Ensuring Athlete Well-being with Tyrre Burks of Player's Health

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their success, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you'd be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Tyrre Burks, the founder and CEO of Player's Health. Tyrre, welcome to the show.

Tyrre Burks: I really appreciate you Jake, thanks for having me.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, well Player's Health launched an insurance arm of their company in 2020 to cover youth sports programs and fitness clubs across America. They generated 1 million in premiums in year one and will do over over 50 million in premiums four years later. It's a fascinating story. Make sure to listen to it all the way through.

Tyrre, um a little bit more about you. Um, you not only lead the company, which is on a mission to create the safest and most accessible environment it's possible for kids to play sports that they love by providing innovative and connected athlete safety and insurance products and services to the youth sports market. Something I think a lot of parents love to hear, because so many of us that have families, quite frankly you, you drop your kids off and you hope for the best when you come and pick them up. That they've been taken care of, they've been coached well, that they have a great experience and nothing really bad happens. But you never really know. So um before we dive into your company and the inspiration around what made you start it, where you, where are you joining us from today?

Tyrre Burks: Um, I'm joining from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Uh we're based here in Minnesota but most of our compan- uh is remote. But I'm originally from Chicago.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Oh great. Very cool. Um are you a Bears fan by chance, or...

Tyrre Burks: Unfortunately I'm a Bears fan, fortunately and unfortunately. We, we gonna have some good years ahead of us, but it's been a rough six years.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I hear you man, I hear you. Well, they got a good quarterback, we'll see what happens. Um, exactly. So, so, so great. Um you know, you're an entrepreneur today. Um kind of walk us through your upbringing and and what were some of the, the things that helped influence you to someday become an entrepreneur?

Tyrre Burks: Yeah, that's a really good question. I think um, you know I grew up in the south side of Chicago. I grew up in a project. Uh I went to school in a project and I grew up literally around that area. And I just, um I always, I've always been a big dreamer. I've always uh wanted to do more. Always been able to see myself beyond the current circumstances that I had. My mother, I grew up with a single mother. My mother she had multiple business. She used to sell cookies, they call her "the cookie lady," but she was a big baker and made cookies, cakes, all these things. She sell them in my, my football games and she was a hustler. And so I think that was really the foundation of like where my work ethic came from. Uh I'd say the entrepreneurial spirit... I end up realizing that my great, my grandfather on my dad's side owned a chain of dry cleaners uh, and I just found this out like, like, like probably six months ago. But like it's in me. And so um, you know, I've definitely been... I'm an innovator, I'm a visionary kind of dude, and, and so always thinking about ways that I can uh think beyond or solve problems that I see happening on a day-to-day basis.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: You know, you came from the south side of Chicago and you got into sports. Walk us through the journey of your athletic experiences and the inspiration. We're going to kind of just get straight into this here, tell us your story.

Tyrre Burks: Yeah. So I you know, I said I grew up in Chicago. Uh this was in a time you know, late '80s early '90s. Gang activity in Chicago was just rampant, and it, it's even worse today unfortunately. But when we think about like safety, when you talk about accessibility and safety, like I didn't start playing organized sports until my freshman year of high school. So my mom worked two, three jobs most of my life and you know she worked for her boys. It was me and my little brother, we're 10 years apart, so most of my you know call it my first 10 years it was me, I was the only child. And then my little brother came out of nowhere and here it is uh I got a little brother.

But ultimately you know sports was really a safe place for me when I started playing. I got invited to come to a football practice uh from one of my friends in high school. And I didn't even start playing football till my junior year. I started as a wrestler. I wrestled, I ran, I ran track, I swam. And these were things that just kept me busy, it kept me out of the streets, it kept me... it was a safe environment for me to develop and grow. And throughout that time I've always had an opportunity, always had a dream of wanting to do more, I just didn't know what that would be. But sports was the first place I was affirmed outside of my mom. This was the first place where someone told me that I could be something. Especially coming from where I'm at, I'm not saying I was like the, the nicest kid or like you know did everything right and I was a goody-goodie. But of course I was a knucklehead and I had my moments, but this is the first time that I had someone outside of my mom saying "Hey Tyrre, you're good at this sports thing. You're good at wrestling. You're good at football. You could do this at the next level." And it was someone that, my, my coach opened my eyes to those possibilities. And one of the things that I've done throughout my entire life was when I, when I've experienced any good in my life, I clung to it. And that's exactly what I did. Sports was a positive outlet for me and I clung to it. I showed up early, I stayed late. And, and football ultimately became the sport that I played. I end up playing uh, I end up getting a scholarship to play at a small Division 2 in Minnesota uh, which is where I landed here, how I met my wife, all of these things.

