Owning Your Wealth as an NFL Player | NFL Players' Podcast with Zach Miller and Erik Averill
Enjoy NFL Players’ Podcast? Leave us a 5-star rating & review to help others like you discover the show!
Episode Summary
As an NFL player, are you getting the financial advice and returns you deserve?
In the first episode of the NFL Players’ Podcast, former Seattle Seahawk and Super Bowl champ Zach Miller is joined by AWM Capital co-founder and former professional baseball player Erik Averill to discuss the most important financial questions that all NFL players should be asking, how to start building your financial team, the goals of this podcast, and the things Zach wished he would’ve known as a rookie now that he is retired.
Join us each week as Zach breaks down the most important actions you should be taking to help create long-lasting wealth in your career as an NFL player that will allow you to leave a legacy long after you retire.
Episode Highlights
(1:03) Zach’s biggest goals for the NFL Players Podcast – helping players grow and keep their wealth
(1:31) Zach Miller: “I hope to be the financial advisor to NFL players – that knows the most, that does the best for their clients, and above all else treats them like I wanted to be treated and would’ve liked to have had as an advisor when I was a player”
(1:55) Erik Averill: “At AWM, we understand what professional athletes actually need”
(2:20) When do you start to understand that football was a business?
(3:55) How should players think about themselves as a professional?
(4:45) The “lifecycle” of an NFL player
(5:00) Zach Miller: “You’ve put so much effort and time to being an NFL player - to achieving that goal and achieving that kind of excellence on the field – that you should demand that off the field.”
(5:43) The problem with most financial firms
(6:04) The robust team every NFL player should build around them to help them achieve success on and off the field
(7:22) As a second round NFL pick, what was it like to suddenly come into that kind of money as a young player? What do you wish you would’ve done different?
(9:04) What advice would the Zach of today tell Zach as a rookie?
(10:01) The main goal of this podcast
(10:57) Some of the most important questions NFL players should be asking
(12:32) What’s behind Zach’s passion for advocating for NFL players
(13:33) Why Zach joined the AWM Capital team
(15:49) What was it like to change agents as a player?
(18:57) Zach Miller on business and finance for young players: “For me I’m always going to side with the players and see it from their point of view. I want to be able to communicate that I was in your same situation: you don’t have to be perfect, you can just be good and your situation will be excellent by the time you’re done playing.”
(20:07) Being the CEO of your professional sports career
(21:22) Why just liking your financial team isn’t enough (Resource: The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey)
(22:32) Holding people accountable to keeping your best interest at the top of the priority list
Stay Connected
AWM Capital: IG | LinkedIn | Facebook | AWMCap.com
+ Read the Transcript
Erik Averill (00:05):
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the NFL players podcast. I'm your host, Eric Averill co-founder of AWM Capital. And I am joined alongside my co-host former NFL player, Zach Miller. Welcome to the podcast, Zach.
Zach Miller (00:20):
Thanks Eric, for that introduction, I'm excited to be doing this, first-time podcasters. So I promise I can get better and I'm looking forward to this.
Erik Averill (00:30):
Well, we're hoping all that media training will pay off and we're putting you in the hot seat, but really excited to launch this podcast. As a lot of people know, AWM Capital, we've worked deep with the MLB players for a very, very long time, and this is our entrance into the NFL.
Erik Averill (00:50):
And it's really exciting to have you, as not only a former player, but now someone who's passed the certified financial planning designation. And we'd just love to hear your thoughts of what it is that you're trying to accomplish, sharing with players, agents, families of players on this podcast.
Zach Miller (01:07):
My biggest goal is to help athletes, particularly NFL players, not just to raise their financial IQ, but to help them make better investment decisions. Being able to pick the right team of advisors, to help them be able to grow their wealth, keep their wealth, have the retirement that they want, achieve their goals while they're playing, take that stress out of their lives.
Zach Miller (01:32):
And so I hope to be the financial advisor to NFL players that knows the most, that does the best for their clients and above all else, treats them like I wanted to be treated and would have liked to have as an advisor when I myself was a player.
Erik Averill (01:50):
And I think this is a really unique conversation and opportunity for us to dig into what does an NFL player actually need, because you're not guessing about it. One thing I love about being part of AWM, and we founded this company over a decade ago is, we're former professional athletes.
Erik Averill (02:07):
We're not guessing on what are the unique lifestyle, what are the unique services that they need, what are some of the complexity of being an athlete, and I'd love for you to just maybe walk through, when did you understand that football was a business?
