Emmitt Smith on Entrepreneurship and the Business of Football

It's not that big a deal. I mean, we only have pretty much the greatest running back ever to play the game of football coming up on this stage. I don't know what y' all think about that. I think that's. I think that's pretty cool. I'm just like a real quick story, and then I'll do kind of a formal introduction. But many of you may have also experienced what it's like to travel on airplanes lately. They're like, hey, here's your flight. And you, like, give them money. And then a couple days before, they're like, just screw in with you. We canceled that flight. We put you on this other one. You're like, well, that one doesn't work for me. Well, in addition to being, like, probably the greatest running back ever to play the game of football, when all this stuff was going down, this gentleman said, I'm going to make sure that I arrive the day before just so I don't have to stress out and so that I don't miss that commitment. You're talking about somebody who. And we have dealt with a lot of different celebrities, a lot of different celebrities over the years with Traffic Conversion Summit and some of our other events. But my favorite ones are the ones who. They're just pros. They're professionals, and they see when they make a commitment, they want to see it through. And I wasn't surprised when I was talking to some of the members of his team to discover that he doesn't really identify, first and foremost, primarily as a football player and really hasn't for quite a while. Yeah, that's what everybody knows him for. I mean, you're talking about somebody who is known as a football player, but even towards the, you know, while he was still carrying the ball, identified as an entrepreneur, somebody who would go to Jerry Jones and say, hey, can I sit in on this business meeting? I want to understand what's going on. And so when I heard that he had made the decision to. I want to make sure that I fly in early so that I'm there and so that I don't miss this commitment, what I realized is that we weren't simply dealing with, you know, a Hall of Fame athlete. We weren't simply dealing with a celebrity who, if you saw him on Dancing with the Stars, can also cut a rug, which. God dang. We're dealing with an entrepreneur. We're dealing with one of us. We're dealing with somebody who, when we make commitments, we see them through. So when we welcome Mr. Emmett Smith to this stage, be upstanding and yes, welcome one of the greatest players of the game. But at the same time, welcome one of our own fellow entrepreneur, Mr. Emmett Smith.

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Thank.

You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table.

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Thank you again.

Good afternoon.

Thank you so much for coming out today. Really appreciate you being here.

Thank you all for having me. We all, you know, we had a.

Canadian on stage that tried to say y' all earlier.

Probably didn't come across well, did it.

Said y', all, I'm here to talk a boot. And as I know so you have obviously had quite an entrepreneurial career right after having quite an athletic career. I'd love to talk a little bit about kind of your entrepreneurial journey. So had you done any kind of business at the time that you went into the NFL and were having that career?

Yeah, when I think back to my younger years, I becoming of an entrepreneur without even realizing what I was doing, whether it was taking a lawnmower, going around in the neighborhood and cutting grass, or even in college with my full back, Darrell Perry and I formulated a team, a partnership to go out and detail cars and so forth. So we was doing things that at the time to subsidize some of the activities that we wanted to do, whether it's cutting grass and I wanted to go buy some clothes because my parents couldn't afford to get me the Jordache jeans and all that kind of stuff. And they had to share the wealth with my brothers and sisters. So I found a way to go and create my own money, if you will. I'll never forget when I was in high school, I had a job at a place called Blab Television, where I learned how to not only work the cameras, white balance and tilt right, pan left and two shots, one shots. And then they brought me into the back room to talk and taught me how to direct the show. So I learned how to do those things just on the side, just to raise capital, just to be able to have my own money, pay my own gas. So the spirit was already there. And that spirit was birthed by one of my top Warner football coach, Charlie Egger.

Really? Okay.

Yeah, I was over his house. First time I've ever been over standing over a white person's house. Literally, first time. I don't know how many black kids he ever had over his house, but I was over his house. It was my first time. And so in his home, he had a 3,600 square foot home, which was much bigger than the projects, which I. And his son's 10. I played ball with him, and so he was there to monitor my weight so I can play the next day. Okay. So I'm walking around in this man's house and I saw an office in a home for the first time. And I walk up to his office and walk around, I see these papers laying on this slanted board and I'm starting to look at this stuff like, what is this? And he started to explain to me what he did for a living. He owned his own construction company and he was building houses. He also was building commercial buildings. And he started to teach me how to read blueprints and floor plans. And from that moment on, I started looking at what life could be like without the game. Now he told me, he said, you have talent and your talent can take you a long way, but someday that talent is going to go away. Then all you will have left is your education.