And this was the first time, here it is, I'm now out of, out of the 'hood so to speak. I'm playing collegiate football, I'm achieving my dream, and I have a really bad injury. Um and, and injuries will be a common theme in my, my, my collegiate and professional career, in that I had a ton of injuries. Um my freshman year of college I was catching a low ball with my head down, and I get hit, I'm paralyzed on the turf. Could not move. This happened, this was, this went on for like 45 minutes. It's probably the most bizarre feeling you could ever have where you literally can't move for... and I thought it was over. I thought I was never going to walk again at least in that time because it went on for about 45 minutes. I end up miraculously, things, feelings start coming back in my fingers, I get up and I walk off the field. Um, and throughout that experience um, I thought I was going to you know get back on the field immediately because this same thing actually happened when I was a junior in college, I mean in high school, and I was back out the next possession like nothing had ever happened, was off and going. My coach at high school did no better. But my athletic trainer in college definitely did. I had to see nine neurologists to come back to play. And I saw the difference between how that injury in high school was managed versus my injury in college, dramatically different. Because I had medical staff, there were policies and protocols being implemented. And here it is, what could have been a catastrophic injury I had was managed properly. I was properly cleared uh, they switched my position, I was playing inside receiver to outside receiver, and I went on to continue to play.

Well I didn't realize that you know, I went on, I played four years college, had an opportunity, I played in Europe for a year in the uh German Football League, and then I played in the Canadian Football League, I played for Calgary and Saskatchewan. And towards kind of... I played four years professionally all in. I had injuries throughout that entire time. I got that, that bulging disc in my neck led to torn hamstrings, torn ligaments in my toe, broken fingers. Like all of this happened and my body just started to fall apart. And I was just having injuries after injuries, and I realized at some point I needed to figure out what I was going to do next. Now during this time I end up losing both of my parents and I had some, I had an inheritance of life insurance money that uh that I had saved.

And when I, when I decided to hang it up, I was playing for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, I knew I didn't want a regular job. I knew I wanted to go and create something. And um, the idea wasn't really Player's Health in the beginning, it was a communication system for sports organizations. Um I used to have to... because I was in the training room a lot, I'd have to go to training with the athletic trainers, I'd have to be in meetings with my coaches. And there was very little communication that happened between all of these departments. And so I thought that this needed to exist, so I created a system called Team Interval that would allow all of these constituents within the sports team [to] communicate. And within that system was an injury, injury reporting function. And that was the basis of the foundation for Player's Health. When I first started thinking through this application I didn't know how to balance a checkbook when I first started a business. Like, I knew nothing about business, I just knew I had this idea. I saw the, the evolution of technology everywhere, and um I knew that that was where I wanted to really start to kind of begin my professional career beyond me playing sports.

