Joby Branion (Part 2): The Impact of Athlete Mentorship

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast where we talk to successful individuals in their respective fields who do things to.

Help others and make an impact for the greater good.

Here is your host, Alan Pavloski.

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. This is part two of a two part episode. You can always find all of our episodes on legacy all starspodcast.com or your favorite podcast platform. Enjoy the show. You know, you talked about providing services to your clients like financial education and second year, second career preparation. How do you prepare athletes for life after sports and ensuring that they continue to make meaningful contributions.

Everybody's different, right? So, and that's another reason why I don't want to have a lot of clients, because I can't represent 100 clients. The stuff that we're talking about doing, we can't do if we have 100, 200, 300 clients. Right? And that's the, sadly, the direction that's happening with most of these agencies in the industry now. They're gobbling up other agents to have as many clients as they can because they're trying to leverage to have as much value as a firm.

Not paying any attention to what the ripple effect is in terms of their ability to do the specific, holistic, individualized approach of managing and guiding the particular person. Right. The individual. And that matters the world to me. Like I said, I got three boys of my own. They all play football. I'm a former player myself. I've done this for 20 years, almost 30 years. I know what matters. I know it doesn't matter. And I tried to build something that I would want for my own kids if they were good enough to be a professional athlete. Right? Don't tell my kid what he wants here. Tell him the truth. Empower him. Give him the tools and the resources so he can be successful, protect him. Oh, and by the way, prepare him for that day where he's never going to play again. Because it comes for all of us. And there are some foundational things that you just, you know, these are all life lessons that teach my own kids that, you know, one day, one day you'll die if you don't pay your taxes, you go to jail and they're going to take your helmet away, they're going to take the ball away. Right? Those, those are inevitable. On the flip side, they will never take your education away. Once you've gotten that degree, it's yours for the rest of your life. And it's a validation that in this country matters. Right. It's hard to be a high School football coach if you don't even have a degree from college, Right. I still remember Iman Green, who had like forever to graduate. When he left as a junior from Nebraska, he was so proud. When he finally graduated from Nebraska, he said, joby, this is the proudest I've been other than when my kids were born in my life. And I applaud him for that and for driving himself to do that. Not every one of my guys takes the advice, and some of them don't need to. Right. They make so much money, it doesn't matter if they graduate or not. But for most of them, we're going to bend over backward to make sure that we do everything we can to help them attain their degree, because that will be there for the rest of their lives. Your education, they won't take from you. Your network, they won't take from you. Right. Your network of relationships. And you're in a unique position as a professional athlete to have access to people who want to know you because you're a professional athlete who will not be excited to meet you after you've retired. It's just a natural thing, right? So one of the things that we do that I don't think any other agency does, and we do it with every guy, is we try early on to tie our clients once they get into the NFL and get established, tie them back to the alumni from whatever school they finished, right? So for Vaughn Miller was Texas A And M. For DJ reader was Clemson. I remember when DJ, he was a 5th round pick coming out of Clemson for the Houston Texans. Before he ever played for the Houston Texans, I'd already contacted the woman who was the chairperson for the Clemson alumni group based in Houston. And she was like a senior executive at Hess Oil and Gas, a multibillion dollar international conglomerate, right? And I remember telling her, hey, I have a client who's coming to Texas. Houston. I'd love to get him integrated into your alumni group. And I said, his name is DJ Reader. And she said, the football player. I said, oh, you're a football fan? She said, I went to Clemson. I said, got it. And it reinforced the point, right? Yeah. She was excited because he played for her alma mater and she knew that, right? So he comes and they hit it off. When I once I introduced them, he went to a couple of events mid season, she calls me and she says, I just want you to know that we had a straw poll in our local chapter of color Clemson alumni. We decided DJs our favorite Houston Texan. And I said, man, DJs gonna love hearing that. I said, out of curiosity, though, you do know the DeAndre Hopkins plays for the Texans. And you know he also went to Clemson, is a Perennial Pro Bowler. DJs a backup nose tackle right now. Yeah, but we don't know him.