And how old were you then?

I was 11 years old.

Wow, that's really early to get such great advice.

Eleven years old. And so from that point on, it was all about getting a job. And then it became about when you had your own capital, owning your own business. And so that's how it got started.

So when you heard that advice and you're 11 years old, what do you do with it? How do you take that? And what happens next? Anything different immediately or just kind of in the back of your head?

It was just in the back of my head because football was at the forefront and getting to college was at the forefront. And so when the opportunity through high school, when I had odd in jobs and so forth, I realized that I was sitting next to Sam Bettis, which was the upper class running back at the time, and his locker was next to mine. And he started getting these college letters. And I'm like, what are those? And I'm a freshman. He's like, these are letters from colleges. They all are interested in me coming into their schools. I'm like, really? He said, don't worry about a young fellow. You're going to start getting a lot of them. And I got my very first one from the University of Florida, and I was so excited. And then I started getting more Nebraska, then I started getting more Auburn, Then I started getting. Man, I got so many letters. I got sick and tired of looking at letters. Sick and tired of. I made boxes and boxes and boxes of letters. It was ridiculous. I mean, the same old folks. Sometimes Florida would send two or three letters in one week.

Really?

It got crazy. And so he started to explain to me, you can earn a scholarship to go to college. I'm like, okay, that means my folks don't have to pay, Right? Great. So. So football became my first business without me realizing it. It was my first business. It became also, once I got to college, they started teaching us how to deal with the press, media training and everything else. So I started learning a lot more about, okay, this is bigger than what I'm thinking.

So now, did you have any kind of business education, formal or informal at that point?

None.

And so you're going in to a very sophisticated business operation with NCAA and NFL, obviously, yes. How did you go about educating yourself or finding the mentors and advisors that would help you through that?

When you get Pell Grant and you're a scholarship athlete and they only give you $700 a semester, but the Pell Grant is worth $7,000 a semester. But they're giving me 700. The rest of the school get the rest of it.

Really? I didn't know that.

And I was asking the question with my counselor. I'm like, why is that the case? Shouldn't the whole 7,000 be mine? I mean, what does the school need with the other $6,000?

They've got all this.

He's like, well, you own scholarship. I said, well, hell, y' all can have my scholarship. Give me this money right here. So I can, I mean, because what I learned, what I learned, this is when I went back to college after I became a pro is it was so cheap to go to school, it only cost me like fifteen hundred dollars to enroll in classes and all this kind of stuff. And for books and tuition. Well, hell, I rented an apartment complex. I rented an apartment and I had three bedrooms and was just me in it. And it only cost me four or five hundred dollars a month. So I started. Now I'm a pro. So I'm thinking, I'm like, how I could have rented that room. I could have rented that room and not pay for none of this stuff.

Right.

So that $7,000 could have went a long way. Later you look back and reflect. But as you're going through you asking these questions, just trying to understand why the system is the way it is and why college athletes could not live to the fullest. First of all, they told me I couldn't get a job, couldn't work and be on scholarship at the same time. That was the NCAA rules back in 1986 pretty much.

Until just recently. Right, with the nil stuff. Yeah.

And then another eye awakening moment is when you walk into Florida field or walk onto the football field, period, and you look around in the stands and you see 22 jerseys all over the place. And then you start asking yourself, how is that possible? Where's my cut?

Right.

Oh, you got a scholarship and they making multi millions off of your jersey. Oh no, give me that money.

Right?

Give me that money. So it's like give me a piece of it or something. But NCAA rules would not allow that to happen. So you start learning more things and then you're in class and then you talking about what you want to do and you go through these business opportunities and you reading the, you're reading the textbooks but you're not getting the true work experience of the real world.

Experience theory. No practices.

Yes, yes. And it just was completely different then. When I became a professional athlete and I was able to get paid, then the world just opened up. So to me, a lot of the things that I went through to that point was training ground for where I was going. And then once I got there, it was just so much, so many great things just flying around your head. Just. You mentioned Jerry Jones, someone who mentioned Jerry Jones earlier. Yes, I did have the opportunity because I remember what Charlie Egger taught me and I remember what other folks were saying. Don't be afraid to ask questions. And so I started asking Jerry the right questions. I Mean, like, hey, man, I know how much you're paying me, and I know how much you're paying these other 53 guys on this roster, but how much are you really making? You have to ask the questions. And then I started saying, hey, can I come sit in your office during my lunch hour? I want to hear you negotiate contracts.