And yeah, I, I fumbled trying to get a product to market. And really um, three years into that, trying to figure it out, I recognized that you know, Player's Health, this injury management tool that was being organically used, was really the source. And it really brought, it came back to my, how I started my whole journey with this. These injuries led me to think about what safety would look like for youth sports. And so when I look back I recognized that sports was a safe place for me. There are kids that, that want to be the next Tyrre and that, that come from where I come from, and sports was that for me. And I recognize that there are kids today coming into environments where they assume that they're safe, and they're experiencing things that show that that may not, not be the case. And these lives are dramatically changed. So kids are dealing with emotional, physical, sexual abuse, or they're having injuries that go terribly wrong. And that was the foundation of Player's Health, that was the impetus for me starting. Which is, I recognized that here's the positive environment of me coming into a safe environment and all the possibilities, the travel, everything that I experienced through sports. And here it is now, kids now coming into an environment that's not positive and that experience in sports dramatically changed their life. You take a kid's motivation away, you take their confidence, their innocence away at a certain time in their life, they may not ever get those things back. And the trauma could have a negative effect on their lives. And so my focus in building Player's Health around safety was around, we want to make sure that sports are giving kids only the positive things that we want sports to give them, and not withdrawing or taking something away from them that they may not ever get back.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Such an inspiration. What are some of the things that you do? So for example, you have a kid that plays soccer or plays football or plays in some youth organization. What, how do you take the risk away for example from the coaches that begin to coach in those leagues? Or what are some of the tools that, that, that the youth organizations are using that come from you that are helping them?

Tyrre Burks: Absolutely. So in running a sports organization, I think very few parents... that, I think you alluded to this in your intro... we as parents, we very rarely think about all of the safety requirements that an organization should or shouldn't have. We're just assuming that these things are already in place and I'm driving my kid. Well, we also recognize that. So when we started with injuries, this was something I was very familiar with. How we manage injuries in youth sports are dramatically different than in college sports. So if an injury happens, we wanted to make sure that organizations were following return to play protocols. So if I think about a concussion, that's probably the most widely talked about injury that is happening in youth sports today. A kid has a concussion or a suspected concussion, they need to see a medical professional and there should be a medical clearance that's required before they can return back to play. Our app would allow them to document that this incident happened. Not diagnose it, but document that the injury happened and that "here are the things we need to collect before this kid should be allowed back to play." That was the initial app that we built uh, it's our injury management platform. We actually have one of the largest injury databases in youth sports. Hundreds of thousands of injury reports have been documented in this system and we've properly tracked athletes back to play. So that was the foundation of what we did. Injuries need to be managed in youth sports.

Secondly, in order for you as an adult to come in contact with a minor, we need to make sure that you're credentialed. We need to make sure that you go through a background check, abuse awareness training, concussion training. Are you prepared for the unforeseen things that happen in youth sports and can you respond properly? Is what we want to educate these volunteers on. And most of youth sports is volunteer ran and driven. And so that is what we decided to focus on next. Which is making sure that adults were properly credentialed before they come in contact with an athlete and that they were prepared to respond properly when things happened. We also happen to be one of the largest background screening providers in this space. This year alone we've credentialed over 880,000 coaches. And so all of these coaches have to go through their background check, their abuse awareness training, concussion training, before they can get access to their roster. Now none of, like of course there, some of these pieces were in place, but none of this was being done in one platform with the expertise that was being brought to these organizations at a fraction of the cost that they would normally pay. That was the value we were bringing. How do we make athlete safety affordable and how do we make it easy for them to do it by actually bringing a team of experts to help them do it.

And then lastly, uh unfortunately emotional, physical, sexual abuse is extremely prevalent within youth sports because it's a vulnerable market, it's a vulnerable place. If you don't have these policies and protocols in place, and unfortunately we've also seen news articles of organizations that have fallen prey to this. You know, you think about your USA Gymnastics, USA Swimming, Penn States, the list unfortunately goes on. So we decided to pick up the torch and act as a repository for allowing athletes, coaches, or parents to anonymously or privately report abuse incidents, and then we would act as a third party in investigating those incidents. So that was the first four years of Player's Health. We acted as the risk management arm of the organization. And as you can imagine, we're seeing kind of the best and the worst of youth sports. And we're helping organizations respond properly. But thinking about this health and safety of these athletes as the number one priority, above the scoreboard.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, it's amazing how much has to go into thinking through the sort of the back end of what happens around youth sports. You do read about the articles in the newspaper and you just scratch your head and think how could that happen. I mean you got all these parents, at least eyes and ears are on the street to see what's happening with their own kids, but you just can't be there all the time. And uh it is heartbreaking, and it does change their life and they become a different person, and maybe they you know have mental health issues down the road, whether it's depression or you know different elements that come out of it, anxieties. Um so that's, that's you know a great sort of foundation platform there. Talk a little bit about the type of organization that you work with across the US and we're talking about youth, so what type of sports do you support and what are kind of the parenting companies of those sports that you support today?