We know. There you have it, right?

You have it.

And now dj, who has now gone from Houston to Cincinnati, and now he's playing for the Detroit Lions, he still has those relationships from the introduction to the Clemson alumni group in Houston. And these are people who are going to be in his network beyond his playing career. That's value. Why do we do. We don't make any money doing that. Why do we do that? We do that because that's what I want done for my own kid. I understand the value of that. All right? Most agencies aren't going to do it because it's a time suck if you don't see the real value. Right. But we do that. But that's how Von Miller said this. I hate going back to him, but it's poignant. Example wherever. Second or third year in the league. I asked myself, Vaughn, out of curiosity, what do you think you want to do when your career is over? He said, man, my career just started. I said, I know, I know, but, you know, just indulge me. What do you think you want to do? Is it honestly, I want to own my own chicken farm. I said, okay, what do you really want to do? He said, no, I'm serious. I went to the School of Poultry Sciences at Texas A and M. It's the best school in the country for poultry sciences. I was like. And then he starts rambling on all these things he knows about chickens. And I said, this dude is serious. So I said, well, okay, let me work on that. So I then went back to Texas A and M, worked through their administration, got to the alumni group on campus to figure out, are there alums from the School of Poultry Sciences at Texas A and M who have had successful chicken farming outfits who are also football fans, who also know who Von Miller is and would like to mentor Von Miller. We did all that, found a guy, his name's Paul Price. Shout out to Paul. He's been great. And we made the introduction, we did all that vetting, made the connection. They hit it off. About six, eight months into the relationship, Paul calls and says, hey, out of curiosity, you know, I've got an idea, a concept for an organic.

Chicken farming process. Do you think Vaughn would be interested in being a partner? I said, well, let me find Out. Let me call his financial advisor. So I got to his financial advisor, who's separate from us, and we work together. Next thing you know, Vaughn's a partner in a organic chicken farming group, which now is fully operational in Austin, Texas. He is a full fledged partner. The thing is clearing, you know, seven figures in revenue. They're talking about building it out even further. And he's still playing in the league. This is what he wanted to do when his career was over. Right. He's having success right now with something he wanted to do when his career is over. What does that mean? That means whenever his career is over, he's already got something that he can pivot back to. So it won't be, oh, woe be me. What am I gonna do now that my career's over? It's gonna be, well, it sucks my career's over, but I'm excited about what's next. Cause I'm prepared for it. There it is. And that's, you know, they won't take away your education, they won't take away your relationships, they won't take away your life experiences. And those are things you can maximize while you're in the league, because you're in the league. And in order to do that, though, you need somebody to be a facilitator, which is uniquely an agent, is uniquely, you know, situated to facilitate something like that. But most agencies don't. Why? Because there's no money of that stuff. But we do it because that's what I want done for my own kid. And I believe at the end of the day, happy clients will. Ultimately, it'll come back to us. You know, we won't make money on this transaction. But if we do right by people, the byproduct will be we'll make money. They'll send us referrals. They'll be, you know, they'll say things like Vaughn did in that opening clip. And that has value to us. Yeah. But it's authentic and it's real. There's nothing wrong with making money. But there's ways to make money. You can make money by stealing from other people or manipulating other people. You can do it the way that we try and do it, which is adding value, make a difference, have an impact, and yeah. Be compensated for what you do because it's valuable, it's meaningful.

Yeah. How have your personal experiences shaped your approach to mentoring athletes and making a difference beyond their sports careers? And I know a lot about you that other people don't know, but, you know, you've Had a history of being around very important people. Yeah, I'll just say it that way.

Yeah.

Look, my life wasn't easy growing up.

I was fortunate I was adopted. My adoptive father named me after his father. I'm John Marshall Brandon iii. His father was the first black public defender in the history of Chicago. My father became Dr. King's doctor, Martin Luther King's personal physician in the marches through Chicago. I've got pictures of him with Jesse Jackson and Andrew Young and Dr. King, you know, walking down the streets of Skokie. And when I was four, my mother was murdered and my father was.

