We were lucky to catch up with Sean Birdsong recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sean thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

The foundation of my company was built from the lessons that I learned coming up as a young man into adulthood.

I had on the job training from my mother Candace who was an educator, and my father Otis who was an NBA player. I brought education and sports together to create my business, and to give back to the next generation.

The main steps in launching my business was to create the business itself, but to also form and create relationships with people within the space that I was trying to work in.

After playing professionally in the CBA, I worked in the behavioral healthcare field with troubled youth. I started coaching youth basketball camps with my father, the Dallas Mavericks, and in the NBA G-League.

I gained a lot of experience doing that, and that’s when I branched off to start my own. There are a lot of camps and clinics around, but I wanted to stand out by tying in education to our events.

I researched what youth and young adults needed the most outside of your traditional school environment. I found that Entrepreneurship, Health, Finance, Technology and Careers were beneficial to youth in addition to the traditional school curriculum.

The next few months were brainstorming where I could host my own event, and which venue that I could partner with. We reached out to venues in Kansas City where I live and started there.

We ended up in most or all of the community centers in the Kansas City Metro area hosting youth events. I then took that and grew it to a national space.

Sean , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Eighty Three Ventures is our overall company with businesses that involve sports, digital media content, and education.

I am most proud that we can serve the community, and the country with not only sports skills, but with knowledge from our education workshops. We get to teach and educate individuals so that they can make a difference for themselves and others where they live.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

After I finished playing, I was figuring out my next steps. The best thing that helped me was staying close to what I grew up with being sports. The pivot from basketball player to teacher wasn’t as hard because I had great teachers and great coaches growing up. I just took little bits from them and used was I was taught.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When we started out non profit our first few events I put my own money into to get it started. I didn’t have the initial resources to get a loan or funding because I didn’t have a proof of concept.

I created the concept and after a few events, we stated to catch people’s eye in what we were doing.

That led to a partnership with Cisco Systems, JP Morgan Chase and other sponsors coming on board. I believe that wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t put my own money into it first to get it going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://eightythreeventures.com
• Instagram: @theseanbirdsong
• Linkedin: https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/sean-birdsong
• Youtube: @americanballers