Tyrre Burks: And so when you think about youth sports, you know, think of your Little League, Pop Warner, these are organizations we're all very familiar with. But there's over 400,000 youth sports organizations in the United States that represent close to 60 million athletes that are playing sports, sports every day. And the market's massive. It's, you know, it's a, I think the, the most recent update it's over a 10 billion dollar market youth sports is. And it's growing. And so when we think about the organizations we support, we're supporting those 400,000 organizations. But the way we went to market originally was that we went whale hunting. We went after large national organizations. So US Youth Soccer is one of our clients, we write 42 of the 54 state soccer associations. Uh we write you know, USA Cheer, we write USA uh Boxing, USA Softball. Like these large national organizations have thousands of organizations within them you know. They, they sell membership to, and to be a part of a member you get access to insurance and services and governance, and all of that's provided by the national organization. So we went after the large national organizations. So today we support over 20,000 sports organizations. Uh we write 75% of soccer in the United States. Um we write all of flag football mostly in the United States. We write 3,000 gymnastics clubs. Um uh, there's so many organizations, but there's not a sport that we don't write or support. And um and, and we're doing that in both US and Canada.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: So when I think about professional sports, I think the NFL, I think the MLB, I think you know US Tennis, like, but they all have youth organizations that kind of roll up to them. So what are your tie-ins to sort of the bigger brand professional sporting teams?

Tyrre Burks: That's a really good point. So we actually write all of the professional leagues, their youth sports programming. So we write, we do all of NFL FLAG, we do all NBA Junior, we do MLS NEXT uh, or MLS GO. Um there's uh MLB Pitch Hit & Run, like all of their youth sports programming, tournaments, activations, we do the insurance, athlete safety for a lot of those events. And those relationships came through just us focusing on athlete safety. So these are large organizations with massive brands, and they have a lot to lose if these things aren't managed properly at a young, at, at the youth level. And they wanted to bring us as an, as, as an organization... it wasn't around insurance, which I know we'll get to. The foundation of Player's Health and getting a lot of these large national organization[s] or professional organizations were "We need organiz- someone that can do it right and help us implement these policies and protocols." That was the foundation of us getting all of these larger accounts.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. And when you say write, walk, tell listeners what you mean by when you say write.

Tyrre Burks: Yeah, so we're actually, we're actually an insurance company today. Uh if someone would have asked me 10 years ago, "Would you be in, would you be selling insurance?" I don't know what I would have said. Uh I probably would have laughed and it would have been the furthest thing from my mind. But yeah, Player's Health today is an insurance company. We write, we, we write gross premium for a lot of these organizations. So we sell them general liability, participant accident, crime, D&O, cyber, property. All of their commercial insurance we provide for them. Now, we're a different insurance company, and that was, that was the idea. In that four years into this we realized we collect a massive amount of data on how organizations are caring for the health and safety of athletes, what they're doing good and what they're not doing good at. And we recognized that there was a correlation to the amount of claims that these organizations would have. So if we're trying to prevent abuse incidents from happening and we're doing a good job at doing that, and we're seeing organizations that are having these massive claims and insurance companies are paying out the claims for it, it'd be a good idea for a carrier to have access to this data. And that was my original pitch. I started talking to carriers saying, "Hey, we have all this data. As a carrier that has access to this you probably want to get ahead of the claim, because once a claim happens it's already too late." And so that was our entryway into insurance. We were licensing our technology to carriers so that they can offer our technology for free for these organizations to implement. And then we ultimately decided we, it was going to be best that we do it ourselves. Like, we, we love this industry, like we live and breathe it. And so we created a different insurance company. So we set up a brokerage, an insurance brokerage, and then we set up what it's called a Managing General Agent or MGA. Think of us as a quasi-carrier. We're an underwriter that underwrites on behalf of a larger carrier, but we are the insurance company providing the insurance to all of these organizations.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Talk to us about four years ago when the idea really started about transforming or transitioning into adding an insurance arm to the company. Where were you at from an employee perspective, where were you at from a revenue perspective, and where are you at today? And as we end the year.