Was accused of the murder, went to trial and was, in my view, wrong. In everybody's view, was wrongfully convicted.

He ended up skipping the country rather than going to prison for something he didn't do. So I basically sort of lost my family unit completely. I ended up growing up in Massachusetts with a stepmother, and it wasn't a very stable situation. But I had sports, and sports saved my life. I was fortunately blessed. I was a very good athlete in high school. I played football, basketball, baseball. I ran track. I even played lacrosse. And I fortunately, was good because he gave me a sense of self. Right? And I was also blessed because some of the most important people in my life were coaches who saw me as Joby, not a football player named Joby. Right. And those were my first mentors. And when I got to Duke.

And then got cut and then worked in the admissions office, I became an academic advisor. I created the first. It was a mentorship, alumni mentorship program for the African American students who were coming, because I felt like that was something that could be impactful, and it was wildly successful.

I became a mentor to a kid when I moved to California. When I was in graduate school. I was mentoring a Hispanic kid from East LA who bused to west la and. And I gave a presentation on behalf of Duke University. And he waited, and after the presentation was over, he came up and introduced himself. Marcos Rojas. I love you, brother. You're out there, and you've been wildly successful, too. But.

He came to the meeting and he said, I just had a meeting with a couple other places, and do you think Duke would be interested in me? I said, I don't know. Tell me about you. He said, well, as you can see, I'm a cholo. I didn't know what a cholo was, but he's a gang member. And he had the gang outfit, right, which was khakis and this looked back, hair and all. And I said, well, tell me about your academics. And he looked at me and he said, you're serious? I said, yeah. And so after that meeting, I talked to his guidance counselor and I talked to his guidance counselor, said, he's super smart, but he comes from a really tough background. He buses all the way across the city and he has to hide from the gang to go to University High on West side of la. And I just started mentoring him, and I got him to take AP classes, and I got him to come to class with me while I was in business school. And then I got him into this program called the Lead Program. And he got on his first plane to go spend the summer at Duke, ironically. And he ultimately got accepted to Brown and Duke and Dartmouth and was wait listed at Princeton. And he chose to go to Duke. He graduated from Duke. He is now.

And now he's, I think, in charge of. Oh, God. He's in. He's not in lausd, but the. Just south of lausd, the school system. He's in charge of their informational systems, which I know it changed his life, right? Because everybody else was telling me, oh, man, just go to juco. Now, he might have been successful, but think about, you know, but for my intervention at that point in his life, which opened these doors for him, and he ran through those doors, and he got what? He got a Duke degree, and he's now successful in life. That is the intrinsic reward that I didn't feel when I was an entertainment lawyer, which is why it didn't last very long as an entertainment lawyer. That's when I became a sports agent, because sports agenting allowed me that vehicle to become a mentor, and that's who I am at my core.

Man, you took the words right out of my mouth. Because you and I both, in all the years we've known each other, we've both believed in being mentors to others. You and I have mentored each other's kids, and we believe in being there for others. And I think. Let's not talk about you on this question. Let's talk about in general. What qualities do you believe are essential in an agent to effectively mentor athletes in both their professional and personal lives? Qualities?

Well, it's funny, when I. When I started, it was the year that Jerry Maguire came out. I was attracted to the business because of what Lee Steinberg espoused. Right. When I got in there, I realized that a lot of what he espoused wasn't necessarily happening because we still ran like a normal sports agency. Right. Which was do what he can to get people. And then, you know, but. But a lot of the things he talked about, we sort of did on an ad hoc basis, but not as a part of who we were, which is what we do now at Vanguard. So I appreciate what Lee started in my own head, and that's why we're trying to do this differently.

But.

What I was gonna say is that back then, the movie Jerry Maguire came out, and then that was a curse and a blessing, right? People started calling me Joby Maguire.

Just because I was a sports agent. And now everybody wanted to be a sports agent because they saw the movie, right? And then I forgot. What was it that came out?

