Podcast Alert: Dan Porter – Overtime

Transcript

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Dan Porter: [00:00:00] We tend to think that young people are immaterial, and the only thing that matters is what they’re ranked, or where they’re committed, or what job they’re gonna have, or what they’re gonna major in. We’re always talking about what comes next, and I’m in the tiny minority of people who think whatever you’re into right now, that’s pretty cool. 

Umar Hussain: Welcome to Navigating Sports Media, a special edition of the Navigating Sports Business podcast. I’m your guest host, Umar Hussain. I recently joined Navigate as Head of Media after working for Disney ESPN, Comcast NBCU, and the NBA. It isn’t as simple as turning on your TV anymore, and I’m excited to share a new perspective as I interview some of the most influential leaders in sports media. 

And today we have an awesome guest. We got Dan Porter, who is the CEO of Overtime, joining us. [00:01:00] Dan, thanks for being here. 

Dan Porter: Thanks for having me. 

Umar Hussain: Awesome. I wanna kick it off because you have an incredible background. And we’ll start there, and then I’d love for you to give a little bit about why Overtime. 

But I see that you’ve got a history degree from Princeton. You’ve gotten a Latin American studies master’s from NYU. From there, you went to William Morris Endeavor, where you were the head of digital. Actually, that’s not where you jumped. Is that where– I’m kinda going backwards here. But from the beginning, you were vice president of Virgin USA, then the president of Teach for America, and then you were the CEO of, is it OMG Pop? 

Dan Porter: Yep. 

Umar Hussain: To Zynga, to William Morris Endeavor, and then you’ve done some professorial stuff as well, and then have found your way to Overtime. If you could encapture just your career and describe it in two minutes, how would you do it? 

Dan Porter: I just said [00:02:00] yes to everything, and I have no skills. So I was a public school teacher. 

I worked in the music business. I started and ran two companies that I sold. Started a first online ticketing company that I sold to Ticketmaster and ran a mobile games company for five years that I sold for two hundred million dollars to Zynga. I built the digital talent business at Endeavor. 

I worked at Virgin for Richard Branson. I don’t know. I just said yes to a lot of stuff that seemed cool, and I guess I’m good at big picture thinking, and I like consumer stuff. And I like people, and I just didn’t wanna do anything that seemed boring and traditional. And I’ve, like you said, I’ve taught at NYU for nine years. 

I almost a lot of those businesses involve young people. I think young people have an incredible influence on culture and society and I love being around them and learning from them and seeing their energy. 

Umar Hussain: No, I love that. And not to be buried in your impressive bio, but you created one of [00:03:00] the most downloaded apps in Draw Something, so kudos to you for that. 

It’s a perfect segue almost into what you’re doing with Overtime. You’re talking about young people being the culture shakers and movers. 

What excited you about Overtime when you got on board? 

Dan Porter: When I got on board was the beginning cause I started the company. What excited what excited me was that, I built the foundation of modern digital talent business and the creator economy ten years ago when I worked at Endeavor, and we signed and represented hundreds of top creators. 

And I had the attention of every young person in America. I could go pick up my kids in middle school, and they’re like, “Do you know this person? Do you know that person? Do you know this person?” And, it was clear that grown-ups were like, “Why are people watching people play Minecraft and cooking and making YouTube videos and stuff like that?” 

And at that time was really the beginning of when a younger audience started disassociating from professional sports. They didn’t have [00:04:00] cable. They didn’t watch two-hour live games or anything else like that. And it was pretty simple in the sense that I was like, okay, every major sports league is telling me that young people are not their audience anymore. 

The average age of the fan of professional sports leagues is somewhere between mid-40s to mid-50s, and yet they actually are all over here watching every single YouTuber and creator. And so I was like, “Wow, I know a little bit about both. Maybe I could get in the middle and figure out if there’s some opportunity there.” 

Umar Hussain: Yeah, if you can give, for the audience members who may not be familiar, the elevator pitch on Overtime. And it’s probably a long elevator ride ’cause you guys have expanded a ton. Yeah. But I’ll give you the platform here to provide it, and then I got some questions for you. 