Zach Miller (02:25):
I think, I first understood the business side when I'm a rookie and I see the NFL veterans, the eight year, 10 year guys, when they get cut from the team. They're a starter or they're a really good player, maybe possibly Pro Bowler an All-Pro and they're too expensive for the team, so the team cuts them.
Zach Miller (02:54):
And you realize real quick that eventually your career will end. It happens to all athletes, there is a timer on your career. You can't play forever. And as soon as you can understand that as a player, as soon as you can understand that the end will eventually come the better you can start planning for after football. And I think, every young guy in the NFL gets that wake up moment where you see the business side of the game.
Erik Averill (03:24):
Yeah. I'd read recently, it's a $14 billion industry. And a lot of times, you played for the Raiders, you played for the Seahawks. And we think about the logo. But what we really don't talk about is that it's a company. These are 32 multi-billion dollar companies and treating players, really what they are, is assets, right?
Erik Averill (03:48):
They're investments to help generate profits for that company. And that might sound very cold, but as a player, how should players start to think about themselves? One of the things we always hear, and we'll get into it is, "Think about yourself as a CEO or as a business." Does that resonate with players? What advice do you have for players when it comes to thinking about themselves as a professional?
Zach Miller (04:15):
It does resonate. It takes time though, as a young guy in the NFL, you're just trying to prove yourself. You're trying to establish yourself on the team, contributing as best you can to help the team win, earning the respect of your teammates. And then as you get older in the NFL, as you learn more, as you get more business savvy, you can start to take that approach, but it's definitely a learning curve.
Zach Miller (04:42):
There's a life cycle of an NFL player. And as you get further and deeper into your NFL career, you definitely understand the business side of the game from a team point of view, how you should really be looking at the professionals you surround yourself with, and who they are, what standard you're holding them to.
Zach Miller (05:05):
You've put in so much effort and so much time to being an NFL player, to achieving that goal and to achieving the excellence on the field, that you should demand that off the field, whether that's, who you hire as your agent, who you hire for your financial team, and it should be a team, it shouldn't just be one individual, that's really not good enough. And that's not the service that you deserve as a player, you deserve the absolute best.
Zach Miller (05:32):
I know that there's a need for that. And that's a big part of why I wanted to come work at AWM, is because it's built from the ground up to service the needs of athletes. And immediately when I was looking at places, they're not a good fit for athletes. They don't understand the athletes, they don't understand what's going on in their head and how quickly a career can end. And those type of firms will never understand the athlete.
Erik Averill (06:03):
You bring up a great point. We know this, that the greatest driver of our wealth as professional athletes, is our career. And so much of what we need at certain times of our career is a robust service team around us that understands our lifestyles, understands our psyche, understands how to make a lot of those decisions. When Brandon and I, when we launched AWM, it was really built out of that of saying, "When we looked around, there was not an existing company that was built to meet the specialized needs of the athlete."
Erik Averill (06:38):
What you really saw was the mass markets, the Merrill Lynch's, the UBS, the Wells Fargo's that they may have a few athletes here and there, but really what it was is, it was a tack onto an existing business that was built for the massive fluent and as an athlete, I think that we would all get this analogy when the off season hits, we don't roll over to 24 hour fitness or LA fitness.
Erik Averill (07:02):
You would never do that. That's crazy. You go to EXOS, you go to PFS, you go to the elite specialized place because you know that to stay at the top of your game, to make sure that you're starting and ultimately don't get fired and your careers over, you demand excellence. And so I love hearing that.
Erik Averill (07:20):
One of the things that I would love to just dig into is through your story. It's curious to me that you said it wasn't even until your rookie season, you really started to grasp how short and shrewd it was as a business, because you're a second round pick out of ASU. What was that like when you first came in to money? What were you, 21, 22 years old?
Zach Miller (07:44):
I was 21 when I got my signing bonus. And it's life-changing money. You go from a scholarship check of 900 bucks a month in college, to all of a sudden, your paychecks are huge with a couple of million dollar signing bonus. And it's really tough to be prepared for that.
Zach Miller (08:04):
And it's why I wish that I would've known what a certified financial planner was when I was a rookie, because I would've just hired one immediately and really vetted that professional. Instead I did what... In hindsight, I wish I could've done so much better as I hired an advisor from Merrill Lynch.
Zach Miller (08:25):
And while these people that work there, they can be good people, but the business model is not really set up to help an athlete succeed. The other handcuff to only the small amount of advice they can provide on a portfolio.