Say again? Arlis. Arlis came out.

Arlis came out. All that was happening.

I mean, there are all these takeoffs on sports and entertainment agents, right? And so it's a sexy thing and what we have to guard against. And I've had a hard time, even at Vanguard, guarding against the people that want to be here for the wrong reasons, in my opinion. I don't.

It's funny, and part of it's generational, maybe because I'm older and I represent several. Well, I should say I mentor and I work with several coaches, professional coaches, and they said the same thing. So we get some of these young coaches in here, man, and you know what they want? They want to get the logo on their golf shirt. They want the sideline pass, and they want to take selfies with the players so they can post it on their Instagram, right? And it's like they want to. They want to be a coach or they want to say they're a coach, but they don't want to coach anybody, right? They want to say they're.

They're.

They represent a player without doing the hard work of representation, right? They don't want to do the stuff that we've been talking about, because to them, it's not rewarding. It's rewarding to be in pictures with the clients on the sidelines, and that you don't see me plastered all over the place. It's not who I am. I'm not wired like that. You don't even see me doing very many interviews, because it's not about me. It's about the impact that I can have on the people that I'm working with. That's my reward. I don't need people, you know, gassing me up on the Internet. I don't care about that. I care about making an impact. I care about the families. I care about Vaughn Miller's mom saying Please don't ever change. When I was complaining just last week to her about a situation, I said, you know, just like I told my wife, I care too much. He said, just promise me you won't stop caring, because once you stop caring, you're gonna be like all these other people in this industry who are just really trying to manipulate these clients for their own ends. So to your question, I would hope that people would be attracted to this by the opportunity it provides to do what we're trying to do, that is be impactful in an authentic and real way. Right. To mentor. Not to say I've got this logo and I get to go to the super bowl or the parties or the, you know, hang out with athletes, man, if that's what you're about, please stay away from us and quite honestly, stay away from the industry.

The biggest threat, the biggest single threat to all these professional athletes is the endless line of enablers that they will begin encountering in some cases all the way back in high school. There are endless number of people who are going to tell you what you want to hear sometime for relatively benign reasons. Like, they just want to be around the athlete because they think it's cool. Okay? But it could go all the way to the other end where it is strategically manipulative to.

Extract money from you. Right. Either through an extortive effort or a. I mean, you name it. I've seen so many threats to these. These athletes coming from outside.

Our job should be to protect the people from those enablers because the. And it's the human nature. You gravitate to the people that make you feel good. Well, a lot of agents, that's what they do, they enable because they figure that's the best way for me to hold on to my relationship. I've lost clients because I wasn't. I was too honest. And it happens, and I can live with that. But it, but it, you know, I want clients who want the truth and not clients who want me to tell them how great they are, and I just can't do that. I have a saying, you know, I don't.

I don't stare into mirrors, but I'm not afraid to look at one.

Right. That's powerful.

You know, so.

We talked about this.

Privately, but how has nil and collegiate athletes, collegiate athletics, changed the overall landscape of the sports business?

Yeah, it's interesting because it really came to be about three plus years ago, and I was.

Naturally reticent to get to lead with my chin into that. I had other people that were Here, that just, that's, hey, we got to do that. We got to go take advantage. We got to, you know, get. Go get clients and, you know, sign them up. And even if we had no infrastructure for doing what, what NIL was designed, theoretically designed to do, which is like, hey, we get to represent these college athletes, okay, so let's go sell their name and likeness to, you know, potential endorsement relationships or what have you. Well, we didn't have that infrastructure and I didn't want to just run out and sign people and then not deliver on what we thought NIL was going to be about. And I'm sort of glad we waited because over time, what has happened is it has shifted and it has become essentially pay for play. Right? With a handful of exceptions, they're trading card companies that do deals and they're. If you're a high enough profile quarterback, you can go get those deals. But for the most part, then these collectives came up and now you got collectives, and now you've got the house settlement lawsuit that's supposed to be ratified come June, and now you've got revenue sharing that's going to happen. And so it's still in a state of flux, but it is starting to settle down now. And over the last year or so, I've been more open to representing college athletes and now even weirdly representing high school players.