Tyrre Burks: Yeah, it's definitely day and night. So at that time it was pretty bleak, I think to be quite honest honestly. A lot of these organizations, we realized that youth and amateur sports organizations, one, they don't have a lot of money. And so if they're going to spend any money, it's going to be on things that they absolutely need to run a sports order. So background checks, yes, but injury management software, maybe, maybe not. That's a nice to have. So any nice-to-haves, it's going to be really hard for to implement. They all want to implement it but they can't afford to. And so we were at a point, I think we had generated 80, 90,000 in revenue at that point. Um I was out of cash. Uh I was still trying to fundraise and get an institutional fund to look at Player's Health and build it into a bigger business, but we didn't have the business model to do that. And so I realized that this point, Tyrre, you had never become an, you, you had never been an administrator of a sports [organization].

So I decided to volunteer as a sports administrator for two years. Uh it was in Apple Valley Athletic Association here in Apple Valley, Minnesota. Sat on the board, and I was our risk manager. I ran all our background checks and did all of our stuff. And realized, you know, what an administrator really has to deal with on a day-to-day basis. And during that time our insurance premiums doubled. And I was really curious like, how could our premiums go up when I'm implementing all of these new policies and protocols, we haven't had any claims? And so that's when it hit me. "We, we should... insurance companies really care about this data." And I started talking to our insurance broker asking why our insurance premiums doubled. And he was like, "Well, the market seeing all of these insurance claims around abuse, and like the carriers are getting scared and like the rates are going up because a lot of carriers are deciding not, not to write youth sports anymore. Because they can't predict when the next USA Gymnastics is going to happen." That was his response to me. And the light bulb really, it hit me, it was like, "Like here it is, Player's Health, the first four years have been 100% focused on safety for these kids, understanding how we can implement policies and protocols to reduce incidents, and those incidents are leading to claims."

And so at that time I started presenting a different value problem. Here is a new insurance company that uses data to underwrite and price risk. All of these carriers are leaving the space. It's dramatically impacting the cost of insurance in youth sports. Because at that time we went from like 20 carriers that write liability insurance in youth sports, now they're only... they're only about a handful now. So when you have a contraction of the market like that, prices skyrocket. So insurance premiums started, on average, organizations were seeing 30, 40, sometimes 100% rate increases on the same coverage if not less coverage. And that is impacting accessibility. So most parents don't know, we don't know this, but a portion of our registration is paying for insurance. And so if insurance goes up, registration goes up. And I go back to where I grew up, my mom made $30,000 a year, she was a lunchroom manager. She can't... she, there's no way she would be able to afford what I pay for my son to play tribal basketball today, including hotels and all of these other things. So accessibility is really important, and the cost of insurance is being passed down to the parent. And so our focus was really, how do we help get insurance carriers to care about what we do and then how would we build a business around that? And then honestly I went on a two-year journey of learning everything I could about insurance. And then I, I started talking to more investors around what this new idea could be, and was able to successfully raise a Series A. We raised four and a half million at that point, we built an MVP, we got the market. As I shared, we did... as you shared, we did a million dollars of premium in our first year. 6.7 million our second year. 35 million last year, and this year we, we broke over $50 million.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's amazing. Yeah, what a story. I, I just, you know, you got to use the resources you have. You don't always have them, and you have to be resourceful. And you taking the time to dive into the trenches to be an administrator, and then also really do the research what it's like to, to, to run an insurance company or all the intricacies behind it. I mean, insurance is something you need and we all have in different areas, but it just seems like a black box sometimes. You don't really know how it works, you don't understand how it, how much it costs, you don't use it until you need it, and then once you use it one time your rates go up, so you don't want to use it. And there's all sorts of, you know, unknowns in that space. But certainly uh, I just, I love the model, and I also love the industry. I mean if you think of you know Berkshire Hathaway and Geico and all these companies they own, it's you know, products that you need, not nice-to-have, and also reoccurring, which is uh the beauty about insurance, insurances. Um so that's incredible. So four years ago you, you see the revenue go up. How much revenue, how much money did you raise in your Series A, or to date so far? And how big employee-wise are you today as well?

