Issue 13: Wanna Collab?

As the old saying goes, “In order to make the dream work, you gotta have the team work.” 

I was inspired this week by a classic sports debate. I often find myself debating sports with others. We were arguing about quarterbacks in the upcoming NFL draft. This wasn’t a CJ Stroud vs Bryce Young argument. We were discussing Stetson Bennett and his potential NFL career (if he gets drafted). I received a notification a couple hours later (because our phones are always listening) about an article discussing whether 2 time national champion Stetson Bennett will even be drafted. How does that happen? As one person in our debate so eloquently pointed out, “He was carried”. He was made to be more than he was by those around him.

Similar to winning 2 national championships as the quarterback, when I was in college, I was invited to participate in the South Eastern Entrepreneurship Conference (henceforth to be referred to as SEEC). My participation would be as a competitor in the elevator pitch contest. Please note this has nothing to do with elevators or baseball. It is like Shark Tank. You stand in front of judges and present your business idea. I presented a dating app. I’m not going to tell you the idea or the name because I don’t want you to steal it. When I pitched it, the idea was 3 weeks old. I made it to the final round against 4 other companies that had either working prototypes of their business ideas or money already raised. They were also all teams. I was alone. 

I ended up coming in third place out of 37 original participating companies. Some might say that’s impressive, but as for me and my house, we don’t brag about bronze. I was once called “the personification of a bronze metal.” That is offensive. To be fair, I was the one who called me that while attempting stand up comedy for the first time. It’s still offensive though…

Back to the point. Though I stood up on the stage alone, I had many people who had helped me in the three weeks preceding. The dean of the entrepreneurship department, who was the one who originally asked me to participate, allowed me to practice my pitch in front of her classes and get feedback. She then introduced me to the COO of Co.Lab, a nonprofit that accelerates early-stage startups in Chattanooga. I was then introduced to the founder of Bellhops who had lunch with me and helped me figure out the core question, “What is the problem you’re solving?” If you were to ask that question about the Daily Dispatch, the answer is “all of them.” You’re welcome. 

Though I stood alone, I had a team of people behind me. I was a better looking, less publicly recognized Stetson Bennett. Before moving on from the elevator pitch contest, I do want to take a moment to once again thank all those friends who came to one of the additional pitch contests I entered and watched me completely bomb and still said, “Good job.” You’re true friends. To anyone who is wondering what happened to the app, we began developing it with a Nashville based developer but have been on a brief 6 year hiatus. Development will resume if I decide it will make me the millions I need to retire. Honestly, it would be great if a million of you joined my patreon for $1 a month. I will write something every single day if a million people give me $1 a month. I can promise you that. 

Why bring up team work and collaboration on a newsletter I have made explicitly clear is written and dictated by one man? Simple, I want us to be a family. I want to be Dominic Toretto. I’ve seen the error of my lone wolf ways as the most well reviewed issues either contained help from you all or were written about others. *insert analogy about breaking a stick vs breaking a bundle of sticks. 

I would like to officially announce my first collab project: a Spotify playlist. Spotify is our sponsor this week by the way. Spotify: Better than Apple Music, but I do still kinda miss the roulette nature of LimeWire. Remember when Jay-Z and Taylor Swift wouldn’t put their music on our platform? Well, we got ‘em now. Spotify, we’re your whole personality one day a year when Wrapped comes out. 

Thank you Spotify for sponsoring us this week. I will say, if you never hopped on Napster or Rhapsody on the family computer, plugged in your Zune, and downloaded a song a minute, you are missing out. There is nothing like mowing the backyard at 12 years old, bumping some freshly downloaded Akon, and hoping the headphone cord doesn’t catch on anything and rip out of your ear. 

Back to the collab project. By following the link below, you will find a playlist where anyone can add songs. I have added a handful of songs I recently discovered. Feel free to add favorites or fresh finds. Then, when you read, reread, and re-reread Daily Dispatch issues, you can listen to this playlist! 

This playlist is going to be a judgment free zone. No making fun of each other’s music additions. Don’t add music you think others will be impressed by. I’ve already added a decent amount of music, so if you’re going to judge, judge me. That said:

1. The songs I’ve added are not my all time favorite songs and likely won’t be on my Spotify Wrapped. These are songs I’ve found over the last month or so and thought deserved a second spin.
2. I’ve been a professional DJ on over 10 occasions. Therefore, I have literally been paid for my taste in music. I will not accept the criticism of amateurs. 

SPOTIFY LINK:

Local News:

The Cho’s Bros soccer team had a bye this week. There is no new news to report on their progress. ESPN’s 30 for 30 spent some time with most improved player Conner Walker who is currently on a goal streak. He was quoted as saying, “I started catching a little smoke coming from the other teams and I just wanted to see what it was, and I heard there was some big smoke, flames, not really flames but just smoke just coming uh towards our team from others and it started coming to our team, and uh it just started filling up our heads with a lot of smoke. So I keep scoring goals to uh make people stop with all the smoke.” We will resume our coverage of Cho’s Bros next week. 

In other local sports news, Editor in Chief Seth Winton is on an absolute tear on the ping pong table. The drayage department of KCH Transportation has gone a combined 0-87 against him in recent weeks. He has taken a loss to the top player in the sales department and a fluke loss against a domestic ops rep. In fact the local drayage department flew in a ringer from Tampa to hand him a loss. This puts Seth at a nearly 97% win percentage recently. Please write in if you think you have what it takes.