Zach Miller (08:42):
You want to have a portfolio that does well, but you need to look at all the other financial assets, all the other financial decisions that come into an athlete's life, and you can really optimize and help a player achieve wealth and sustain that wealth through a holistic plan.
Zach Miller (09:02):
I wish that I could go back in time and tell myself, "Hey, you need to do a better job of surrounding yourself with the right team of advisors." That does the tax planning, that does estate planning, when you get to that point, that does the right planning and covers your insurance, whether that's disability or life insurance with a family.
Zach Miller (09:24):
These are the things that you're not going to get if you're not at an independent place, if you go to one of those big brokerage houses, they're not going to give you the financial planning first advice that you need. And that's one thing that I could change about my past that would have added so much benefit to me as a player when I was playing, to be able to take that stress off myself, and to be able to build wealth more efficiently, more effectively. And it's what I could have done differently that I know now.
Erik Averill (10:00):
And really, that's the goal of this podcast in the future, right? Is to help future players, whether they're just starting out, or they're NFL veteran, or they retired player, start to bring awareness to the things that, you just didn't even know that you needed.
Erik Averill (10:14):
I think that's one of the hardest things is, your window's so short and money is really a by-product of the fact that you are so concentrated on trying to perform at the highest level that very few people do in the world.
Erik Averill (10:28):
And you really can't take your eye off the ball as far as that performance, that a lot of times they're turning over so much trust to our agents, to our financial people that we don't even realize that we need disability insurance.
Erik Averill (10:44):
You share a story that we'll get into in a future podcast of, you signed a multi-year deal up in Seattle after being a free agent that you just assume, "Hey, I don't need this anymore." Or the other things we'll jump into is, it seems like it's a trend. Every time you sign with a new team, you buy a house there.
Erik Averill (11:02):
Are these the right things to be doing? There're even questions you just don't even know you should be asking along the way. So, we're hoping to uncover those questions and answers for players. One of the things I would love to hear you talk about is defining what success is, and define what winning is for an individual family.
Erik Averill (11:23):
I think sometimes we forget about this, where we're so stuck in the weeds that we're talking about tax planning or investment, but for a family, what are they trying to achieve?
Zach Miller (11:33):
This comes down to personality really, but I think everyone once you have a family, is you just want financial security, and you want the outcomes, for myself it's taking care of my family and kids. I have four little ones I've been married to my wife for 10 years. We have seven year old twins, a five-year-old boy and a one-year-old girl.
Zach Miller (11:58):
It's being able to provide for them. And in working here on something I care about, is something that I want them to see. And I want to show them that, when you're passionate about something and you can work and attack that, whether it's trying to change an industry or fixing a problem that I see in the financial services industry, that's what I want to be able to show my kids that when you're passionate about something, you should go out and try to change it.
Zach Miller (12:31):
And that's why I'm not just saying we should educate players more. I think you need the right people, with the right reputation. I would go as far as to say that, ask any coach or player I've ever played with, and they would vouch for me because I'm about the actions and what you do, should align with what you say.
Zach Miller (12:54):
But as I say, "Talk is cheap." And I've seen so many people talk a good game and make promises, and whether that's in investments or in family and life it's about, see what actions they do. That's why I went back in and got my finance undergrad at ASU. I finished my degree, because that was important to me.
Zach Miller (13:15):
I went and did the certified financial planner education, because that's important to me to have the knowledge, if I'm going to be an advisor to NFL players, I need to be able to back that up with not just the education, the knowledge of what I've been through playing.
Zach Miller (13:31):
But also, the experience of coming here to work with athletes and seeing what you guys have done with baseball players, and being able to establish that in the NFL is something that I hope that I'm going to achieve. It's just a matter of time.
Erik Averill (13:43):
Yeah. And what was so intriguing about having you join the team is when we set the mission of this company it's, "To help our clients unlock the full potential of their wealth for maximum impact." We always say, "money's not the ultimate goal, it's a tool to be used for impact." And it's looking at as something you parked on, this is a passion of mine.
Erik Averill (14:06):
It's not about trying to expose professional athletes to get access to their dollars. We see this unfortunately in the typical financial industry world, is you have these big brokerage homes, starting athlete divisions, and they might go hire a former NFL player, but that's a marketing tool. That's a sales individual who's still trying to get access to you as a client, so that they can sell you things, completely different, than here you are as a player, who's lived it out.
Erik Averill (14:37):
The thing I also love about the CFP education is you were doing that to apply it to your own personal wealth and your own family. And so, this isn't just something you're talking about, you're living in and out, you went through the draft, you went through free agency sign a long-term deal. You went through a lockout in the NFL, changed agents, went through a catastrophic injury. Now you're dealing with retirement. You were a union rep through all of this.