What did he say when you. When you said that?

He looked at me like I never had. Nobody asked me that before.

Isn't that amazing?

And I was like, yeah, I want to come do that. I want to come sit down on you. I come in, I'm going to be real quiet. I won't interrupt nothing that's going on. I just want to hear you conduct business. And he said, sure, come around. And I would come around, talk to Marilyn. His assistant said, marilyn, can I come in? And she's like, go on in. And I would go in and sit down, and I got a chance to listen to him negotiate deals with Paul Taglabu, with Home Depot and everything else. And I got a chance to know him on a totally different level. Got a chance to know me on a totally different level. He already knew I was on a mission physically from the world of sports. He knew I was on that mission. But what I think happened, it opened him up to, wait a minute, he's thinking much broader. And so it helped me out learning his tactics, because when I had to negotiate my contract, I utilized some of his tactics against him. And so then this thing called marketing started entering into my world. Then I started saying, okay, marketing endorsements. Michael Jordan paved the way for all athletes to understand what endorsements could be like. And you start learning these things, how to put yourself together, packaging. And then you meet guys like Roger Staubach, who was a childhood hero, and you start to understand what he's doing beyond the game. And what he did was short of amazing. Then you meet guys like Magic Johnson. Then you start to understand what he was doing to transform urban America.

That's amazing.

Arenas where others wouldn't go.

Yeah. To do that and help and make money.

Help and make money.

Yeah.

Then you start to spend time with guys like Michael Jordan to understand what he did and how he was doing his business and conducting business. So I think the entrepreneur spirit has been within me for a long, long time. And so far, so good.

What were some of the. What were some of the lessons that you can remember in taking away from some of those early advisors like Jerry Jones and some of the other people you mention?

The one thing I learned from Jerry Is don't stress over the lost deal. There's another deal around the corner. You lose one, don't worry about it. There's plenty more deals coming. You just gotta be in position and be ready. Because oftentimes what happens is when we lose something, we spend so much energy and emotions just focus on, man, we just lost this. We put in all this energy. We did all of this work. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe they didn't give us the opportunity or this, this and that. And while you're doing all that, this other deal is just walking right past you. But you so stuck over here, you miss it and you're not really prepared for it. So I have taken and have adopted the philosophy that we use in football. Spend 24 hours celebrating something, but also 24 hours forgetting something to move on and get prepared for the game that's coming up. Now, in football, you have six days to prepare for the next game. Now, that doesn't apply in everything in life, though. That just applies on the business side of it, because in life you deal with things, human aspects of life, that can really slow you down because of a loss of a loved one, especially something like that. So don't apply that to that aspect of it, just to the business context of what I'm talking about getting prepared for what's coming around the corner. Right now we're talking about hyperinflation and everything else. We talk about stuff sitting out in the Pacific and not coming through the omnichannels and everything else. And we talk about gas prices going up, food prices going up. Yes, yes, yes, yes, that is happening. But don't let it paralyze you from being in position to continue to move forward. So take these signs, understand these signs, and try to figure out how these signs can truly impact what you're doing.

What do you see from all of that right now that can impact what you're doing?

Well, I see that the price of steel is going to go up. I see that the price of wood and everything is going to go up. So housing is going to. Costs may go up, profits may come down.

All just in time for the big infrastructure.

All just in time for the big infrastructure. So they trying to get the infrastructure for free. Yeah, they need to get it right. They need to do it right. But. But yeah, those things happens. And oftentimes they happen when some people are just focused on what they do and miss out on how the world itself can impact everything that we all do.

So from beyond the game, was it 2002, that you stopped. You had the record.

You were saying earlier in 2002.

2002. And so you were kind of thinking beyond the game while you were still in the game.

Oh, yes.

What. What were the first entrepreneurial things that you did once you stopped with. Once you stopped actively playing?

