A corn-fusing experience that’s a-maze-ing
The jig is up on Lake Wissota
March 24, 2025
GREEN BAY – When the 2025 NFL Draft comes to Green Bay next month, the event will launch a number of aspiring athletes into the next phases of their careers.
University of Minnesota seniors Jack Christensen and Luke Rexing are among those participating in the big event – though for them, the next chapter isn’t professional football, it’s professional entrepreneurship.
Rexing and Christensen said their creation – MyDraft – is “an innovative promotional booklet aimed at enhancing the fan experience during the 2025 NFL Draft,” offering deals on purchases at 32 of Green Bay’s establishments.
“It’s similar to a poker run, (where) there are partnered businesses, you buy this booklet and you get access to all of these deals at a variety of different local businesses,” Rexing said. “It’s not just bars, restaurants and coffee shops, but all the above. So, it’s access to all of the local gems around Green Bay, all in one place.”
Christensen – a Green Bay native – said he’s chosen some of his favorite businesses to include in the MyDraft booklet, in hopes of helping promote the establishments to locals and draft tourists alike.
The full details of the participating businesses and deals are listed at mydraftexperience.com, with some examples including:
- Mona Rose Winery: Buy one bottle of wine, get one free
- Maple Buzz Cafe: Buy a Maple Explosion breakfast sandwich, get a free latte
- La Carretta: Free guacamole and chips when dining in
- Live Wellness: 10% discount on any IV infusion
- Appleton Cigar Company: One free house cigar
- The Depot: $2 off any craft beer
Christensen and Rexing said they’re grateful for the businesses’ participation, each of which decided upon what deal to offer or menu items to highlight.
“Especially with targeting these local businesses, we wanted to allow them to promote their favorites, or what’s important to them,” Christensen said.
The booklets cost $25 each through the end of March, before prices rise to $30 for April, Rexing said, and contain a total value of more than $200.
“One of the cool things that puts us apart from different deals or these booklets that go around, is we are giving 10% of all of our revenue back to a local nonprofit, Curative Connections,” Christensen said. “It’s a place that I have a personal, family tie to, and I’ve seen the good work they do and the mission they follow.”
He said he and Rexing decided to run the deals from April 18-30, “the week of the draft, plus or minus three days on either side.”
“There are some locals where it’s a popular thing to not want to be in town during the draft because it’ll be so busy, so we want to make sure that they still had access to these deals,” Christensen said. “So, (we have a) little buffer room on either side of the draft week that you can go and take advantage of these spots, and then also, obviously, during the week of the draft (we’re trying) to get people out and about in Green Bay and (to go) see some different places.”
The booklets’ QR codes will direct purchasers to a digital map, Rexing said, displaying the locations of each of MyDraft’s participating businesses.
Rexing and Christensen said the booklets are available for purchase through the website and at some of the businesses.
They also said they’re making plans to sell the booklets in person the week before and during the draft.
Though Christensen and Rexing said they’re not able to leverage all the planning, effort and experience for college credit, the duo said the venture is their first chance to apply their education to real-world entrepreneurship.
“We wanted to get experience with creating something, and learning what that process is like – with filing an LLC, getting your EIN number with the IRS and all of these internal business workings that you really don’t hear about too much when you’re (new to entrepreneurship),” Rexing said.
Longer term, Rexing and Christensen said they hope to expand on the wisdom of this experience and apply it to future business endeavors.
For now, though, Rexing said he hopes locals and tourists alike will be open to “taking a chance on a couple college kids just trying to make something work.”
“We’re putting in as much time as we possibly can into this project, and we want it to be a win not just for us, but also the community with Curative (Connections) and the local businesses around Green Bay, all wrapped into to one, with a win for the consumers as well,” he said. “I think it’s overall just a great deal for everybody.”
How the booklet came to be
Christensen, a finance major with a minor in accounting, said he met Rexing – a marketing major/international business minor from Minneapolis – when the two lived across from one another in the dorms their freshman year, quickly becoming friends.
“We had long talks in the dorm about making something happen in the world,” Christensen said. “We both had some pretty entrepreneurial-based minds right away. We were kind of the go-tos for each other to talk about that stuff.”
He said the two would eventually join the same fraternity and attend the university’s Carlson School of Management together, but it wasn’t until their senior year when he finally hatched the idea for their first co-venture, MyDraft.
Describing himself as an “avid NFL fan,” Christensen said he was planning on coming back to Green Bay to experience the draft in his hometown.
As a business student, though, he said he began to consider what opportunities the unprecedented tourism could yield, thinking “there’s got to be a million ways to capitalize on it.”
