Athlete CEO: Allowing Your Priorities to Guide Your Investment Decisions | Zach Miller, Sam Acho, Jeff Locke, Riccardo Stewart | NFL Players’ Podcast #25
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What guides your investment decisions? As an NFL player, pursuing multi-generational wealth, establishing your priorities is vital to success on and off the field.
Listen as the AWM team discusses the importance of values and priorities in the context of being an Athlete CEO.
For questions, you can reach out to Riccardo Stewart at +1 (602) 989-5022.
+ Read the Transcript
NFL Players’ Podcast #25 Transcription
Riccardo Stewart (00:11): Welcome to another episode of the AWM NFL podcast. My name is Riccardo Stewart and I get the opportunity to be your host and I'm joined with my friends and my coworkers, my partners in crime, my day ones, whatever you want to call these guys.
They're just great dudes and I love being around them. Jeff Locke, Zach Miller and Sam Acho.
So last week we started a series talking about Athlete CEO. And the point behind this is as an athlete, as a professional football player, particular audience, as an NFL athlete, who is going to make 40, 50, 60, 80, a hundred million dollars, you gotta begin to look at yourself as a business. You gotta be able to think of yourself as a business. You gotta be able to make moves like a businessman in ways that you are in control.
And so we talked about, okay, when you're coming out of college, there's kind of two different parties that you're choosing. You're looking at an agent and you're looking at a financial advisor or a financial team. And we talked about the difference of those two. Obviously we find ourselves as a family office and financial planners. But then, okay, from there, and you begin to think about building out what we would call your financial structure, like how ultimately are you gonna live your life and how is your money gonna be used and so forth. But before you can do that, you gotta think about priorities.
And I found that in my experience that that's some of the tougher things for athletes when it comes to priorities. And so, just a little off the cuff. I'm gonna just throw a question to you first Sam, why do you think finding priorities for yourself is hard? Like why is it hard for you personally and why do you think it's difficult for our athletes?
Sam Acho (01:49): I think it's hard to find priorities because oftentimes we want to do so much. Let's say, take out we, me. I want to do so many different things. I'm like, man, I want to go here and go there and do this and do that. I want to try this and try that. And it can be hard to do many things really well. You could do one, two or three things extremely well. You start getting to seven, eight, nine, 10, 12, 15. It can dilute some of your focus and energy. And so I think it's hard to really establish priorities part one because of the desire to want to do so many different things.
And then the second reason I think it's hard is because of the discipline that comes with defining priorities. As soon as you define a priority, all of a sudden your actions start to change. I remember in college when I made a priority of saying, I want to go to the NFL, my actions, my decisions, my daily discipline, all of it changed once I stated that priority.
Riccardo Stewart (02:40): That's good. So we say a lot that money is just a tool. That's a phrase we use. Money is just a tool to pay for the things that you really want and to bless and care for the people that you love. And once you understand about those things you really want, okay, now we can see what your money needs to do. But Jeff, I'm gonna ask you the same question, right? When it comes to the same question I asked Sam is what makes it so hard to establish these priorities?
Jeff Locke (03:07): Sam was really spot on with his answer. I'll add one more thing I'll add is it's sometimes very difficult to picture your future self and your family's future self. Those are priorities are right? A lot of the time you're setting things out in the future when you have no idea what's actually going to happen. So for clients that are kind of in Sam's shoes, Sam's established, got another career, has kids, has family, you might have so many priorities because you have all these things going on in your life.
But then some of our clients that are college kids, right? That just got their first taste of money via NIL. You're like, I don't know what I want to do next. I just want to get to the NFL. Like I don't really have things that I want to be trying to achieve. So that's one of the really hard things is like you got to stop the day to day, right? You got to center yourself, take a beat and be like, Hey, what do I actually want my life to look like in a couple of years or 10 years down the road, which is extremely difficult.
Riccardo Stewart (04:05): So good, Zach. So, and this is often when we sit down with an athlete, you know, what are, like, what do you want to accomplish? And they say things like, you know, I want to take care of my family. I want to make sure, I want to make sure my parents can retire. I want to get a nice house. I want to get a car, like all of these things. How do you choose of the priorities, which is the most important?
Zach Miller (04:27): I think that's, that's up to each individual because there are so many things you're you think about myself as a rookie, just wanting to buy a car like that was the first thing and then eventually I want to buy a house. And then as life changes, you have kids like Jeff talked about you have a wife and kids. All of a sudden you're thinking like generationally like oh wait, I want to take care of them. Later on in life I want to take care of them even once I'm gone that becomes like a legacy priority. So the first thing is like work backwards.
What's the most important thing right now? Is that taking care of your family? Is that taking care of yourself and your family once you're done playing, making sure that the kind of that money that stops coming in, all those big paychecks you're getting while you're a player, making sure that those continue once the careers over like that's like a lot of the focus should be is like the priorities should match kind of what you what you life envisioned once you're done playing. And so we focus hard on that and really setting up a plan for that.
Riccardo Stewart (05:24): Yeah. So I step back and I go, okay, I'm an NFL athlete and I know I need to have priorities. It's important. And Sam, what kind of questions should I be asking myself to help define and clarify like what matters most? Again, like what questions should I be asking myself to draw out those, those priorities?
Sam Acho (05:47): I think one of the questions is those things that keep you up at night. Like, what are those things that really drive you? And for some of us, it is football, and it is trying to be the best in my position. But that may just be one piece of it. For others, it may be, hey, I want to be the best in my position, but I want to change my community. And so if changing your community is a priority, then all of a sudden, you can start thinking of different ways to change whether it's the neighborhood or the area you came from. There are some guys we talk, we spend time with, and they have young kids.