Okay, I stopped actively playing in 04.04 January. The something in 05. One of the first things I was already. Already knew what I wanted to do. So Roger Starbeck and I had already had a conversation, and he told me, once I retire, please come to him. So I retired on a Sunday or on a Wednesday before the super bowl in Jacksonville. That Tuesday, I was in Roger's office talking about what my next move is going to be. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. I wanted to follow Magic Johnson footsteps. I wanted to get into the real estate business, understand the aspects of the real estate business. One of the first things he asked is what side of the real estate business you want to do. I said I wanted to be a developer. I want to build things. I want to see things. I'm taking what Charlie Egger put in my head years ago, and I want to apply it right now. So I want to build retail shopping centers. I want to build a big power center. He said, well, have you thought about the brokerage side of the business? I said, yeah, but I don't. I'm not sure if I want to be a broker because I see all the developers making tons of capital. So I'm like, that's what I want to do.

Yeah, Way more leverage.

So. Yeah, yeah, but way more risk. Too much more risk. Personal guarantees, things you have to learn about as you start to go through the process of financing some of these big, big deals. And so I started in that way called Magic Johnson. Said, I'm about to cut a deal with Roger. Help me understand what I should ask for, what I should. He said, don't leave nothing on the table. Do this, this, and this and this and this and this and this. Yes.

He is so sharp. Yeah.

Yes. And so I did. So resources, I would say to any entrepreneur is this. If you're going down a path that someone else has already gone down, if you know them or if you have a chance to reach out to them, it's better to reach out and get insight before you jump fully in and immerse yourself before you get too deep or before you make a mistake in your negotiations. And so that's what I did with Magic. And so once Starback and I got together with his development team. I consummated my first joint venture.

It's so smart though, because it sounds like now had you had talked to Roger before?

Way before, matter of fact. I had invested capital with some funds that Roger, the Starbucks company had had a fund and we invested some money into buying shopping centers and so forth.

But you still reached out to Magic to get advice before you sat down in the negotiating chair.

Reach out to Roger. Roger wasn't going to tell.

I know. That's great though. That's really smart. That's good. That's good. Okay. So. So then you did. You did the deal with Roger did.

A deal with a company called Cypress Equity.

Okay.

And. And so I started learning how to put these things together.

The development deals.

The development deals.

Okay. What was your first deal?

One of the first deals we did was out in Arizona. We did about 125,000 square foot shopping center. We started in right before the daggone recession hit.

Good timing.

Yeah, it was poor timing. Poor, poor timing. But it was a good experience. I didn't have any major legacy issues with me, but the putting a deal together was more important and learning how to put the deal together was extremely important than any loss that we had because we were able to get out from underneath it without a problem. So I learned how to get out of stuff too as well. Well, but putting the deal together gave. And I had to learn a lot of this stuff on my own too, by the way. It wasn't like people were just running up to me trying to give me information.

And there's no book. People ask that question.

There's no damn book.

Yeah.

Period. Period. There is no book. You have to immerse yourself in it yourself. And the way I did, I went to CCIM institution. Yep. And I started getting educated in terms of working with the institution in terms of helping me understand the user perspective as well as the buyer's perspective. That's right.

Did you go through the certificate?

I went through the certification, got my certification and everything else. I start being able to identify what trade areas look like in my mind. Throughout 15 years in the National League, I was already seeing locations before they actually became real locations. I just didn't have the know with all how to put these things together. Right.

And.

And asking your teammates to invest in something that you can't really put together yourself is like leading the blind. The blind leading the blind.

Yeah, but you don't want to the team, especially on the field. You don't want those guys losing money with you.

No, you Don't. No, you don't. If anyone's from Valley Ranch or from Dallas, Texas, know where Valley Ranch is at? There's MacArthur and 635. Correct. I lived in Valley Ranch in 1990. Lived there in that area, in the urban area, for about five years. So in 1990, I could stand at the top of MacArthur Boulevard in 635 and look directly over to Beltline, which is about a mile one way, 114 is about a mile the next way land. And I said to myself, and I told Michael Irvin this. I said this property right here would be valuable. I think we should put our money together and go buy this property and put some shopping centers on it, blase it. He said, yeah, yeah. And I told. I was talking to all my teamies about it, and they were like, yeah, let's do it. Well, when it came down to getting the money, it was like crickets. No money, no deal. And plus, we didn't know how to put the deal together. And we playing ball.

Right.

