LA Tech Week X Expert Dojo X Camino5
Athletics in Business: What Founders Can Learn from Elite Performance
Los Angeles Tech Week brought together some of the most resilient people in business, founders, investors, and, in this case, professional athletes.
At Expert Dojo, Camino5 co-hosted Influence & Inspiration: Lessons from the World’s Most Competitive Stage | LA Tech Week 2025, a live conversation about how elite performers translate discipline, mindset, and resilience from sport into entrepreneurship. The night wasn’t about highlight reels. It was about habits.
Choice Over Circumstance
Shaquem Griffin, retired NFL linebacker, co-founder of The Y.O.U. Brand, and a globally recognized speaker and advocate, reframed resilience as process.
“It’s easy to choose when things are good. The real choice is when it’s hard, and you keep going anyway.”
Griffin explained how the same discipline that took him from overlooked recruit to professional athlete now powers his speaking and brand work. His message: confidence is built through consistency, not comfort.
Consistency Creates Confidence
Chris Copeland, retired NBA forward and founder of Cope Collective, connects athletic repetition to business execution.
“Athletes and founders are the same: obsessed with getting better, even when no one’s watching.”
He built Cope Collective from the network he earned on the court, showing how resourcefulness and relationships can outperform funding when they’re paired with daily, measurable reps.
Discipline Is Transferable
Doc God shared how bodybuilding shaped every part of his life. Waking up at 4:30 AM to train taught him how to build systems that scale, in fitness, film, and entrepreneurship.
“Discipline is the root of everything,” he said. “Your health, your focus, your success, it’s all connected to the choice to do what others skip.”
That same framework now fuels his creative work and business ventures: set structure, measure progress, and execute daily.
Redefining Identity
Jayon Brown spoke about the identity shift after the NFL, moving from structured seasons to open-ended business building.
“You wake up every day knowing what you’re training for,” he said. “Then one day, that structure disappears. You’ve got to find your next goal.”
That transition mirrors what many founders experience after a funding round, acquisition, or pivot, the need to redefine purpose when the playbook changes.
The Shared Language of Performance
The panel — Shaquem Griffin (retired NFL linebacker; co-founder, The Y.O.U. Brand), Jayon Brown (former NFL linebacker; entrepreneur), Chris Copeland (retired NBA forward; founder, Cope Collective), and Doc God (27-time world champion bodybuilder & filmmaker) — showed how championship habits map cleanly onto founder life: clarity of purpose, systems that sustain effort, and a team that keeps you accountable.
Chris Copeland added perspective from his time in international basketball and entrepreneurship:
“What you do every day defines who you are becoming. Consistency builds confidence.”
Every athlete pointed to a person or unit that made the hard parts livable, a coach, a sibling, a partner, a squad. Founders need the same: believers who remind you who you are when your own voice gets quiet.
What Founders Can Take Away (From the Athletes)
Discipline is the multiplier. You can’t control outcomes. You can control inputs. The score takes care of itself when the reps are real.
Choose especially when it’s hard. Progress is a daily decision, not a lucky break.
Build your team on purpose. Find believers and truth-tellers. Make support a system, not an accident.
Redefine identity on schedule. New goals, new habits, same standards. Transition is part of the work.
Recover like a pro. Rest, review, and reset aren’t luxuries; they’re performance tools.
The Camino5 Lens:
Brand as Performance
Ryan Edwards (Camino5) closed with a simple bridge between sport and startups:
“Athletes train for clarity, every rep has purpose. Founders need the same thing. Brand is performance: a system that keeps you clear, consistent, and credible when it gets hard.”
That’s our operating idea at Camino5: you don’t announce a brand, you practice it. Clarity, repetition, and alignment turn effort into momentum.
Keep building like an athlete.