And it's like, man, I want to change the future generations of my family and of our last name. They want, you know, some of these players that we work with are the first ones to go to college, first ones to graduate. And so I want education to be a huge part of the list of priorities for the X, Y or Z family name. And so I think about it as what are those things that keep you up at night? Those things that, man, I really want this thing to change in my family. And also I think about those passions or those desires, those things that, man, this is something that I get lights me up as well.
Maybe it doesn't keep me up at night, but it lights me up. Man, I love education. Like for me, I love education. I love learning and learning's always and will always be somehow intertwined in everything that I do. And so sometimes those things that are inside of you that are lighting you up and the things that are keeping you up at night that you say, man, if I could only change this and I'm in the position to change it, then my life would look different.
Riccardo Stewart (07:06): Yeah, I would be remiss to say in all seriousness, Sam, I have not even told you yet on this podcast, man, that jacket is dope. Just so you know, I should have made it a priority to let you know that I liked your jacket before I started getting into everything. Jeff, what, like give me some definitions, professor, of like values. And then the so what to that is where do values, like your own values play when it comes to setting priorities?
Jeff Locke (07:35): Yeah, so values. Two ways to think about it. It's either your principles, right? Or really what you find to be most important in life. So I think of values as kind of a filter on your priorities. So you have 20 or 30 priorities you want to achieve over the next five to 10 years. You don't have all the resources to do them right now. Maybe on your first contract, maybe you have to the second contract to be able to really do everything you want to do. Use your values as a filter to see what can I actually achieve and what should I focus on right now.
So Sam brought up a great one, education or family. Like if that's one of your top two values, right? Setting up accounts for your kids or helping your parents pay off their house or making sure they're set might come before buying that second car or going on that dream vacation when you're in your first contract. Things might change later in the road, but that's where knowing your values, which again is extremely difficult to sit down and be like, Hey, these are my top five values but they help you filter out all the noise around you.
Riccardo Stewart (08:38): Yeah. And Zach, why are priorities so important when it comes to the financial plan? Obviously we are financial planners and we've talked very little about money. We've talked very little in this episode about investments. We've talked very little about accounts because at the end of the day, like your money needs to be doing something. And so what is that something? And so I guess I want to hear from you, like why are priorities so important in building out a financial plan?
Zach Miller (09:05): Well, I think if you want to have great outcomes, you have to let your priorities drive your investment decisions. You could actually have all the money in the world at the end of the day, at the end of your life, but have terrible relationships. So use that money to bless the people or take care of the people in your life. Take, you know, buy the fun things, do all those things, but let your money and kind of your investment strategy be driven by the best possible chance achieve those priorities.
So when it comes to investing, once you have enough money, it's actually really easy to just keep making more money because all you do is save as much as possible and plow as but as much of those earnings back into reinvestment, and it'll just continue to grow. That's the math of it. It's the actually making sure that the money is growing for those priorities that will ensure that you have a, you know, amazing legacy, happiness, whatever that means to you and it's different for everybody. And then passing it on to the next generation or setting up the next generation of your kids, the people around you for success going forward. And you can do that perpetually or generation after generation if you set the right plan now.
Riccardo Stewart (10:22): Yeah, not definitely not to get preachy, but the ancient Hebrew wisdom that I hear from that is what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but then lose his soul? Like if you're not who you are, but you have all the things you want, you've actually lost it all. Or I could, if I could quote little Lauren Hill, you might win some, but you just lost one. Sam, our last question is for you, cause I'm not going to keep going on R &B hip hop and then connect it to Bible verses, but we always say that one of the things that sets us apart is when it comes to a financial plan and when it comes to serving our clients is that we take a human -centered approach when it comes to financial planning. What does that mean to you that we take a human -centered approach?
Sam Acho "The Mayor" (10:58.776) Yeah, human centered approach. It means that we actually care about you as a human as a whole human, not just the dollars and cents that you make, not just the name on the back of the Jersey, not just what you post on social media, but the actual intricacies that come to you people. Now you're getting married and what does that look like for you and your fiance or your wife now? What is OK? Well, you have you're expecting a child. How do we actually? think of you as a human now as a father. And we talked about being a husband. And so the first thought that comes to our mind, at least when it comes to our team and at AWM, when we talk about human centered and usually Ricardo and I'll text about this other guys is, oh man, this guy just proposed or man, he's just, they're expecting. Like, and then it's not just, oh, congratulations. It's, hey, what does this mean for their financial plan? Because there are actually some really important things based off this player's priorities that may need to change or may need to adjust. And that's where Jeff comes in and Zach comes in and the rest of the team comes in and says, how do we maximize their values as their specific priorities and life cycles change?
And so when we talk about being a human centered, really the only human centered financial advisory firm, we talk about the idea of, hey, a lot of us have been in those shoes. Zach, Jeff, me have all played in the NFL. Riccardo was not only played in college, but coached in college, recruited a lot of the players who we talk to right now. And so we know what it's like to be in your shoes and we not only sympathize, but also empathize with the life stage and life cycle you're in to help you try to maximize whatever your priorities are.
Riccardo Stewart (12:42): You gotta be able to have a vision for your life. And being able to have a vision, you gotta be able to understand who you are, that's where your values come in, and then your priorities. That's important to you. Once you get that going as an athlete, as a CEO, okay, now we'll begin to go, okay, what are the types of things? What are the type of investments? What are the opportunities out there for you to begin to grow and build that financial structure with you sitting at the top of the mountain, hiring and utilizing your team to put yourself in the best position ultimately to win in life. And so any questions you guys?
Jeff Locke (13:18): Dropping the phone.
Riccardo Stewart (13:24): Any questions you guys may have? We'd love to hear from you. You can shoot us a text at 602-989-5022. Again, that's 602-989-5022.