Economic Insider

Athlete’s Thread Helps College Athletes Make Profit With Licensed Merch

Economic Insider Staff Economic Insider Staff on November 16, 2022

When the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) adopted a new policy allowing college athletes to make their own brands and profit from it, Luke McGurrin and Karthik Shanadi knew they had to step up and help athletes take advantage of the opportunity, hence the birth of Athlete’s Thread. 

Banking on their experience as founders of Greek House, a platform providing custom apparel to over 500 colleges built in 2013, McGurrin and Shanadi want to leave a massive impact in the collegiate licensing space. Their first venture was followed by the establishment of College Thread and, eventually, Threadly. Today, they aim to expand their services to student-athletes who want to launch their own businesses and help each one of them, not only the star athletes, make money from their name, image, and likeness, making it fast and easy for them to conceptualize their merch, produce enough supply, and reach online stores in no time. 

“While Athletes Thread is a new opportunity, this is ten years of experience leading us up to this point, and we’re ready to scale like crazy after refining and perfecting our technology,” said McGurrin. “The best part about this is helping tell the unique story of every student-athlete. We believe that if you’re a student-athlete, even if ESPN isn’t telling your story, you’re already a hometown hero and have a huge community behind you that would love to support you. What we really want to do is help all of these students realize how much they have accomplished and be the driving force to not only get their story out but help them be successful,” he added. 

Athlete’s Thread is taking an active role in uplifting the lives of student-athletes with customized apparel. The company’s solution provides its clients with the opportunity to showcase their personalities and tell their stories through their merch. The platform currently hosts over 2,000 athletes from 12 colleges, while 58 colleges are currently waiting to go live. Some of the athletes from the Athlete’s Thread family include Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young and break-out athletes Jahmyr Gibbs, Jalen Milroe, and Trashon Holden from the University of Alabama. 

“We’ve found out how to take products, and athletes live in less than three days of getting signed on. Our platform has really simplified making officially licensed merchandise for both athletes and colleges,” said Shanadi. “Our mindset working with all these athletes, the colleges, and the athletic directors is to help them tell their story, but also make sure we are helping them be successful both on and off the field,” he added.

Over the few years, Athlete’s Thread aims to welcome over 8,000 athletes into its community and expand beyond merchandise and apparel.  

“It’s already complex enough being a student and athlete at the same time, so when you start hearing about licensing compliance and taxes, it can become overwhelming. So, there’s also a little bit of fear of the unknown and how do I do this safely,” said McGurrin. “So what we’re also trying to do is demystify the name, image, and licensing process and make it extremely easy for the athletes to where we’re essentially removing their risk,” he added.

Aiming to scale their company to become a leader in the sports merchandise industry, McGurrin and Shanadi are taking groundbreaking steps in assisting athletes with their branding ventures, becoming a solid force in providing athletes with a well-rounded boost using their name, image, and likeness. 

My Plan Keeper Protects Retirees Against Market Volatility

Economic Insider Staff Economic Insider Staff on November 16, 2022

In this era of economic volatility, finding a safe place to store one’s assets and finances can be confusing. Just recently, the S&P 500 was down 21.43% and the bond market, largely considered by many to be a “safer” option, was down YTD 15.79%. Equities market and bond markets have been down in quarters and months together but it’s more rare for them both to be down in annual returns. For many seniors in retirement or those already gearing up for it, this news is enough to send someone into a panic. My Plan Keeper is a company that helps people, especially seniors, protect their finances, as well as their life plans, from an economy that’s become too complex to understand.

My Plan Keeper was founded and is owned by Carla Garcia. As a financial advisor and relationship manager, Carla has spent the last 20 years serving a wide range of clients, including business owners, professional athletes, healthcare workers, government employees, and hardworking individuals. She spent a major part of her career working for Merrill Lynch and Citi Personal Wealth Management in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale markets, which allowed her to gain extensive experience with domestic and international clients.

“I built this company so that my clients no longer be confined to a small group of solutions and also to help clients build confidence and bring awareness to the importance of building a solid foundation to protect their existing plans by adding safe money strategies that a bank typically won’t offer them,” she said. “Being independent is truly a game-changer for me because I can now represent my clients 100%. I hope many advisors realize what a disservice they are doing to their clients by strictly offering what their institution has in inventory. Now I have hired experts in the field who give me access to not only a huge warehouse of solutions but to truly unbiased research, making sure I am offering our clients only the best that fit their needs.”

After mulling it over for some time, Carla decided to take a leap of faith and leave her six-figure job because she was fully dedicated to her new mission of giving clients the genuine security they needed. Today, My Plan Keeper Company offers honest advice and strategies backed by solid research so that clients can safeguard their financial and life plans and live the best possible life. Carla’s passion for helping her retirees drove her to learn the ropes and become certified to offer Medicare plans. She knew she needed to do so for clients to understand better and for them to avoid sales agents who focus more on getting money.

What makes My Plan Keeper stand out is its genuine mission to positively impact the retirement community. Unlike other organizations, they are not money managers. Instead, a Financial Keeper acts as an objective outsider so that clients can have the power to implement solutions and build a solid foundation for their plans. “I do not want to sit here and position myself as a financial advisor. I am a Financial Keeper, a retirement expert and a safe money strategist who has witnessed so many clients succeed and many fail. I am taking that wisdom and sprinkling it. My Plan Keeper will provide a positive impact socially for generations to come,” Carla shared. 

“The retirement planning community is very large, and there is a lot of competition and misinformation. Unfortunately, we are all built to believe in what we believe, so we get a lot of mixed opinions,” she said. Adding to her point, Carla emphasizes that sentiment and emotions drive market results, so financial planners and advisors often offer clients market-risk products to generate pay and revenue. “One thing we can not predict is when markets will stabilize, but when it comes to retirement, income is the pillar, and retirement income should not depend on portfolio returns,” Carla added.

Other organizations that aim to help retirees often neglect to protect their plans against market volatility, inflation, long-term care cost, sequence of return risk, taxes, and even Medicare.

Carla Garcia holds many licenses, including FINRA Series 7 and 66, as well as a CRPC® designation. Moving forward, she aims to develop her brand further and help thousands of new retirees with tools that will revolutionize how people plan and protect.