Dan Porter: Okay. So Overtime is one of the biggest kind of sports platforms in the world. And what does that really mean? We have 110 million followers across all of our accounts. A quarter of a billion people see one of our videos every week. We have 20 [00:05:00] accounts with over a million followers. So if you think, like- In the old days, here’s ESPN. 

Here’s ESPN if you dropped it on the floor and it broke into 30 pieces and it owned TikTok, Instagram, and everything else like that. That platform is a mixture of sports and culture. I don’t have any rights. I have no professional sports rights. I don’t put any professional live games on or anything else like that. 

I just talk to the next generation audience in a way that resonates with them. And then on top of that, we basically made two big bets, which were high school basketball and high school football. And in both of those spaces, we have built or are in the process of building a massive national platform, both for our audience to watch, ’cause they wanna watch people who are like them, and for our broader audience to watch as well. 

On basketball, we have OTE, Overtime Elite, which is in its fifth season. It’s the second most watched and followed basketball league in the world. On top of it, we’ve sent multiple [00:06:00] players to the NBA and high-level college, and we have a women’s basketball product. And on the football side we have a spring football league, OT7. 

Six of the top college quarterbacks who play on Saturday played in our league and we’re about to announce a bunch of other products there. So it’s really like a next generation sports platform that if you’re under 25, you know what it is, and if you’re old, you don’t know what it is, but you probably are happy in your La-Z-Boy watching an 80-inch TV anyway. 

Umar Hussain: Yeah. So how do you see the growth of Overtime generationally? So most professional leagues now are trying to get after your audience. Got the olders covered, and now you– I’m curious how you think about, you’ve got the young audience. How are you gonna stay and grow with them and develop them as they get older? 

Dan Porter: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think of it, my answer’s kind of almost more of a psychographic answer. Like when you’re 17, 19, 20 years old, [00:07:00] you tap into Overtime because it feels relevant to you and because also you have your own hopes and dreams, and you see your hopes and dreams mirrored in the athletes that we talk about and that we cover. 

And your hopes and dreams might be to be actually on Overtime or to play in one of the leagues. We get thousands of messages. We did a open tryout called the Dream Tryout for one bench spot in our basketball league, and in the first day, 25,000 people signed up to try out I think as you become 20, 22, 24 years old, you go to college, you graduate, you get a job, you realize, okay, maybe you’re not going to the NBA or the NFL, and you start to stop thinking about your own dreams, and you get energy from following the hopes and dreams of who the next generation is and tapping into that. 

And so I think that’s why over half our audience is actually over 21, but the vast majority of those people started following us probably when they were 17 years old. 

Umar Hussain: Gotcha. And do you [00:08:00] foresee the future of your brand just on the platforms where you are absolutely dominating in now? You talked about over 100 million followers across various social platforms, but we know the big dollars, at least on the media side, are on the TV, linear, which is still a business model that is humming along and performing very well with a lot of fiscal rewards for leagues. 

But with that even being said, there’s a degradation happening in that space. So where do you see, what would you define as success for Overtime in the next five to 10 and then beyond? 

Dan Porter: Yeah, listen, I’m a businessperson, so I wanna create a business that goes to where the money is. And I think consumption habits are changing, and you can watch football and basketball on Amazon and Netflix and Peacock and a lot of different places like that. I think for now, we’ve found a tremendous amount of value in controlling our own distribution and distributing it on social platforms because, a- as an example, we’ve added [00:09:00] 35,000 followers on average every single day for nine straight years. 

Like you don’t get to grow at that level. On top of it, over half of our followers do not follow ESPN or a single NFL or NBA team. And so I think we’re in a good spot where we are now. Number one is I can’t predict the future. I couldn’t have predicted NIL. I couldn’t have predicted, the transfer portal. 

There’s a lot of things I couldn’t have predicted. Netflix would be showing football games. Who knows? But ultimately, I think our number one goal is to build a massive audience, not to have to be on social media ’cause it’s religion. Social media is an, a means to an end, and an amazing one for us to build a massive audience, and then it’s on us as businesspeople to be able to make a living because we have the attention of all those people. 

Umar Hussain: Yeah, I think about, we talk to a lot of league properties, teams out there, and we ask about building. If you were to start your league from scratch today, thinking a lot about it, [00:10:00] I’m almost like it’s the Overtime playbook. You’ve got creator economy. You’ve got content to supplement competition, and your arena is tricked out. 

