Athletes Have To Stop Leaving Money On The Table

Every Athlete Has A Platform

As long as you’re a professional athlete, you have relevancy.

As long as you’re a professional athlete, you have a lot of attention.

As long as you’re a professional athlete, you have a platform, but how you leverage and use that platform is 100% up to you.

A lot of athletes don’t act on the potential opportunities that they have outside of their sport. An agent might be able to secure a few marketing deals and brand partnerships, which might be the same deals that every other athlete will get, but that doesn’t really count as “taking advantage.”

As soon as you get to the big leagues, every athlete gets the basic trading card deal, or a typical shoe contract or other rookie related agreements, but how many athletes go a step further and actively seek out brands for sponsorships and endorsements?

How many athletes really use their platform to speak out on injustices and other community issues?

How many athletes invest some of their contract in stocks or maybe real estate?

As athletes get older they start to realize the importance of doing these things, but as an athlete, what if your career doesn’t last as long as you think it will?

What if the career that you thought would last for 10 plus years only lasted 3 years?

How much money would you have left on the table?

Why You Have To Take Advantage

All of this is why as an athlete, you have to take advantage of the now.

As with almost any professional athlete, in any sport, you have a small window to capitalize on your platform. The sad, and unfortunate truth is that usually once you’re done playing, not a lot of people really care about you anymore.

Very few people will care about what you’ve done in your career. Very few people are concerned with your stats or will remember whether you started or came off the bench. The only thing that matters is that you can either leverage your time during your pro career to create more opportunities for yourself or bring something to the table once you retire to make yourself valuable to others.

All that other stuff won’t get you in the door once you’re done.

Case in point, Steve Francis was a three-time All-Star and the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2000.

It seemed he had a long, promising career ahead of him, but he quickly fizzled out of the league at the young age of 30. Now, he seems to have struggled a little trying to navigate his life after sports.

He had so much going for him and I’m sure that even he didn’t expect to be out of the league so abruptly. But that’s sometimes how it works out and you have to be prepared to do other things besides just be an athlete.

At the age of 30, you still have your entire life ahead of you whether or not basketball is in the picture.

There is entirely too much money out there for athletes to get in on and many of them aren’t getting in on it. If it’s in front of your face, you should never leave money on the table, figuratively speaking.

Here Are A Few Ways To Do This

First things first, you have to have people around you who care more about what you do off the court or field than what you do on it. 

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Too many athletes have people in their corner who are only there because they either have known this person who for a long time, or because the athlete has money and that person wants to get in on it or they want to reap the benefits of the athlete’s fame just to say that they helped them get to where they are.

Whatever the case is, an athlete’s influence and reputation are too important to not have people who want to help you do great things away from your sport.

Nothing great is done alone, and athletes have to have people around them who will help them expand their brand the right way.

Find great people who care and want to help you grow off the playing field.

Next, athletes have to see themselves as a brand and build on that.

As I said before, there is a ton of money out there for athletes to get if they can recognize the opportunities and act on them while they are in the middle of their career.

For example, look how Venus Williams has created a brand away from the tennis court.

She is the founder and CEO of her own clothing line called EleVen and Venus consistently takes advantage of her platform by wearing her own apparel while dazzling the tennis world with her play. 

While this fitness apparel brand has been making waves since its inception, it’s not even Venus’s only business. She also is the CEO of the design company V Starr Interiors. Venus believes that athletes are designed to conquer challenges, so applying the lessons of resilience will definitely benefit her businesses as they grow.

She found what she loved to do and created a brand around that.

Discover your main interests and passions to build a brand that produces money for you away from your sport. 

Lastly, athletes have to identify all potential opportunities to scale and grow their brand.

As a professional athlete, you have the ability to diversify your income streams and take advantage of almost anything you want to.

As an athlete, you can get paid off of appearances, speaking, investments, signings, sponsorships, endorsements and a variety of other things that can help grow your brand and portfolio.

Not to mention, this helps you gain skills to help you in life after sports. The more things you involve yourself with, the more you learn about business and how to grow your money in the most effective way possible.

Of course, most athletes don’t necessarily have time to do all of this, but it all goes back to having smart people in your corner who look out for your best interest and want to see you succeed.

Constantly grow and expand your brand to find other opportunities such as speaking, public appearances, and endorsements. 

There are various things that athletes can do, but the one thing that they should never do is leave the money untouched.

The opportunities and options are endless.

Identify what you want, put good people around you and always look for ways to grow and expand your brand.

One day you’ll look up and be thankful you did everything in your power to ensure success on and off the playing field.

Malcolm Lemmons is an athlete turned entrepreneur, author, and speaker. He focuses on helping athletes brand themselves to prepare for life after sports. To check out more from Malcolm, visit his website at www.malcolmlemmons.com or connect with him on Twitter & Instagram