Tyrre Burks: Yeah, so today we've raised over 40 million. Um we did $4 million Series A. I mean, we call it a seed round, uh our A was about 10, and then we did a $30 million. And that was two years ago. And so um, the employee base grew as well, but honestly it didn't grow initially. We, we went from like two of us, me and my co-founder Chris. It was us for a long time. Uh we, we would bump up to maybe six or seven employees. And there were some market adjustments. Um we have to survive COVID. Running a sports business and insurance during COVID, really tough. So we were about 12 people going into that um that series, that seed and that A. We raised 30 million, we're about 55 to 60 employees now.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You know the path of where you're at and where you started was lots of left and right decisions, choices and directions. If you were to do it all over again, I know you're still a young company, what would you have done differently?

Tyrre Burks: There's so much I would do. I think the biggest thing that I would do, and it's now just an awareness that I have around fundraising and use of capital and your motivations to fundraise. If I didn't know what Player's Health was going to be before I started fundraising. And I think that's a big mistake that a lot of young founders make, in that you have a great idea, you're getting some validation in the marketplace, and you're assuming that that's the validation needed to go and raise capital. And if you're charismatic, you know, you can you, you're a people person and you can hit the pavement, you'll raise capital. But doing that prematurely puts you on a path to grow with maybe not the right incentives to grow. And so I, and my... now the way I'll re-describe that is when I first started, I you know I raised that uh, I raised three and a half million in kind of a friends and family, re-, call it Team Interval, pre to Player's Health, like year two, year three. I had no idea what this business could be. I had a bunch of ideas around what it could be, but I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't set on it, I was still tweaking. A lot of money to raise not having a firm business model, not having repeatable sales that's coming in. And so I, I pivoted 50 times to our first institutional raise. And yes, once we raised our institutional, maybe there was a couple pivots, but they weren't as drastic. And the growth was a lot more uh, call it, it was a lot more sustainable in terms of the growth because I had a real business. And I, and I knew exactly what this business could be.

So if I, I, I, I gave up a ton of equity along the way because I didn't know what we're going to be. I was, call it, I was incentivized, it sometimes it, it, it was a disadvantage because I was on the growth train. Once you take outside capital, you're signing up for growth. And sometimes whatever cash you get in at that point you're just happy to get revenue and you're going to keep running down that path. And that could be a dead end, that may not take you to the outcome or the exit that gets you to a nine-figure exit, but you got some cash, you got some validation, and you want to just show revenue growth. What I would have done is I would have waited. I would have cash-flowed the business as far as I possibly could on my own, worked a second job, did whatever I could to validate the business model and understand exactly what I was building. And then I would have raised outside capital. And it would have been a lot less painstaking, I would have given up less equity along the way, and, and I think it would have, it would have allowed me to... I, I would have, I wouldn't have wasted as much capital along the way as well. So I think there's a waste. But of course there's learning and things you can do that you take along the way. But I think you want to be really thoughtful about the amount of capital you raise before you understand where the business is going to be.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, really insightful. A lot of companies we work with come out of Y Combinator and Techstars and are bootstrapped and they raise capital and sometimes it's too much too soon, they give up too much. Um there's uh one of our guest speakers or one of our guests in an episode a few months back uh, name is Don Muir, he's the CEO of a company called Arc. He came out of Stanford and they, they created this fintech company where you can raise capital... you can get capital without giving up equity. So you need $10 million and you're a company that generates a certain amount of revenue, they kind of take that into consideration, look at your risk profile and, and really it's a, just a, it's another option to, to, to have the funds you need to scale but not give up as much equity. And so there's a lot of innovation happening in that space so interesting to hear that. Um you know, today as you, as you continue to grow and you look at the future, I mean it seems like there's, I don't know, it just doesn't seem like there's a lot of competition in your, in what you're providing. Like what, what why would a comp- why would a youth organization use your service versus like another insurance carrier? Are there, are there other options out there, or what's, what's it look like for you on the competitive landscape?