It’s cool to watch. Clearly big brands are there. If I were to be Dan Porter, you’re now the commissioner of the NFL, what would you– Just this is a more hypothetical exercise. What do you think, would be wise of the league to borrow from you or learn from you? 

Dan Porter: Granted, they have now leaned more into the creator economy and YouTube. So I’d say, first of all, they have a commissioner. He does a great job, but if they’re ever interested, I’m highly interested. So I will absolutely take the call. Sure. But in, in seriousness, listen, they did a game on YouTube this year. They collaborated with MrBeast. I think the NBA and the NFL have to satisfy everybody who’s [00:11:00] 25, 35, 45, 55, 65, 75, and so I think they, they have taken some kinda risks there in terms of distribution that make a lot of sense. 

And on top of it, their focus on carving out days and day part of those games. I’d say especially for the NBA more than the NFL, because the NFL is primarily a national platform, I think the opportunities that the NBA and Major League Baseball and some others will see probably relate more to the RSNs, where you used to have this split between national and what I could watch my home team. 

And as those RSNs have functionally gone out of business, essentially, I think there’s gonna be opportunities there. Tho-those guys have a lot of different financial opportunity and pressure, but I don’t think anyone is ever gonna not be successful because they put their pro– a couple games or a couple things on platforms where– there are two billion people on YouTube. 

It’s [00:12:00] free. Anyone, anywhere in the world can watch it. Both the NFL and the NBA smartly are highly invested in playing internationally. When I put my games on YouTube, on average, we have people from 70 countries watch every single game, even if it’s 2:00 in the morning, because it’s available for them. 

They know how to find it. They can watch it on demand. And listen, those guys are less in the audience bui-build-building business than I am ’cause they’ve been around for 50 years, and they have diehard passionate fans. I’ve been in the league business for four and a half years and so I’m in the audience building business. 

I gotta get my product out there and meet people where they are. I don’t have the pricing power they do. But a hundred percent, Roger Goodell and Adam Silver are highly aware and focused on digital and social platforms, as well as making money on linear streaming. So I think that given the- their broad appeal, they’re doing the right things. 

I think we’re a little different in that our slice is [00:13:00] just a little smaller, and yeah. 

Umar Hussain: So that’s what I wanted to ask you about, was, like, brand building. You guys play all your games in a single location, at least for Overtime Elite. And you talked about, the RSN business. 

You talked about, the pro style, where it’s community-based. You have a slightly different definition of community. Can you talk about how you are building that audience? 

Dan Porter: Yeah, I think it’s a really good point. So we play for the internet. We do not have city-based teams. We’re not a geography. 

We’re not a city-based live event business. We are literally playing for every fan on the internet. And and on top of that, we really focus on simplification. We have a small number of teams. They play on Friday and Saturday. There’s a couple stars. You can choose to follow any team, no matter where you’re from. 

And I think, honestly, it’s probably what anybody would do if they were gonna start from scratch. I do sometimes wonder why somebody starting a new league feels that they have to create [00:14:00] regional-based teams. Number one is, if you come to a city like New York, we have a lot of sports teams already. They have a lot of fans already. 

Like, how do you get oxygen and air there? Number two, okay, so I’m from New York and the team is from New York. Why should I care? I think it is, if you’re doing something new, way more powerful to make it digital native and play for the internet. 

Umar Hussain: Yeah, and I think the argument on the other side is that with regional alliances, there is a lot of, identity, loyalty in play, and that’s why I think they would get in. 

It’s just traditionally how it’s been. 

Dan Porter: That’s the thesis. Yeah. That is the thesis. I love Brooklyn, New York, where I live. I grew up in Philadelphia. I’m a fan of teams from both those places. If you started a new league and dumped a team there, you’re just making an assumption that I then care about it. I have no heritage with it. 

I have no history with it. Nobody’s talking about it in my group chat. But just because I’m from the same place doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily a fan. People make that [00:15:00] leap and I actually don’t think that leap is necessarily true. I think you’ve gotta make them care about the league and everything else first, and you’ve gotta fish in the pond where the biggest audience is. 