After spending last Thanksgiving back with family, Christensen said it was during the “very boring drive” from Green Bay to Minneapolis when the idea hit him.
“I kind of came (up with) this idea by comparing it to college bar crawls and how those are always so successful on college campuses,” he said. “You know: you buy something – a t-shirt in that case – and then it comes with all these partnered places where there’s a deal; that sort of thing.”
Pondering the practicalities during the four-and-a-half-hour trip, and pivoting to a broader span of businesses beyond bars, Christensen said he “slowly pieced together that this could totally work.”
“The baseline was kind of built there,” he said. “Then I talked to Luke, and he came along and really helped create everything that (MyDraft) is now.”
Jumping into research, Rexing said he learned last year’s NFL Draft, hosted in Detroit, brought the city an additional $200 million in local revenue.
“A lot of that money went to local businesses and went and became more of a long-term capital thing for the city, as opposed to just a short-term, one-time boost in profits,” he said. “So, (the draft) is really good for the (host) city. After Jack pitched the idea to me, we did a lot of research on how we can make this profitable, and how we can get in on the action.”
Christensen said Rexing suggested expanding on the original MyDraft concept of deals for 15 businesses to a more topical 32 – one for each NFL team – which also served to offer a broader range of options for consumers.
“Getting those first few businesses on board was essentially door-to-door knocking,” Rexing said. “A few years ago, I had a sales job where I went door to door (selling) roof insurance, and I think that really helped with us being able to pitch to these businesses and literally just walk in, ask for an owner and say, ‘Hey, we have this idea. It’s free for you guys to advertise with us. How can we make something work between us?’”
The early goings were difficult, the business partners said, with countless weekend trips to Green Bay and a precious few businesses agreeing to participate in the unproven venture.
As more businesses joined, though, they said MyDraft’s momentum and credibility built, as they ultimately secured the 32 participants they sought.
“Without them, we aren’t anything, so a huge thank-you to all 32 partners,” Christensen said. “They really helped us chase our dream and put this thing in motion. Every single one of the places are incredible… and I’m just super excited to get the chance to promote them and promote local (patronage).”
Rexing and Christensen said the final component was finding a suitable charity to support.
With Curative Connections – a nonprofit promoting healthy aging and independence – they said they found not only a meaningful cause, but additional wisdom as well.
“They’ve been super helpful,” Christensen said. “Kari (Moody) there has helped us get some resources to reach out to the media. We met with her, got an awesome tour of the facilities and got to see how it all operates. It’s a really, really neat organization, and they’re excited about (MyDraft), and we are pumped as well.”
Christensen and Rexing said they’ve also benefitted from digital design help, provided by mutual friend Joey Snippes.
Otherwise, they said they’ve handled all the pitching, marketing, social media, web design and virtually all else solely between the two of them.
The partners said working on MyDraft while finishing their senior year of college has “been a lot to handle, but doable.”
Rexing said it was especially tough for him, Christensen and Snippes to send the booklet’s final design file to be printed, knowing from that point, no more edits could be made.
“Then it was a realization of, ‘Okay, the hard work has just begun for advertising and actually selling the thing,’” he said.
Drafting dreams
When it comes to the project’s possibilities, the partners said they see no reason not to dream big.
“We’re excited to hopefully sell 5,000 booklets,” Christensen said. “And with 5,000 booklets, we’ll be able to give our goal of a donation back to Curative Connections.”
The two also said they hope this could be just the start for MyDraft.
“Next year the draft is in Pittsburgh, and I know there will be some Pittsburgh reps coming down to check out the draft, just like (Green Bay representatives) did in Detroit,” Christensen said. “Hopefully, (MyDraft can) get on their radar (and) show what we were able to do just from late November until now. If they give us a chance next year, with a whole year to work on it, just imagine the local businesses we could promote in that area, too.”
With MyDraft, Christensen and Rexing said they recognize they’re taking a chance – an intentional challenge they’ve learned to embrace.
“I mean, we’re at the perfect age where I think people should be taking risks,” Christensen said. “Getting something steady and something that you know is guaranteed is a great way to set up life, but this, in my mind, is the time to take a chance to try new things, kind of put my mind where my heart is and follow a dream.”
Their experience with MyDraft, Rexing said, “takes a little bit of the fear out of risk-taking.”
“I did the door-to-door knocking and had plenty of experience with rejection and failure over and over,” he said. “I think, like Jack said, just being able to act on something if I have an idea, (it) isn’t as intimidating anymore. I’m very willing to kind of face-plant and just fail, but that willingness is exactly why I think (MyDraft) will succeed.”
For more information, visit MyDraft’s website and accounts on Instagram and Facebook.