Tyrre Burks: There's a few other options. I think the biggest difference between us and the competitor is that we're not just pedaling policies. And I think everyone's call it perception of the insurance industry, most people would say it's a negative one because the trust... and there are a myriad of factors why people would say that. I think one of the things that we're doing differently is that there's, there's been insurance companies that have existed in sports, sold insurance to these organizations for decades. And they sold them a policy, didn't help them manage the risk, and just, just watched the rates go up. And now these organizations are just left trying to pick up the pieces. We believe that as an organization, it's in our best interest to make sure that we help you create a safe environment. If that is 100% our mo-, our mission, the more on mission we are, the more money we can make. And that's ultimately our business, that, that's how our system works. So if you implement risk management, you implement policies and protocols, this keeps your incidents down, which manages your cost. Now your rates aren't going up because you're not having all these incidents, you're not having all these lawsuits. Which ultimately keeps your rates either flat, or you get discounts as you implement. And for us, the less claims you have, the more money we make. That's the dramatic difference.

And then it's the way we look at an organization, the way we underwrite. Most of everyone in our space, they look at the previous 10 years of claims and they go, "Hey, you haven't had any claims, you're a good risk." Well what we've known and what we learned over the course of the past 10 years, that's not a good indicator to a good sports organization. You, USA Gymnastics, perfect example. Decades went by, really good risk, no claims. Well, what mechanism did you have to understand incidents that were reported? Like how, how is the organization internally managing these incidents before they actually become a lawsuit? And then they didn't just get one lawsuit. They got multiple lawsuits that became one class action lawsuit at a moment in time that looked back over 30 years. If I was a carrier, yes they were a good risk. But all of the incidents along the way... if they would have had Player's Health they would have had a leading indicator to get ahead of the incidents, stop the bleeding before it became these massive claims. And that's the biggest value add that I think we have. Is that we help our organizations get ahead of the claim by focusing on mission. The more on mission we are, the more money we make. The more organizations save, the, the more safer these kids are going to be. And so it's truly a win-win. I think there are very few companies that could say "we can do good and do well." We definitely have that business, business model. And I don't, none, no other... none of our competitors can say they have the technology, the industry expertise and the passion that we have to, to create change in this space that's not directly tied to a dollar amount.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay great, yeah. System paused a little bit but we captured everything, that was great.

Tyrre Burks: Yeah. Yeah, no worries.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay, um I I just love what you're, what you've created. How has building and growing Player's Hea- Health over the years changed you?

Tyrre Burks: That's a really good question. Um, I think in the beginning when I first started this business, like one, my nature, I, I want to share love. I want to, I want to create things that are going to be good for people, that are going to help and solve problems. And so when I first, I had more of a, call it, philanthropic lens to how I built a business. Not recognizing that in order for me to make the biggest impact, I have to generate revenue and build a sustainable business model along the line. So it can't just be all, "I want to give everything away." And because if I continue to do that and not have our cup filled along the way, we won't have enough to give. And so I think over time I recognized that yes, as philanthropic as I am, as, as on mission as I am for what we're doing, we need to build a sustainable business model that generates revenue, that has strong financial controls that allows us to build a business that could have the massive impact. We have to be everywhere in order for that case, we got to build a big business. So financial infrastructure is really important. And I don't think I really valued that in the beginning. Uh it was just, I was heart-led, and I wanted to build this business. And as I've now matured, and I'm still maturing, still learning, um I'm now understanding the importance of um being a good steward over investment capital, being a good steward over expenses and our people. And I think stewardship is what has helped me through building this business. And that I'm, I'm a way better steward over the, the resources that I've been given to ensure that we could be fruitful and, and, and... so it's been, I'm happy that the process is not over, but I think in the beginning it was just like, "I need to give everything." Now I recognize you need to be a good steward over these resources so that you have more to give along the way.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that message. You know we're gonna just, I don't know if you're wanting to share this, but I know that we talked previously, and you're going to, you're launching a podcast here coming up pretty soon. And you want to share a little bit about what that's about?