Years later, Target's popping up, Marshalls popping up, chick fil A, McDonald's, you name it, Kroger's. All these shopping centers are popping up right around that corner. That corner right now is probably worth over $200 million just by seeing it. Yeah. And then I saw some other sites, and the same thing happened. So having an eye was part of my gift. And the reason why it's part of my gift is because that's what God had blessed me with. To play the game of football is to be able to see things happening and process it fairly quickly on the football field to where it highlights my talent. And I'm able to do what I do on the football field the way you see me do it in the real world. That same old vision is being able to see something before it actually gets there. See what the potential could actually be, whether it's potential of a shopping center or the potential in people as well. That's part of my gift. And so all I've done my whole entire life is try to maximize my gift and do it in the most entrepreneurial way I possibly can do it.

That's pretty great. So you had education through the CCIM and some bit of modeling through them and through the Staubach. What was it? Was it Roger Staubach Company? Staubach Company and that kind of helped you put those first deals together. Did you have a group of people that you kind of talked to like, that were peers, like kind of mastermind y or anything? Like that?

Well, through the relationships through CCIM as well as those relationships that I had with the Starbuck company and then others as you go to these conferences like this right here, you start to develop relationships around the country. And then when I moved to Arizona I developed other relationships with other developers. And so learning from various developers and seeing what they're doing as well is one of the things that I've always tried to gain insight on and to model some of the things that we do that I try to do as well for my company standpoint.

And then you said you branched out for a lot of the development deals that you were doing into related things that were real estate related. Can you share some of that with us?

Well, one thing I learned by working with Cypress is when we put together our pro formas, the one thing you you're looking at is what construction cost is going to be. So you see what it takes to develop a shopping center and you know that there's a lot of construction costs that there. And picking the right GC is something that's extremely important. And so. But seeing how much money was being placed in the construction cost took me back to Charlie Egger in terms of what Charlie Egger was doing. So how does a construction company make money and et cetera, et cetera? Obviously they make it off of the volume, they make it off of the materials that they buy. Especially if they buying it in in bulk and they're able to get discounted. What's the name? And they don't always pass the money on to the owner. They always take it to the bottom line. Understanding that piece, I started looking at and hearing in 0809 when the market turned about George Bush was talking about infrastructure needs. I was seeing what was happening around the country. I saw bridge fall down in Minnesota where people got hurt and killed in that case because of the infrastructure was failing. And they, and then the government started talking about how the infrastructure is failing. And so I started saying okay, if the government is about to and if you know anything about real estate, infrastructure leads where real estate is going to go. So I'm looking at new roads and bridges starting to happen around Dallas Fort Worth. And I'm seeing all of this infrastructure work coming in. I'm seeing these rock haulers and cement trucks and high five this going up and new roads going at the new toll road and everything else. And I started looking on a government letting and seeing how big these projects were and I'm like wow, 300, 400 million a billion. That's like how many African Americans are in this space? I couldn't find any. None that was doing quality work at that level.

Right.

There was an opportunity. So I created a construction company to do just that on the infrastructure side as well as on the building side. Fortunately for me, I ran into a guy by the name of Eugene Walker who worked at a big company called Austin Industries which has Austin roads and bridges. Austin commercial roads and bridges is exactly what it sounds like. Commercial was also airports, office buildings, parking lots, parking, all this stuff. And he and I had the same thought and the same passion for doing something in a space that most people say you cannot find qualified individuals in. And that's where we started.

So you found a partner that had the experience that you needed to experience.

That I needed. He had the experience, he had the operational experience, he had the north all to do it. And he and I teamed up. Now I'm going to take you back. This was like we started in 10, so I'm going to take you back 12 years prior to that, 98. I commissioned a guy to do a business model for me. All because I saw these rock autos and everything else.

Wow.

All because I saw it. Then I saw the high fives going up. And at the time the Dallas toll road stopped, I believe at George Bush right now. And so. And I knew Frisco was about to grow.

Okay.