Erik Averill (15:03):
And what was so inspiring to us was, here's a guy who doesn't need a job. He wants to make an impact. He wants to change an industry. And the thing that was so important for us when we started AWM was the fact that being a former athlete is not enough, it's great that we know what it's like to be in the locker room, but it's the professionalism of, we're trying to hire the best financial experts.
Erik Averill (15:27):
And so, building that team around, really asking the question, starting with a blank slate, not as what's the best option that's available, it was, what do the wealthiest people in the world do? What do the owners of the team do with their wealth? And can we build something using the best of those ingredients, specifically for the athlete?
Erik Averill (15:49):
I would love to hear what was that? You mentioned changing agents, that's really hard because in an advisor standpoint, whether it's your financial or your agent, trust relationship, this is how we're choosing people. What was that like?
Zach Miller (16:05):
It's difficult. You have such a strong relationship with your agent. You're getting so much advice from them. You just build a natural trust with them. And for me, it came down to a business decision. I outplayed my contract with the Raiders and you had to detach emotion from it. You have to demand the best.
Zach Miller (16:26):
And so, I changed agents to someone that could get me a long-term deal. It was what I was looking for, a long-term deal with financial security and guarantees in there. And so I gave my agent through my entire rookie deal to get that deal done in lockout and it didn't happen. So I changed agents in 2011 and signed a big deal in Seattle, right when the lockout ended and months after changing my agents.
Zach Miller (16:53):
So, it's no different than holding your financial advisor, your wealth manager, your business manager, you have to hold them accountable. And if they're afraid of the competition, that's on them. They need to be open to being evaluated by an outside source. They need to be honest with you.
Zach Miller (17:12):
They need to prove their value to you because there's too many athletes, too many NFL guys that get taken advantage of. And sometimes it's outright fraud. Sometimes it's recommending bad investments or in other cases, it's just not providing the service that the player deserves. A lot of times they can be fine people, but because of the structure of where they're at, they're at a big brokerage house.
Zach Miller (17:37):
They're just worried about asset management. They only want to worry about the portfolio. You need the financial planning first, that part of your wealth is the one that needs to be taken care of. And it's what the NFL owners do. They have independent family offices. That's what they have. And so you need to start thinking like that.
Zach Miller (17:57):
You need to put the team that is an expert and is proven, not just in designations and certifications, but experience and working with athletes, because there's plenty of guys that have gone back into financial services after being players. And that's all they are, they're a name and they get promoted straight up because of where they played or how long they played.
Zach Miller (18:21):
And they're not dedicated to the craft of actually being good with finance and the math and the numbers, and then being able to understand their players. I've been through, I think almost everything NFL player can be through.
Zach Miller (18:36):
And so, I understand when I'm working with major league baseball guys, and it's easy to say, "Oh, they should be doing this better. They should be doing that better." But you have to remember that they're in their early 20s. You don't have the business savvy. You don't have the financial savvy. You're still figuring things out.
Zach Miller (18:57):
For me, I'm always going to side with the players and see it from their point of view, and be able to communicate that, "I was in your same situation, you don't have to be perfect. You can just be good and your situation will be excellent by the time you're done playing."
Erik Averill (19:15):
Yeah. And you hit on so many key things there. One of them, when you started that conversation of switching agents, it's not personal. It was business. And every player who is now a former athlete knows that that's the comment that comes ultimately from the organization. "Hey, we've loved having you, you're a Pro Bowler but your injuries, it's not personal, Zach. We really would love to sign you. We just can't, with those medicals. It's not personal. It's just business."
Erik Averill (19:45):
And that's a cold steam, but we understand it's a multi-billion dollar industry, and they're not going to continue to pay you millions of dollars. If there's someone that has better competency, expertise. Someone that they think can help the team, yet why don't we apply that as athletes to the professional arena of our life? It really is saying, "How do we think like these business owners, how do we think, like team owners?"
Erik Averill (20:11):
And that was a big passion for Brandon and I is, people would give you the soundbites, "Hey, you should be the CEO of your career. You should act like a business owner." Yet, it sounds really good but most people are telling them that, are either employees they've never owned anything. They've never been a CEO or they've never had their own personal wealth to manage.
Erik Averill (20:31):
And that's where I think we uniquely come from is we own a business. We deploy capital for a living. We understand how companies are ran. We understand what it means to have an operations team. You understand what it means to make these decisions as a family, of moving certain places of how to deal with contracts.