Tyrre Burks: Out. Yeah, yeah, well I, so I've been, I've been, everyone's been telling me like "Tyrre, you need to write a book or like do a podcast or whatever it is." And, but I wanted to make sure that it was really unique to who I am. So I, one, I'm a, I've been an athlete my whole life. And uh, but also faith plays a huge role in my life as well. And that there's a common theme in terms of my relationship uh with, with, with the Father that I want to share. And I recognize that there were points in my life where maybe I was walking a certain way and I wasn't doing things that I thought I, that I should have been. And ultimately I found out that faith, it'd always come back to my faith.

So I'm launching this podcast called Trophy Testimonies. And I have a massive network of professional athletes, college athletes that all have that, that, that are in their sports and they're living out their faith through their sports and using their sports platform for the good. And, but there was always a moment in our life where we were playing for the trophies, we were playing for the cars, the money, the clothes, the women. And at some point we realized that life is bigger than that, and, and, and our faith really came, became our foundation. So I'm excited to launch this podcast. I got so many professional and collegiate athletes that are going to be sharing their stories, their testimonies so to speak. I'll be sharing mine of course.

Um but yeah, it goes back to me living in my personal mission. Everyone in our company at Player's Health has their own personal mission. So yes, we have a company mission, which is to create the safest and most accessible environment for an athlete to play the sport that they love. But it's important that we all live in our personal mission. And this is what gets me up out of bed every day. So I want to create a world of love, acceptance, and safety. I do that through creators leadership, empathy, and using my voice. That podcast, Player's Health, like my whole role that I occupy in Player's Health is me living on mission every day. And so I really appreciate you, you, you bringing that up. And yeah, if you are open, and uh, if the audience is open to listening, yeah, we, we'll have our first episode coming out first week of March. It'd be great to have you guys uh tune in.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah that'd be great. I see behind you uh, Randy Moss's jersey. And don't know if you have any connection to him, but obviously professional athlete we all know and love.

Tyrre Burks: Well yeah, I, so I live in Minnesota. And Randy Moss, his time in Minnesota is legendary. And I'm 6'5", you probably can't tell, but I'm a tall... I was a tall wide receiver. And I was fast. And you know I was running 4.3s when I was running my 40s. So I was a fast receiver and I modeled my game after, after Randy Moss. Randy Moss, Larry Fitzgerald, uh Andre Johnson, those are the three. Like, and they're all 6'4", 6'3", 6'5" big. I was like two, I was like a 200 pound receiver. So like the... I, I, I definitely idolized um uh Randy Moss from a sports perspective, for sure.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Right, in terms of the guests um, sounds like they're going to be a lot of athletes and sharing their stories. Um, don't know if you have anybody you want to kind of share on, on now or maybe we'll just wait till, till you start promoting it. But I know that there's you know, whatever your belief is, and again um I'm not here to tell you what to believe in. I happen to be a Christian, but you know um higher power, whatever you want, whatever you believe in, there's so many athletes that you know you can see on their jersey or they're painted on their wrists or they have tattoos of whatever they believe in. Um and it is about you know, the story behind how they got to where they're at, and we don't hear those stories. We just see the good life. There's a lot that goes on in between the beginning and the end. And uh to me that's a really interesting um platform to be able to understand and hear the stories that others, others can relate to that are in the trenches going through things. So really excited about uh your podcast. Certainly we'll plug it when it's coming out, just let us know.

Um uh, Tyrre, I want to thank you so much for coming on here today and sharing your story. And more importantly, um you know the inspiration behind why you're doing what you're doing I think it's going to make a big difference. And can't wait to catch up with you in 6, 12, 14 months to see how things are going, have you back on the show uh as, as, as requested if you want. Um I also want to thank the listeners today for listening. It means the world to me that you spent your time with us. My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal. Hope you have a great holiday, enjoy the rest of the week, and we'll catch up with you on the next episode. Until then, take care.

Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.

This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.

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