And if your strategy is, “I depend on regional sense of identity,” maybe you just don’t have a big enough, compelling enough product to start with. 

Umar Hussain: Yeah, I like it. You guys have, I think wisely, particularly with basketball, you’re seeing that it’s a superstar-driven league. Yeah. Not necessarily in locales. 

Now, if you’ve asked a TV ratings person, they’re gonna tell you that locale matters but you’re not playing in that ballgame. You brought up another point earlier about NIL. I wanted to ask you how it’s changed your business and, like, how you plan to or already have adapted. You’ve clearly had some success with some very, the Thompson brothers, for example, doing very well in the league. But how did that, that development on the collegiate side impact your thinking? 

Dan Porter: Yeah. So for some [00:16:00] context, in our first season, we wanted to pay players ’cause we thought that was fair. The second we paid players, the NCAA took away all of their eligibility. Every college coach in the country hated me and hated us because we were ruining the system and this and that, and I was like, “Listen, I’m not the one who took away their eligibility.” 

Within 10 months, NIL legislation happened and changed. Did it happen because of us? No. Were we one of the top accelerants? Absolutely. Which is kinda crazy to think about. Once that happened, it meant that any league that we had in basketball, we were able to have a financial relationship with the player, and it was fully legal, kosher, legislated, and everything else like that. 

So for us, it’s been a massive accelerant of our business. Furthermore, when we see, when we’re in football or basketball we are a platform, and as they say, if they don’t know your name and they don’t recognize your [00:17:00] image, they’re way less likely to pay you more money for your likeness. And so if you come and you play in our basketball or our football leagues, and all of a sudden you get a massive amount of visibility, that’s an accelerant on a business basis, on an NIL basis to any of the players. 

So it’s able to enhance a lot of the value. I think, we see people staying in college more. We see all kinds of things like that. And at the end of the day, I am for the empowerment of young people, and I think it’s a massive accelerant. The idea that you and I could be in high school and you could be a rapper or a YouTuber or a child actor and make money, but because I dribbled a basketball or threw a football, I couldn’t make money, just didn’t seem rational or fair to me. 

Umar Hussain: Yeah. No, that’s totally fair. I wanna transition a little bit and I wanna come back to it, but you’re obviously a competition, league, property, but you also, a big arm of your business is on the content side. Can you speak a little bit to the content philosophy and how you [00:18:00] serve your players, your fans, your leagues through your ecosystem? 

Dan Porter: Yeah. So our point of view is sports media is about talking to you about sports. Overtime is about listening. I think that if you think about social media or the internet as a place to take your videos and put them, I think you’re missing a lot of what makes it powerful. What makes it powerful is brand, connection, engagement, trends, virality. 

All of those things are the native language of the internet, and we just built sports and culture platform that was in the native language of the internet. I have people who work here who are nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two years old making content in a place that no one else would ever allow them to do that. 

I think as context, I’m fifty-nine years old, and people say to me, “How do you make media for young people?” And I say, “I don’t make the posts. I don’t write the captions.” And so I just think there’s been a huge [00:19:00] opportunity there. I think that social media came and it was about highlights, but it wasn’t about stories and connection. 

It wasn’t about trends and the thing that makes social media. If you look at it right now, the funniest thing on social media is the rise of the quarter zip and, like, all of these just young people who created this funny storytelling. We’re now part of that and everything else like that. 

Umar Hussain: I don’t mean to cut you off, but you guys are taking some credit for coming up with six seven, right? You said that came out of your Atlanta facility. 

Dan Porter: It came out of a player in our league as well. And so I think what’s powerful is traditional media is top-down and the internet is bottoms-up, and we love playing in the bottoms-up content business. 

Umar Hussain: And you guys do partner with some professional athletes. You’ve got professional athletes on your cap table or invested. What do they see? There, there are, I think, a number of NBA players. You’ll– you can list the and rattle off the names of the celebrities involved. But when you talk to investors, what is [00:20:00] resonating the most with them? 

Dan Porter: I think for the professional athletes, a lot of them were just fans of the platform and used it and saw the changes and supported that. I think for investors, it’s really about just our moat is so massive in terms of our audience. I think that brands that wanna reach young people are not advertising on television, so where do they find young people in a structured, massive way? 

