Grafted Is The 10x Mushroom To Your Athletic Department's Mario

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We know you're exhausted🆘... and we're here to help

But first... consider a realistic job description for athletic department staff 😆😩:

Seeking a tireless servant leader who is willing to change job roles every other day in order to meet the ever-changing needs of the department, alumni, student-athletes, and the AD. No experience necessar…....ily prepares you for what’s to come.

Necessary skills/roles:

• Branding/NIL consultant
• Social media watchdog
• Law enforcement advisor
• Family crisis navigator
• Career coach
• Academic advisor
• Guidance counselor
• Mental health advocate
• Diversity and inclusion champion
• Alumni rally-er
• Community service coordinator
• Internship connector

And somehow in the midst of that, you're probably pursuing another degree, trying to get published, or otherwise trying to advance your career.

And even all that might not be so challenging if you had the attention of all your student-athletes at the same time, as if what you do was a mandatory, regularly-scheduled course offered to athletes. But instead, you juggle the seasons and schedules of every single sport, trying to create opportunities for each cluster of athletes when they are available, interested, and (let's face it) not completely dead tired.

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Y’all are indelibly, inarguably superheros🦸‍♀️🦸🏾‍♀️

Yes, it's hard. And that's why you need to be looking for 10x mushrooms.🍄

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Here's a bold idea from the world of tech startup investment:
Don't even consider a tech solution unless it makes you 10x better at your job and makes your life 10x easier.

And if you find the right tool to make your life easier, that 10x boost isn't just for you. It transfers to your customers—that is, student-athletes and alumni. When you’re using better solutions, you’re better placed to provide better results to your community—10x better results.

Take this funny illustration from User Onboarding (thank you, The Next Web)

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The service you provide students and alumni isn't ________ (fill in the blank); it's empowering them to be awesome people who do rad $%#*!

And at Grafted, we want to similarly empower you.

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‍That's why we build apps that make the lives of athletic department staff 10x easier. Here's what I mean:

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Grafted 10x💥 the number of people serving your student-athletes.

You are 1 person, with the energy and time limits of 1 person. You can only have so many 1:1 meetings each day. The only way to grow that number is to add more people.

Grafted allows you to leverage your alumni base to become advocates and resources for your student-athletes. It alleviates the need to be everyone to every one of your athletes and instead allows you to connect them with the most relevant, diverse, engaging-to-them alumni partners.

This is exactly what we've seen at the University of Wisconsin in their Forward360 app.

“The trick is meeting the needs of each user group (student-athletes, letterwinners and employer partners) in a systematic and scalable fashion until the support from letterwinners and employer partners is so top-heavy, every student-athlete has multiple paths to a meaningful career," says Executive Director of W Club & Strategic Partnerships, Nick Pasquarello.

Grafted 10x💥 the career opportunities for student-athletes.

When the student-athlete development/life skills/career & leadership department is limited by a campus, the list of employer partners tends to mirror the list of companies with season tickets and stadium advertising.

In other words, it’s short.

Grafted communities aren’t limited by campus; as a result, neither are the companies that student-athletes have access to. Not only are you able to provide value and a pipeline of prospective employees for diverse companies—but each alum brings their own company into your network.

Remember, one key to scaling career services to help 100% of your student-athletes find meaningful career placements is 10x’ing the number of companies they can choose from. As an example, one of our communities features alumni from companies as small as 5 (a lean startup) and as large as 600,000 (Amazon—ever heard of it?).

Grafted 10x💥 the valuable content for student-athletes and alumni.

You will not believe how easy it is to generate valuable athlete outcome-focused content for your students. No scheduling rooms and food, no coordinating with team schedules, and no checking semester calendars. Plus, we’ve made creating content as easy as an informational interview—no prep, log on, and answer the video prompts.

Bottom line, on Grafted, you’re able to generate 10x the content you’re used to.

Grafted makes it easy to deliver custom-curated content

And because each question&answer from a broadcast is ✨automagically✨ cut and packaged into its own career info video available on-demand, the bi-products of your career broadcasts are 1000x more valuable than those of other use-it-and-lose-it channels.

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👉If you've been reading Goodies for a while, you know the drill... we think you should schedule a demo. (Surprise, surprise)

Sure, we think Grafted will help you do your job better.

But just as much, we want you to love what you do. To not be drained by the stress and frustration of doing everything on your own. To have gas left in the tank at the end of the day for your family, friends, hobbies, and dreaming.

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To finish today, let's return to that job description we started at the beginning of this email:

You're right for athletic department work if ... no... BECAUSE you are...  compassionate and courageous; eager to share your experience to better prepare student-athletes; determined to do for the 1 what you wish you could do for all your student-athletes.

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👀 More inspiring stuff from this week:

• How to restructure your workday so that you can ride the wave of productivity and focus🔥. Especially check out this section.

• We're excited to welcome Northwestern Athletics and the Kabiller NU for Life Program to Grafted. Big plans for their Branch app

• Great news for athletes: More and more people believing soft skills are just as important as technical skills! Whitepaper from iHASCO

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