunity to take their physical skills and game to the next level. I fell short in my career because of injuries. I had back injuries that I didn’t take care of in high school and early college years. I didn’t take weightlifting as seriously as others, especially since I was a quarterback and didn’t have to lift like others. When I switched to tight end, my body wasn’t physically prepared for that. So as an athlete, the million-dollar lesson would be to take better care of your body.

Real quick, if somebody wants to be a top 1% in their field and wants to out-compete everybody around them, what would you recommend?

Go back to what I said before: raise your standards. Raise your standards for yourself, your habits, your lifestyle choices, and your daily routine. I would say make fitness, health, and fitness a priority because your thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and dreams only come to life through your body and how you bring them into the world. So I’d say take care of your body, show up with your best performance, mindset, health, and attitude every day.

And one last question, because that was your buzzer: What separates your fund from other people’s funds?

Our fund, Champion Venture Fund, is a sports asset class fund. How many people here are in real estate? I know we had that question earlier—real estate people. How many of you also own or invest in real estate? Pretty much everybody. How many of you own a sports team? How many would be interested in owning a sports team or having equity in a sports team or league? There are a lot of people who would like that. If your hand is raised, come see me after.

What makes our fund different is that as former athletes and former front-office executives in sports teams and leagues, we have access to sports properties, sports investments, and team ownership. We’ve got deals on the table where we could buy ownership stakes in European soccer clubs, women’s sports teams here in the U.S., emerging leagues, and expansion teams for major sports in the U.S. We’re doing something that a lot of other funds don’t specialize in, and that’s our big differentiator.

Thanks, Kyle.

Yep.

Appreciate it. Give him a round of applause, guys!