But I'm doing it honestly, I'm excited about it. I'm excited about it because I see it gives us a unique opportunity given our business model. We can start building relationships with these kids and these families when they're still so young and still haven't seen so much. They haven't been corrupted by what happens when you get to a college locker room for a few years.

And we can help them start reframing and understanding what's important. Don't let the ni. I always like to say, don't let the NIL tail wag the dog. Okay? If you're an NFL prospect, even in high school, some guys are project, and we only work with high schoolers who do project as potential NFL players that you don't want to make a decision on where to go to college based on the nil. You want to make a decision where to go based on the fit and the scheme that they may run as it relates to your position and whether they're going to improve your likelihood of being able to transition into the NFL with value and then sustain it into a second contract in the NFL. Right. That a couple hundred thousand dollars difference from one institution to another is not worth sacrificing the potential tens of millions down the road from a successful NFL career. Same thing with the portal, which is another animal that's. That's still. Everybody's still trying to cage. And there are so many people who, I mean, have zero background in anything, who are coming into the business saying, I'm going to be your nil representative. They know nothing about marketing. They know nothing about.

The NFL. A lot of them know nothing about football or basketball. They're just in to try and get the client so they can then sell to the highest bidder so they can make their fee. Right? There was something recently, it was finally exposed that a lot of these people were charging 20% on the collective deals. That's where all the real money is, right? We don't do that.

We charge a much lower fee on the collective negotiation, and only after a certain threshold has been attained. Right? So the first, however much, we don't bill on that at all because it's not about that. Right. We're not trying to make money off of representing you for the collective or for nil. We're trying to represent you to help you increase your likelihood of succeeding while you're in college, to have a chance of having a professional career. And then hopefully, when it's all said and done, because we've had the time working with you, we've earned your trust and your respect over time. And so when the time comes for you to decide who to represent you for professional purposes, when the NIL representation is over, hopefully we have a chance. Right? But it gets not tied to the NIL representation, but it gives us a unique opportunity to start building a relationship and show you that we are who we say we are. We're going to do right by you. We're going to tell you the truth. Truth, and again, earn your trust and respect. Right? And that, to me, is vital to be able to have a healthy relationship moving forward, period. It goes back to what I said earlier. It's who you choose to surround yourself with. Don't surround yourself with people who are going to tell you what you want to hear. Surround yourself with people who are going to be honest with you because they do respect. That's the ultimate respect, is being honest with somebody. I'm telling you the truth because I respect you too much to be anything other than that. I've been places where.

Colleagues on the phone talking to a head coach somewhere in the NFL and, you know, I'm there riding alongside him, and I hear the entire conversation. Phone hangs up. The phone call comes in from another client, and the guy says, hey, I was just talking to coach so and so about you.

I'm like, so he hangs up the phone with that client. And I said, you didn't say anything to the coach about that client. He said, yeah, but he doesn't know that.

I just can't do that. I'm sorry. I just. I. You know.

But that's rampant in this business. People will tell you what they think you want to hear, and they'll. They'll manipulate everything to take advantage of you because you're still young and you don't know any different. You don't have enough good people around you to protect you from that.

Yeah, absolutely.

But Nil is a unique opportunity that I think will eventually sort of find its floor, its settlement ultimately, and it will be a little. Right now, this portal stuff is a lot like NFL free agency lite. You know, there are rules, but there's no enforcement of rules. And it's just. It's crazy.

But it'd be nice if we could get the riff raff out from the representation standpoint and for those of us that are in representation are, again, doing right by the players, not doing it for our benefit. We're doing it for the benefit of the athlete.

You do right by people, and good things come to you. And that's something you and I talked about over the years. And of course, it's played out, I think, appropriately, because you're very successful. I've had a good career, and I think we've. We've both tried to. To live right. Live by the. The philosophy of do right for others and good things will happen to you.

