Today we’d like to introduce you to Dwight and Dmitri Thompson.
Hi Dwight and Dmitri, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My brother and I grew up in Orlando Florida, this city holds a special place in our hearts. We’ve been playing basketball here for most of our lives! We attended Orlando Christian Prep for high school, we wanted to go and give ourselves a chance to be successful. Our school was a national powerhouse in the boys’ basketball world. Thankfully we ended up winning a couple of state championships there. I attended the University of Central Florida and I earned my bachelor’s degree in Marketing a minor from their prestigious sports business management program. My brother went on to play Division I basketball at Elon University. He graduated with his bachelors in Sports Management and a minor in communications. He went on to play professionally overseas. In 2018 a couple of months before my brother graduated, we decided to do his pre-NBA Draft process in Los Angeles, California. During that time, we started working on our brand “DT Apparel”. We were also looking for different ways to do a fundraiser to give back to the community. We grew up in the Meadow Woods area and we truly wanted to give back. That spurred our idea to sell T-shirts online. We designed a logo for the shirts, and it ended up selling extremely well. The fundraiser really gave us the opportunity to give a lot of money back to the Boys and Girls Club. Once we realized how successful the fundraiser was, we decided to pursue our brand. In August 2018, we officially launched DT apparel. Our goal was to inspire people of all ages to pursue their dreams fearlessly and to “Rise Up’ to the occasion. Shortly after that Dmitri left to begin his career overseas. Although there was a major time difference, we were still able to communicate and discuss business. Shortly after in January 2019, we launched our youth basketball league, the “Rise League”.
Setting up the Rise League was extremely difficult because we didn’t have much experience hosting big events, especially of this magnitude. Thankfully it all worked out and we initiated our first season in March 2019. It was a huge success; we quickly hosted another season shortly after in August. We were in very high spirits because everything was trending upward, but then Covid-19 came and shut down our operations completely. Being away from our kids that we trained for so long, motivated us to re-strategize and come up with an idea to solve our problem. We decided to open our own private training facility so we could train our kids. But of course, there was a huge risk, being in close quarters was an obstacle due to the virus. Ultimately, we bet on ourselves and took a leap of faith, we went forward and opened our facility. There was no Rise League season in 2020 because of Covid-19, so we only hosted training full-time for the entire year. During the spring of 2021, we started a new company called “Rise Media”. We wanted complete control of our creative, we needed to be able to tell our stories exactly the way we wanted them to be told. We offer photography, videography, editing, and Photoshop services for businesses and the public.
That brings us to the present day, currently we are “Rise League Inc”. We are a nonprofit 501(c)(3). Starting this Fall, we will be launching a 12-month scholarship program for the young underprivileged youth in our community. It will consist of monthly seminars, job tours, employee shadowing, gifts, a multitude of engaging events, and college scholarship opportunities. We want to provide the youth with unique and engaging opportunities to learn about entrepreneurship, financial literacy, creativity/ innovation, and media. At the end of our 12-month program, we will be awarding multiple college scholarships. Our purpose is for them to realize that sports and music are not the only options for them to be successful. Just as my brother and I transitioned from basketball to entrepreneurship, we aim to inspire the youth that they can follow in our footsteps. We want to continue to actively serve, our community means a lot to us and we love to be able to give back in any way possible.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
There were a few obstacles along the way. One being that my brother was halfway across the world, it made it extremely difficult to consistently communicate with him. There was a 7-hour time difference, but we did the best that we could and managed to make it work. It didn’t stop us from brainstorming new ideas and implementing them. The next major obstacle that we had to endure was COVID-19 of course. Being that our business relied so heavily on interactions in close quarters. When everyone was forced to quarantine, it was extremely detrimental to our business. We had to re-strategize and come up with new ideas for business, but ultimately, we managed to survive that phase and we’re grateful for that.
The next major obstacle we had to endure was COVID-19 of course. Being that our business relied so heavily on interactions in close quarters. When everyone was forced to quarantine, it was extremely detrimental to our business. We had to re-strategize and come up with new ideas for business, but ultimately, we managed to survive that phase and we’re grateful for that. Business owners out there, don’t be afraid to pivot/ re- strategize, that fear might cause your business to suffer. If you lack innovation, you run the risk of your business becoming obsolete.
The final obstacle was the fact that we had no experience in the initial stages of each of our businesses. For instance, we came up with the idea to open our training facility without knowing anything about commercial real estate and the multiple steps that are required to get approved. To do something on that scale you have to go through different committees and organizations just to get approved. We had to learn these things on the fly and conduct our own research. I’m grateful that our businesses are doing well, even though we didn’t have much knowledge beforehand. Sometimes you need to take a leap of faith and believe in yourself. With that being said, be sure to put in the work and do your research along the way. Faith without work is dead.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
On the basketball side of our services, we offer training sessions, leagues, camps, clinics, and tournaments. We have former professional basketball players as trainers and coaches for our services. I am currently the assistant coach for a high school boys’ basketball national powerhouse Orlando Christian Prep. We were fortunate enough to win the 2A State Championship the last 3 years. My brother has played 4 years of Division 1 basketball and played professionally overseas. We are extremely excited about our new scholarship program. There’s so much to be taught in this topic area and we are truly humbled to be able to provide a safe platform for them to learn.
Contact Info:
- Email: support@riseleagueinc.org risemedia02@gmail.com
- Website: riseleagueinc.org dtapparelstore.com
- Instagram:@rise_league @dtapparel2 @risemedia02
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/league_rise and https://twitter.com/DTApparel2
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9TMgXf8cXD50Z9NVi3vJhw
