From Scarcity to Abundance: Changing your Mindset

This month, we had the opportunity to sit down with the first ever Chief Purpose Officer in American pro sports: Mike Geddes, co-founder and CPO of the Oakland Roots Sports Club and Oakland Soul Sports Club . We talked about purpose, how to strive for racial equity, and what he needs from the industry – read on for the conversation.?

Tell us about your background and how it led you to create the Oakland Roots and Oakland Soul.?

I’ve been a huge sports fan my entire life and started my career in sports journalism. I wanted to work in South Africa ahead of the 2010 World Cup, as the positive social impact for the country and the entire continent that was promised with that event really resonated with me. During that time, however, I saw a lot of brands making big claims about ‘cause-driven’ business that ended up having no substance. It made me think about reforming the sports business model to make it more sustainable.

Around the World Cup, I had the chance to work with Kick4Life F.C. in Lesotho. I saw that integrating purpose into their business, actually helped them be more successful, and for the first time, I saw how this model could really work.?

I moved to the Bay Area to start a sports social enterprise and met my co-founders of the Oakland Roots. We all wanted to create a purpose-driven team, and knew that, especially in Oakland, if we wanted to build a different structure, we had to do it authentically.?

Oakland has had quite a few sports teams leave in recent years. Why did you want to build the team here, and how did you gain the trust and support of the community there??

Over the years, so much of the passion for sports in Oakland has been exploited, so we knew we had to do “less talking and more walking.” We had to put the city and people at the forefront of our business, and mean it. In the very first public event we held to discuss the idea, someone in the community told us to “just show up and keep showing up,” which is still a part of our employee handbook today. We try not to talk too much about doing good, but to just show up in the community and get on with it. One of our most-used reminders is “the work does the work.”

What is the Anti-Racist Project, and how does it play a role in being part of the community in Oakland??

We knew we wanted to work with Common Goal to donate 1% of our salaries to drive progress, but we wanted those resources to go specifically towards anti-racism work in the Oakland community. Common Goal had nothing like that when we joined, so we worked with them to catalyze the start of the Anti-Racist Project (ARP). We wanted to look at where racism existed in our communities and address it from an institutional level. What Common Goal has created — with the help of Roots and other clubs, is something different from traditional responses to racism and discrimination. This month we launched the first “Switch the Pitch” hub in the United States, training and recruiting youth coaches to start rebuilding with the next generation. All of this helps us be a stronger, better community, and we believe investing in this work is what Oakland wants and needs from their sports teams.

Your role as a Chief Purpose Officer is modeled after companies like Ben and Jerry’s and Patagonia, but is unique in the world of sports. How do you put purpose at the center of athletes, a club, and fans, and still run a successful business??

I’ve seen first-hand, both in other organizations and at the Oakland Roots, that you don’t have to compromise your purpose for the sake of your profits, and vice versa. If you look at all of our sponsorships, we’ve redesigned them to center their purpose. While that might make some partnerships less appealing, we believe it opens up many more opportunities than we would have if we were offering “just” a regular sponsorship deal. Defining what we do and who we will work with makes it easier for us. Since we have a clear vision, the alignment between our purpose and the sponsors is more sustainable than it would be otherwise.?

For us, there’s no tension between purpose and profit, because they work together to make us more successful. When times get tough, many brands look to cut their community or Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs first, because they aren’t at the heart of the business. The success of our business is defined by the success of our purpose, so we’ve taken the approach of leaning in.?

In an ideal world, what would you like from your league and industry to move into the future??

Courage. I need the league and industry to move from a scarcity mindset, focused on crises, quarterly profits, and losses, to an abundance mindset. It’s easy to get stuck in a cynical attitude and dismiss these ideas as naive, but if we don’t change the way we think, we end up with the same systems that led us to the problems we have today.?

We have to make courageous decisions as people and as organizations. It’s not easy – in fact, it’s challenging – but at the Oakland Roots, we’ve found that’s what makes us thrive. We need to focus on what brings us together as people, and center our businesses around that.?

For more on what Geddes and the Oakland Roots are doing, visit their website.

ABOUT 17 SPORT

17 Sport is the world’s first sports impact company operating at the intersection of sports, business, and purpose. We provide strategy, partnership, and implementation services to transformational leaders in sports and business committed to forging a better tomorrow for people, and the planet.

If you would like more information or are ready to start activating your purpose through sports, please contact: [email protected].?