Athlete Entrepreneurial Spirit and Mindset Training Kit

For athletes who want to see how others made the move, and what to learn next.

Download the kit

PDF, 70 pages, English

Most readers of this kit will never raise a funding round, but many may open a club, a studio or a workshop. The stories were chosen for that range, from a small rowing club to a company sold to an international buyer, and every fact in them comes from a public source.

Alongside the stories come courses and reading, each tied to the mindset areas the assessment measures.

What’s inside

Athlete stories
Fourteen athletes who went into business after sport, each told in the same twelve parts, the hard part included.
Online courses
A catalogue of 24 courses, most of them free, with suggested paths through them.
Books, podcasts and talks
A directory that opens with five resources to start with and includes resources for each partner country.

Where to start

Taken the assessment? Each part has an index by mindset area, so start with the areas where you scored red or amber. If not, pick three or four stories that look like your own situation: your country, your sport, your stage of career.

PDF, 70 pages, English
Led by Compass Academy

All outputs

  • Research

    Research Report on Athletes’ Entrepreneurial Mindset

    Available

    A mixed-methods study of 100 athletes and 12 interviews in Poland, Türkiye, Belgium and Norway. It maps what athletes already bring to business, what they lack, and how the barriers differ by country.

  • Assess

    Entrepreneurial Mindset Assessment Tool for Athletes

    Available

    A self-assessment of fifteen to twenty minutes that shows what you already bring from sport, where the gaps are, and where to start.

  • Empower

    Empowerment Toolkit

    Coming soon

    Four modules built on the research: identity beyond sport, low-risk ways to start, country-by-country paperwork, and the financial basics athletes said they were never taught.

  • Connect

    Supporting Kit: Networks and Community

    Coming soon

    Where to go next: incubators, funding programmes and mentors across the partner countries, listed for people whose schedule is not a nine-to-five.