Money Lessons Why Most Athletes Go Broke

Speaker 1:                          You’re also a businessman. I’m looking on here and you tell me if this is still current. You own 10% of Five Guy’s entire franchise portfolio. Is that right?

Shaquille O.:                      I sold it.

Speaker 1:                          You did? When did you do that?

Shaquille O.:                      I don’t know, a couple of years ago, I think.

Speaker 1:                          The burger business was good to you?

Shaquille O.:                      Yes, it was very good. Very good. I grew up being raised by a drill Sergeant and every time an athlete did something crazy, I would get in trouble for it. So my father did a very great job of using scare tactics, cause a lot of athletes when they’re done playing, they have no income and they go broke. And I never wanted to be like that. So even when I was making a lot of money playing basketball, I would come home and see my father and be like, “Yeah, but what are you doing with your money?”

Speaker 1:                          Good for him. What kind of advice do you give the youngsters now who are, I mean, watching the summer league games now and-

Shaquille O.:                      I tell them-

Speaker 1:                          All the guys that just came into the league through the draft.

Shaquille O.:                      I tell them that this money’s not going to last forever. You got to save it. You got to invest it and you got to be smart. My first check, I blew it. I blew it in like 20 minutes. That’s cause I needed to. I bought my mom a car, dad a car, paid off their credit, bought them a house. I was young, I knew I had more money coming in. But the second and the check out that I was like, “I got to start saving.”

Speaker 1:                          Were you an early investor in Facebook?

Shaquille O.:                      No, Google.

Speaker 1:                          Oh, Google.

Shaquille O.:                      Yeah.

Speaker 1:                          Where are you stock-wise? I mean, do you still hold stock [crosstalk 00:01:27]?

Shaquille O.:                      Yeah, I still hold stock.

Speaker 1:                          You still hold-

Shaquille O.:                      I’ve never really checked.

Speaker 1:                          But you still hold Google from being an early investor?

Shaquille O.:                      Yes.

Speaker 1:                          Wow. Do you still get opportunities, people come to you to invest in companies, whether it’s [inaudible] IPOs, Twitter, Snap, things like that?

Shaquille O.:                      Yeah, so my last big investment was Ring.

Speaker 1:                          Oh yeah.

Shaquille O.:                      Yeah. Cause I bought a new house in Atlanta and this is the first time I’m not being a spoiled brat and living in the community. So I live almost [crosstalk 00:01:55]-

Speaker 1:                          Oh, that’s right. It’s one of the commercials. I mentioned all the commercials, I can’t keep them straight. They’re so many.

Shaquille O.:                      So I live-

Speaker 1:                          I keep seeing you with the little General guy. [crosstalk 00:02:05].

Shaquille O.:                      So I live amongst the people in the great town of McDonough, Georgia. So I called a security company, “Hey, this is Shaq. I need some cameras.” And of course they knew it was me, they tried to charge me 80,000. I said, “I’m not paying 80,000 for no cameras,” so I went to Best Buy, saw the little Ring cameras. So when I went to see [inaudible] in Vegas, I met the CEO, a young fellow. Guy by the name of Jeremy and said, “I would like to invest. I would like to be a partner.” And they just got acquired for a lot of money.

Speaker 1:                          Yeah, that’s right. Yes, they did. [crosstalk] Thanks for stopping by-

Shaquille O.:                      Thank you.

Speaker 1:                          And spending some time with us.

Speaker 3:                          [crosstalk] a treat.

Shaquille O.:                      We have a business meeting later [crosstalk 00:02:34].

Speaker 3:                          Yeah, we got a meeting later on, big dog.

Shaquille O.:                      Thank you. Hey, next time you guys kick a lady out of her seat-

Speaker 3:                          Yeah, that was wrong.

Shaquille O.:                      There’s going to be some problems.

Speaker 3:                          Yeah, that’s wrong.

Shaquille O.:                      Here you go young lady. [inaudible] you can have your seatback.

Speaker 1:                          [crosstalk] Shaq, thank you.

Speaker 3:                          It’s too bad he’s so small.

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