From NFL Player to Entrepreneur and Influencer with Chris Gronkowski

A struggle many pro athletes face is that once their careers end, it’s difficult to find an equally lucrative and glamorous profession. It is possible to parlay one’s fame into a business idea or career as an influencer, but only during a short window period in which one’s cards have to be played right. As a former NFL player turned entrepreneur and the Founder of Ice Shaker (as seen on Shark Tank), Chris Gronkowski did exactly this, and he joins us today to tell the story. When Chris got released from The Chargers after injuring himself, he dived straight into his wife’s business, and after a year they were making more money than he did in the NFL. Chris wanted to get back into sports and fitness though, and that is when he came up with Ice Shaker, the idea that would become his signature premium-quality, vacuum-insulated protein shaker. We hear how Chris leveraged all his resources to develop his product before getting the opportunity to present it on Shark Tank. Chris talks about the boom in sales his business experienced after being selected by the committee, going from $80 000 to making over three million in the next 12 months. We take a deep dive into Chris’s marketing strategies today as well, hearing him talk about how to get high rankings on Amazon, the value of engaging with one’s audience, and what he did on TikTok to generate more site visits from one video than he got from the first live airing of his Shark Tank episode.