It’s via us. And I think that, it’s kinda like I always say “Listen, I don’t listen to the same music my parents listen to, and my kids who are in their 20s don’t listen to the same music I listen to, so why do we assume that everything else is the same?” My dad wore a blazer. I’ve never worn a blazer, and my kids are definitely never wearing a blazer. 

Everything changes on a generational basis, but I could sit and watch Monday Night Football, and it probably looks pretty much exactly like it did in the [00:21:00] ’70s when Howard Cosell was there and I was a kid. So therein lies our opportunity because every other form of culture seems to go through more radical change, and we’re just applying that lens to sports, and I think that’s what investors see. 

Umar Hussain: Yeah and then, that’s the question of, I am not Gen Z. You are not Gen Z. But as someone who is not Gen Z leading a organization that is meant for the young generation, how do you personally make decisions? I’d imagine you have some trusted lieutenants, but there’s gotta be some gut in there for you. Or maybe how do you keep yourself young? Do you know this is what we should get behind? 

Dan Porter: I make a lot of decisions. I’ve spent my whole career around essentially consumer and young people. I made a mobile game that was downloaded 250 million times. I put on music festivals to Richard Branson. 

I started my career as a public high school teacher. And so I just [00:22:00] think that besides being young at heart, I just focus on listening and paying attention. And honestly, I’d say the difference is I actually value young people. I think young people are cool. I think they have an impact on society. I don’t care about them based on what they’re gonna be in the future. 

I care about them right now. I’ve been a professor for nine years at NYU. I just think in general, in society, we tend to think that young people are immaterial, and the only thing that matters is what they’re ranked or where they’re committed or what job they’re gonna have or what they’re gonna major in. 

We’re always talking about what comes next, and I’m in the tiny minority of people who think whatever you’re into right now, that’s pretty cool. And I think it sounds small, but it’s actually big, and that allows me to tap in. I’m just open-minded and willing to listen and ask questions, and I don’t [00:23:00] think that because somebody is 17, they know less than I do or they’re any worth anything less than I am. 

And I think that’s how everybody here feels who works here, and I think it’s a superpower. I go in a lot of places, and people are like, if it’s not professional sports or professional athlete, who cares? Why should somebody care about… I was literally on an interview before this and somebody said, “Why would anybody care about these kids? 

Why would anybody care about high school basketball?” I was like, “Embedded in your question is exactly why we’re successful.” Because you’re just assuming that it has no value. You’re just literally saying, “Somebody’s 17, so who cares?” And I just think in every great business is an idea that’s slightly unorthodox or against the grain. 

And you know what the answer is? I actually care, and you know what? 110 million other people who follow us care. So great, you’re never gonna be interested in it. You’re not my audience. 

Umar Hussain: No, I love it. I wanna [00:24:00] before I wanna pivot into your culture and leadership style, I also wanna bring some attention into what you’re doing expanding into sports beyond basketball. 

You’ve got football, you’ve got women’s basketball, and I believe boxing. Could you speak a little bit to just the philosophy there? Is it really mimicking what you’re doing with Elite in expanding, or is there somewhat a secret sauce you’re bringing? 

Dan Porter: I’m willing to try a lot of things. I do believe the future of our company is gonna be football and basketball. That is where attention and passion is. Basketball is very global. Football’s the biggest in the US. I have tried boxing. I’ve been in gaming. I’ve done a lot of things, but over the next five to 10 years, there’s so much room to run in both football and basketball and I think about it this way. 

25 million people might watch an NFL game, right? That is less than 10% of the US [00:25:00] population. That means 90% of the people in this country are not watching that. A million or two million people might watch an NBA game. That is literally less than 1% of the coun- country. That means for my basketball league, my audi- I have 99% of the country that I can go after right there. 

I think they’re both incredible products with the best superstars that I remember watching in a long time, but there’s actually a lot of room to run still. 

Umar Hussain: And I’d love your thoughts on some of the, your competitors. There are other creator leagues in sports like soccer. I show Speeds back. 