Yeah, that's. It's. It's not. It doesn't need to be complicated. You know, my own son, I think I said this to you earlier. He's told me, my youngest, he was mad at me for something when he's 16 years old. He said, dad, you treat me like I'm one of your clients trying to get under my skin because he overhears all these conversations I have with my clients. And I said, you know what, Jackson? Know this. I love you more than life itself. Okay? And what you hear is me treating my clients like they're you, not the other way around. Right. And I.

How did he respond to that?

His eyes got big and he's like.

An interesting distinction.

Yeah. Like, okay, yeah. So now when he hears me talking to whomever and he hears some of the same stuff, he realizes I'm telling them what I've already told my son, and now I think it resonates better. Right? Because again, like, with any. You've had your own kids, you know, at a certain point, they start tuning you out, and you just hope. Yeah, yeah, well. But you just hope that some of it sticks, right? And so, like, that Von Miller clip that we opened with, it was like my own kid. It's like that point where you go like, oh, my God. He appreciate. He listened. Everything I was saying didn't go in one ear and out the other. Oh, my God. Right? And as a parent, you're, like, proud. That's how I felt at the moment. I was, like, really proud that Vaughn said what he said, because it wasn't scripted. It was off the cuff, and he said exactly the right thing, and it was authentic, and it meant we are doing the right thing. Let's keep. As hard as it is. Let's just keep heading in this direction, and slowly, hopefully, we'll get more people in this business, in this industry. Going back to what you said, let's find the people who have the right priorities. They want to make a difference.

Now.

They got to be competitive as hell, because the NFL, you got to negotiate with those people. We haven't even talked about contract negotiations. If you can't negotiate a contract, you got a problem. Right? But you got to be able to recruit athletes and their families. You got to maintain the relationship, and then you got to do the work. All those things together. Not just I'm a great recruiter, and I don't like negotiating or.

I hate recruiting, but I love taking the clients out to dinner. Right? Or I love negotiating, but I can't recruit. Well, if you can't recruit, you're not gonna get new clients. So now you get that. That issue. But I want to attract people to this industry because of the unique opportunity it provides to have an impact.

In ways that are intrinsically valuable to you, but you're also giving back to so many others that are. That are You. That are. That are strangers to you.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's. It's a special. It's a special opportunity if. If you're in it for the right reason.

Well, listen, it's been way too long that we got a chance to sit down in any capacity like this. We are both busy, and you've made special time for this. This has been a special, special opportunity for me to visit with my friend. I hope you all appreciate the. The. The depth of Joby's commitment to doing right because he really does live. He really does walk the walk. I've been there with him and I see it. This has been Legacy All Stars podcast. If you want to learn more about Joby Joby Branion and his, his company Vanguard Sports, you can go to their website. Please tell us about the website and about your socials.

Well, yeah, see, I, I don't know them off top my head. That's how I know vanguardsports.com that's the website.

Google it.

And you. I think it's at Vanguard sg. I want to say it's Twitter. I think.

I forgot what it is for Instagram. I think we need to do another one. So you'll find them all on the Vanguard website.

Just Google Vanguard Sports. Anybody who wants, anybody who really wants the best for their children and has a prospective athlete, you'd be well served to reach out to them. They're. They truly do walk the walk. I love Joey like a brother.

Reach out to anybody that's here. I have some of the most amazing people that are part of Vanguard. That is probably what I'm most proud of is the folks that have been attracted to this that are here now, they are really. I am blessed to have such incredible people that are going to be doing this long after I'm hopefully sitting on a nice beach with a, a tropical drink down the road. But they're going to carry on this, this legacy that they've bought into and they live every day.

Yeah, that's the way I'd like to see it as well. If you want to learn more about what I do to help people leave a legacy through passive income, you can Visit me@legacyallstarspodcast.com Again, this has been the Legacy All Stars podcast with our special guest, Joby Branion. Thank you, my friend. So good to see you.

Thank you, brother.

All right.

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