For the last 5 years, I’ve spent Columbus Day weekend working on a passion business of mine, called Project 9 Lacrosse. It’s both fun and challenging to build an event business in a fairly fragmented market. My co-founder, Mark Millon, and I have invested in two particular areas where most operators do not: exclusive instruction and content. While both make up the meat of our business, there are other critical product differentiators I’ll highlight, below.

Project 9 is an intense, very rigorous, instructional training camp for the most highly touted lacrosse player in the country. It’s the Elite 11 camp of high school football.

According to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association (the SFIA, formerly the SGMA), over the last decade, not only has lacrosse been the fastest-growing team sport, but also the fastest-growing NCAA sport, with a staggering 60 new varsity programs added in 2013.

Several years after Under Armour launched their first nationally televised lacrosse high school All-American game, I remember watching a Hopkins vs. Princeton game and thinking, “with HS players’ becoming bigger, faster, stronger and more skilled, why hasn’t there been a vastly improved collegiate product?” After researching the proliferating club lacrosse scene, I drew data that showed a large decrease in attendance at instructional events and increased attendance at recruiting tournaments and showcases. Additionally, these recruiting events were being offered to 10th, 9th, and even 8th graders. When I was in high school, there were Top 205 and Blue Chip showcases, offered exclusively to juniors and seniors. Welcome to early recruiting.

It dawned on me that there wasn’t an elite instructional event for the best high school player. Our product was born.

To execute, we knew we needed a dynamic group of current player/coaches to support our curriculum. The player part was important. Through our own experiences and interactions with high school players, we knew hiring people who were empathic would be just as important as the instruction we’d offer.

If we were to acquire the elite player, we knew we needed to have an elite presentation. We needed everything from lodging, transportation, meals, facilities, product and apparel, to be first class.

We wanted to disassociate ourselves from the recruiting event season. Hosting Project 9 in the Fall allowed us to distinguish ourselves from other operators. October is also a month that aggregates the fewest media impressions of the year. We felt that if we could bring two brand names together with the best high school lacrosse players in the country, we’d be able to create a conversation our industry’s media outlets would cover organically.

Our invitations were hand written, signed and sealed. We wanted the Project 9 experience to feel like receiving a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Only 50 elite players’ could attend the event, prorated per position. In year 1 we had 36 attend. The players’ had such a great experience that our business generated the holy grail of marketing: word of mouth approval. In year 2, our event sold out inside of 72 hours. In subsequent years, it’s become a regular sell out. Like a rock concert. The differentiator? We've refused to chase more revenue through scaling operations. Keeping this event restrictive and offered only once a year, ensures its novelty.

Between Mark, myself, and our production capabilities, I knew we were capable of creating incredible instruction with supportive content. However, it’s been the thoughtfulness around data, talent, deliverables, timing, and scarcity that have proven to be our best product differentiators.