So I went all the way out, me, myself riding around, just looking because I'm looking at real estate and everything else and I'm putting it all together. And so there's about five acres I was looking at on 380 and the toll road where it stopped at. And there was this real estate guy by the name of John Christie who was selling about 5 acre plots. And I was like, that would be a great spot for a batch plan. So I come back, I started doing my research and everything else. I commissioned this guy from SMU to do this business model around that location. He started doing a business model, started coming back. He did a 1 mile ring, a 5 mile ring, a 10 mile ring, a 15 mile ring and a 20 mile ring. And then I'm doing all my research. I'm like, man, these are expensive trucks. $120,000 for a rock hauler, $120,000 for a cement mixer. Not to mention the batch plant itself is about 700 to a million, some thousand. 700 to a million dollars. And I'm like, oh my goodness. So he comes back, he said, you know what, this is an interesting business you're talking about he said, but here's the thing. You won't be able to get any governmental contracts for about a year or two before you get in. And it's going to cost you about $15 million to do this. So if you set this up as a minority company and you're not able to get any governmental contracts, you're going to have to subsidize it through other means. I was like, wow, I'm not sure if I'm ready to drop 5 to $15 million into this business. And I'm not there every day.

Right.

I'm still playing ball. So I took the business plan and I said, okay, I'm gonna keep it fast forward. I'm focusing on breaking the record. Fast forward to 2010. I look back, Frisco is Frisco now. And that business model was spot on. The closer I was to a mile of my bass plant, the more revenue I was going to make. The furthest out I was, the less money I was going to make. And the reason why is because transportation routes, the trucks would be further out, would take 20 minutes, 25 minutes, maybe even 30 minutes to get back to the so I couldn't turn the trucks as much. But if I'm doing residential development and I'm putting in the concrete, which every house has a slab on it and some places requires pier and beam, et cetera, et cetera, then you have roads and everything in Texas is concrete.

Concrete.

So boom, another opportunity. And I wasn't prepared at that time. But right now, the next one I.

See you're gonna do it.

I'm jumping on it. I know how to go get the money now. I have the resources now. I have the infrastructure now to help support me. So right now my mind on entrepreneur tip it is out there.

That's pretty cool. You've got some other interesting things too. And you had you were kind enough to autograph. This is a heck of a signature, by the way. Yeah, that is amazing.

I stole that.

You stole that signature from who?

From a guy named Emmett. Emmett. Yeah. I like it.

I like it.

So I. We have a signed football here. I would love if we could give this to the somebody. Is there anybody that would want an Emmett Smith signed football? I'm gonna let the man himself hand it to you.

How can you tell a man know when he ran up here to get it, he didn't even wait for it.

Now the. The only challenge mark with that ball is that how do you know that it was signed by Emmett Smith? But that is a challenge with some. That's awesome. The, the, the challenge. But the challenge, though is that we don't know very often when we invest in sports memorabilia and other things if it's actually authentic.

Correct.

And so you saw that as an opportunity to do something. Would you share a little bit about that?

Most definitely. In 90, when I became a professional athlete, I was introduced to this world called sports memorabilia. And the way it works, I'm going to tell you, I get paid.

It starts with the college getting all the money for the. For sure.

For sure. But now I'm a professional athlete and the way it works is you get paid to do signatures. And so you do your signatures and people sell your signatures along with the items to the general public. So you go to these places like a field of dream store, some sports memorabilia store, someplace that has a bunch of sports memorabilia collectible items for you to buy, whether it's on ebay. Now it's on ebay. Back then it wasn't. You had to go to these physical locations.

Right.

And so you spend a lot of money. Well, there were times when I started seeing fake signatures on items.

Do you see your signature?

That was fixed.

That's got to be just very frustrating.

It is so frustrating because I feel for the person like this man here who pays 500 or $600.

Did we tell you that was 600, by the way? We're just going to add that.

Yeah, we're going to add for your convenience. Yeah.

To your bill.

It's going to be on your hotel room. Yeah. So you see a bill up there, 600. Just, just note Emma Smith made and put it on your room. So you start to see these things and you like, man, my fans are getting taken advantage of because that's not my signature.

Right.

Hey, business hunch listeners, we're going to get right back to the show, but Roland wanted me to invite you to a brand new training that he's doing on acquiring businesses with no money out of pocket. It's something that he's talked quite a bit about on the show, but he's doing a free training where he's going to walk through the entire process. So if you want to get access to that, go to businesslunchpodcast.com EPIC. That's businesslunchpodcast.com Epic. And you can get signed up.

