Jim Cavale was sitting in the audience at a tech conference in Birmingham, Ala., in 2016. At the time, he was president of a successful fitness company in the city that had grown into a national brand, but his mind was beginning to think about new challenges.

That inaugural Sloss Tech conference, in 2016, was a game-changer for Cavale. As he listened to keynote speaker Gary Vaynerchuk, the wheels began to turn.

“I was very comfortable and very passionate about what I was doing at Iron Tribe Fitness,” Cavale recalls. “Gary’s talk stirred a lot of passions that are embedded inside of me. He talked about the importance of personal brand and social media and how important it is in terms of athletes. He talked about leveraging the platforms to accomplish your goals in business and in life.

“He talked about things that led to a conversation between him and me afterward, that really kept stirring in me after the event was over. Less than two months after that event, I ended up deciding that it was a good time to sell out to my partners and I found myself in New York in Gary’s office telling him the story of the impact his talk had on me. I knew that I was going to build something new in this sports/social media realm. I didn’t know what it would be, whether it was going to be consulting and services or technology-based.”

That idea becameInfluencer (INFLCR), which launched in late 2017 and now works with some of the biggest brands in college sports and politics. The INFLCR software allowing clients to store, distribute and track their digital assets — photos, videos, story links, GIFs and more — through a cloud-based INFLCR account as they flow through the social accounts of their brand ambassadors. (more…)