Erik Averill (20:51):
And there's this complexity as an athlete that you really do need to treat it as a business owner. Now you've got to put the team of experts around you in it, the relationship thing, super interesting, of course you want to like your agent, of course you want to like your financial person, but in the book speed of trust, there's this more robust definition of what trust is.
Erik Averill (21:14):
We usually stop with likability. Do we like the person? And then we stop there. The problem is I can really like you, you could be great. I'll even trust you to watch my kids. That's how much I trust you, but you know nothing about taxes, nothing about investing, nothing about estate planning. You have no competency.
Erik Averill (21:33):
This would be like me being like, "Hey, I really like football. Hey, can I roll out and play for the Seahawks? I'm a really trustworthy person." But I can't catch a freaking football and I weigh 190 pounds. I'm going to get killed. I'm not very competent. It wouldn't be very good. And we laugh about that.
Erik Averill (21:49):
But on the financial side, it's like, "Oh, I like this person." Yet, are they certified financial planner are they certified private wealth advisor. And do they have a history? Do they have a track record of having successful outcomes for clients in your situation?
Erik Averill (22:05):
And I think that's really important of talking about order of operation. That, first and foremost, your agent, your financial team are showing up because there's a business interest and that's not right or wrong. It's just the truth.
Erik Averill (22:18):
Make sure that they're competent first, make sure that they have experience having successful outcomes and then make sure that you like them. So it's just flipping it around. And what other areas do you feel like you see from your own career? Things that you just didn't know that you're like, "Oh my goodness. I wish I would've known."
Zach Miller (22:39):
I think the biggest thing is to your last point, is that I expected that the people I hired, the people I surrounded myself with, whether it was a CPA that was separate from my advisor, that's separate from an insurance agent.
Zach Miller (22:53):
I expected them to have the same desire to win and succeed at everything that I have in my heart that I want to be the best at everything. And I expected them to do that too. And it was not the case. They are there to make a buck, essentially.
Zach Miller (23:12):
They're just trying to get the job done, and do a decent job. And they don't truly care about you. They don't understand you. They're not the best at what they do. And they don't strive for that.
Zach Miller (23:25):
And that's one thing I've always done, in anything I've tried to achieve is just, if you're going to do it, you might as well do it the best, put in your best effort, the best work. And if you do your best and you lose out, you lose the game, whatever it may be so be it, but you should always have put best effort in.
Zach Miller (23:47):
That's something that you got to hold people accountable because not everyone's always going to be looking out for your best interest and own your wealth is a saying here. And it makes so much sense to me because that's one thing that you should take ownership of all the decisions of who you hire, whether it's agent, your financial advisor, whether it's anyone working with business, family, you should take ownership of that, because at the end of the day, it's on you.
Zach Miller (24:19):
And the sooner you can take ownership of that, talk to enough financial advisors, enough agents, and you make the final call. Don't rely on family. Don't rely on friends. You need to separate those things. Because that way, when you hold someone accountable, there's not any relationship strains or there's not any ill will.
Zach Miller (24:41):
That's one thing that all athletes should do, is truly own their wealth, take ownership of it and expect more, expect more from the people that you surround yourself with on your team. It's what all the wealthiest families in this country do.
Erik Averill (24:56):
Yeah. And we'll spend a full episode talking about who is qualified, and how do you find those people? I think the good news is they actually exist. One of the things that makes us passionate about this is there is a better solution. And the reason you think you can change an industry, that sounds crazy, right?
Erik Averill (25:16):
You think that you alone are going to come in and change something that historically athletes, this story is old of time that an athlete makes a lot of money and ends up in a bad situation. There have been for years and decades and decades of former athletes, getting into the financial industry that say they're there to help, but they really just turned into salespeople.
Erik Averill (25:39):
It's been reported on over and over again, but we finally believe there's actually a solution. And that's what we built AWM to be, is to be able to guide you guys as the players, as the families and even agents listening, saying, "You are there to serve your client's best interests."
Erik Averill (25:56):
And we're going to provide that roadmap going forward for you to make sure that you are owning your wealth, that you're capturing the financial life that you deserve. And so, we appreciate you guys' attention. We're excited to start this journey with you.
Erik Averill (26:15):
We're going to be with you every single week. Zach, is going to continue just to share his personal experiences and provide you guys with the tools and the tips that you need to own your wealth. So until next time, stay humble, stay hungry, and always be a pro.
Zach Miller (26:32):
And always compete.