I think it’s called the Baller League. But what are your thoughts on just, creator-led, and there are also former athletes that are involved as well on that competition space that you know you have a lot of entertainment options that could be your competition, but those kind of would zero in exactly on your product. Do you have a take? 

Dan Porter: I will say at a high level, I don’t feel like I have any competitors. I don’t think that [00:26:00] anybody stops watching my product to watch a creator league. Second, I think that, Felix who runs Baller League Gerard Pique who runs Kings League, Speed, I think all those guys are talented, and I think we all watch each other, and we all share ideas, and we all wanna try different stuff, whether it’s Twitch streamers or changing that. 

I think that as a place for innovation, those are additive, and I think professional sports leagues watch those leagues too and look for ideas there. But startup sports leagues and other sports don’t, like, I don’t think that any of those soccer leagues think that I take audience from them either. 

But I think that we all are inspired by each other, and I think people look for ideas in a lot of different places, for sure. 

Umar Hussain: Do you think there’s space for you to partner with a big league or with a professional. 

Dan Porter: So I am an NFL [00:27:00] partner. I work a lot with the NBA, and I’m an official Olympics partner. 

And I’m a partner of the NWSL and the ATP, so yes. 

Umar Hussain: What do those partnerships entail? 

Dan Porter: I think in the old days what do those leagues want? They wanna reach our audience. They wanted to do it on our channels and our voice, and they have sponsors who they are ably, able to satisfy in terms of linear and streaming distribution but want more social distribution. 

So a lot of times what happens is we create a lot of content in partnership with them, and then we’re able to essentially sell media against that, and then also they’re able to get audience on our platform. So when we’re in Paris for the Olympics, we are interviewing players. We’re asking funny questions. 

Somebody won the gold in [00:28:00] swimming, and our person said, “Is it true the swimmers pee in the pool?” And he said, “Oh, absolutely.” And we’re able to sell a lot of media against that. So we’re complementary to them and increase awareness for their product, and then we make money together. 

Umar Hussain: Incredible. Great. That’s awesome. I wanna shift real quickly before we get into rapid-fire questions and have a little more fun. But you’ve led teams in massive organizations like WME, Zynga, and now the entrepreneurial one at Overtime. How has your leadership style evolved across those environments? 

Dan Porter: Yeah, so this is my third startup. I think I’m probably better at leading people in a startup environment than I am in a traditional business. At the end of the day, in a way, I get better, like we all get better at anything we practice at. A lot of it actually comes from working in nonprofit. So I was on the early team of Teach For America, and I was the president of Teach For America in the ’90s when I was only [00:29:00] in my 20s. 

And I think that nonprofit is so interesting because it’s nonprofit. There’s no profit and loss. You really have to understand what your mission is, and our mission was around education and empowering young people and everything else like that. And I think that in a way, leadership that’s about meeting fourth quarter revenue projections is never as compelling to people who work there as leadership about a bigger vision about something that you’re out there trying to do in the world. 

And I think that actually working in nonprofit had a huge impact on my ability to think that way and articulate that and get people to buy in. Because especially leadership on a startup, you’re asking people to go on a journey with you. At a big company, you’re leading people who are like, “This is great. 

It’s a job. At 4:59, I check out.” But I’m asking people to trust me with their careers and try to do something really big. And I think that’s pretty different. 

Umar Hussain: Overtime’s a content company. It’s a league. When you’re talking to the young athletes that [00:30:00] you sign up to play in your league, aside from them focusing on education and playing the sport and getting the best version of themselves as possible, as brands, as content creators, what advice do you give them? 

Or do you give them any advice, or is there any direction in how they are building their brand for the future off the court? 

Dan Porter: Yeah. I think that the most successful people, first of all, not everybody, even if they try their hardest, can be successful on social media. Some people resonate with people, and some people don’t. 

That’s just how it is. But I do say to them “You should be as authentically you as you can. Don’t try to be somebody else. Don’t try to copy somebody else. Don’t try to take pictures that you think somebody else is taking. Just figure out who you are and be you. And if the audience doesn’t like you, at least you tried to be you, and they didn’t like you.” 

But people are looking for [00:31:00] people who they feel are genuine and authentic. They’re looking for people who inspire them. If you’re the kind of person who puts up 1,000 shots every day, then talk about putting 1,000 shots up every day. Why are you doing that? What makes you think about that? I think we’ve never been in a position where we’ve had more access To people because of social media. 

I think about all those people I followed musically. I had to buy their records and listen to them on the album. There was no Instagram where every day I was watching them write a song and practice and talking about their left hand and their right-hand voices on the piano. And yet now, if you’re an an artist or an athlete, you can have access to that. 

And, a lot of times people will say you keep the main thing, which means you focus on basketball or football, and you do the other stuff. But if you wanna be a brand and you wanna build a platform and a business for yourself, you gotta get out there and tell your story. And I think if you don’t tell your story, other people tell your story, and they don’t tell the story the way that you want to. 

And so you gotta figure [00:32:00] out how to make that work. And if you think it’s an afterthought, then great. That’s fine. But it’s gonna be an afterthought for you, and you’re gonna lose one of the tools in your arsenal. 

Umar Hussain: No, absolutely. No, that’s awesome. This is the more fun potion, although I very much enjoyed this whole conversation. 

This is rapid fire. These are quick 30 seconds each. Give me a quick answer, but I won’t hold it against you if you wanna expound on it, especially if it’s interesting. So what’s your– First question: What’s your bucket list sporting event outside of anything overtime runs? 

Dan Porter: My bucket list sporting event was seeing the Eagles win the Super Bowl, which I did in Minneapolis. 

And then my second bucket list sporting event was seeing the Eagles win in in New Orleans when I brought my wife, who grew up in Philadelphia but is not a huge sports fan, and everyone was like, “That was the worst game.” And I was like, “Every time they scored and ran up the score, it was the greatest game of all time.” 

Outside of that, I’ve actually never been– I was at [00:33:00] the Women’s World Cup finals, which was incredible, but I’ve never been at a World Cup or Champions League finals game. I’ve been to a Premier League game, but I’ve never been to a high-stakes one like that. 

Umar Hussain: Amazing. Amazing. Best piece of career advice you ever received. 

Dan Porter: You don’t regret the things that you do; you regret the things that you don’t do. 

Umar Hussain: Love it. What advice, in addition to that, would you give someone who’s passionate about sports and media innovation and wants to rise in the industry? 

Dan Porter: Being interested in sports is not a skill. You gotta figure out what is your skill. Are you a lawyer, are you an accountant, are you content, are you a manager? And then get that way into sports. But just being interested in sports isn’t, So what? Tell me what you’re good at. 

Umar Hussain: Amazing. What’s your favorite restaurant in Brooklyn right now? 

Dan Porter: My favorite restaurant in Brooklyn right now is Terre, which is a pasta natural wine west restaurant It’s all [00:34:00] authentically Italian, and in the summer they have a gelato place out front, and it is like far and away, and they– I think they import it from Italy, the best gelato that I’ve ever had. 

Umar Hussain: Oh man, where in Brooklyn is it? 

Dan Porter: It’s on Fifth Avenue right near where MS fifty-one is in Park Slope. 

Umar Hussain: Okay, amazing. I need to add that to the list. What’s a small daily leadership habit that’s been a game changer for you? 

Dan Porter: I try to get up from my desk and walk over to where people are just chopping it up and jump in the mix and chop it up with them so that I learn what they think, they realize I’m a real person. 

Today I walked over and they were talking about five twenty-nine accounts for their kids, and I was like, “Oh yeah, I had a five twenty-nine account for my kid too.” 

Umar Hussain: There you go. I love it. I love it. Thank you, Dan, so much for joining us today. This was an absolute pleasure for me. I think it will be [00:35:00] for our audience as well, and I wish you the best of luck with Overtime. 

I love what you’re building. If there’s any other last shout-out you wanna give, I’ll give you the last word here. 

Dan Porter: I would say shout out to Overtime, and honestly, Overtime is just the sum of the three hundred and fifty people who work here who all took a risk to do something and believe that what we’re doing is important, is big, and I appreciate all of them every day. 

Umar Hussain: Thank you so much. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us. My email is Umar, Umar@NVGT.com, and you can also connect with us on our LinkedIn pages at Navigate. Hope you have a great [00:36:00] day.