So I felt bad for my fans, extremely bad. Somebody was ripping them off and that bugged the living crap out of me. And the only thing that they had to verify, somebody had a nerve to tell me, well, it has a hologram on it. What does a hologram do for you?

You can't possibly make a hologram.

What does a hologram do for you? It falls off in the bottom of the box sometimes if you leave it in there on there long enough. So it has nothing to do with really authenticating the item. I could put a hologram on almost anything. And then it was giving it these letters of authenticity, coas, certificates of authenticity. What is that requires a printer and print all these out. So I was trying to come up with ways to help the consumer, which is you. And there was no way at the time. Then finally, in 02, a guy comes to the Dallas Cowboys with this concept, and he brings in and he wants to take it to Jerry Jones. And Dave Campo knew that I was very knowledgeable or heavily invested in technology because I was buying stock and everything else in the tech space. I bought Qualcomm when it way before. I end up with 125,000 shares of Qualcomm.

Nice.

It went up to 700 and split four times. So when this guy walked in with this technology and I was telling all my teammates about it, this guy comes in, he shows this technology. It's RFID technology. Before we know RFID the way we know RFID now, this is like an O2. I'm like. I said, so what does it do? And he starts saying, it's an asset tracking and inventory system. I said, okay, so you're tracking uniforms and all that? Yes. I said, so if you could track this uniform, this same thing here can authenticate this uniform? He said, never thought about it that way. I say, yes, if you can authenticate this uniform, then you can authenticate my signature. And not only can you authenticate my signatures, now I have a way of selling. The consumer has a way of verifying where these come from. Hmm. What's the problem? The consumer don't have a reader. This consumer will have to buy something to attach to a device to scan it. That's not good. And this is in O2. But the process of verifying and authenticating uniforms and authenticating signatures was spot on. The timing of getting devices in the hands of the consumers to read these devices on these tags was off. So it made it challenging. So we perfected the art of putting it on the items and inside of the items, wrote patents, got seven of them.

And you're. You're on these patents, right?

On these patents, all on this process. So 2010 rolls around, I have my first Android phone. I have my first Android phone.

Boom.

Deal with it.

So it was a phone. It was a phone. It worked just like the Apple phone. But I had my first Android phone and I found out that Android had NFC in it and it can read the tags. I was like, whoa, timing, timing. So we ventured down this path to start working around this and Apple didn't have it in their phone. So Apple's taking me back to 02, to where I got to figure out a device to put on the phone to get it in the hands of the consumer. So, but today. But today Apple has it in his phone. Android has it in his phone.

So do you have an iPhone?

Yes, I have Android and I have Apple. I have both of them.

Ah, nice.

I have both of them. And so applications can reside on both phones. So we're in the process of developing an app for Android.

Okay.

And some other things. So now you as the consumer can have a resource. Whereas before you didn't have a resource. Now you can have a resource to where you can go and look for one of our prova tags.

Like prove A.

Okay, got it. It's a Latin term which means proof.

Okay.

You can actually verify some of these items and make a business decision. Best for you.

Nice.

That's the reason why we did it. And so I like doing things that's. That's helping people, not only from a development standpoint, doing redevelopments, doing, bringing services and so forth, but also providing things for folks not to get taken advantage of. It's almost like showing me the Carfax, put it that way. Yeah, you should have a resource if you're going to spend $5,000 on the Emma Smith game worn jersey. Notice I say game worn, not game used. There's a distinct difference between game worn and game used. Game worn is I put the jersey on. I went into a game, didn't really play in the game, just walked out on the field and never used the jersey. Took it off and put on another jersey, then wore it on the field into a game and played in it. See, they trick you with all these marketing tools, guys. I'm just telling you. Game issued, game worn. Game worn is more valuable than game issued. Game issued. They put a jersey on my back and say it was game worn or. Or worn by the player.

Wow.

But it's never touched the football field. You want stuff that's legit, by the way. That's what our Apple is called, legit. But you want stuff that's real and you deserve things that are real. When you paying those high dollar prices for the things that people are selling out there in the sports memorabilia market. Now, I say that to say this, it's a multi billion dollar industry and there's been reports that over 70% of that stuff is fake. So I can promise you in this room, somebody here has some fake stuff on their wall. I promise you that. And I'm here to help. That's it.

And is that active now? You guys are doing it? Is it prova.com it's provogroup.com provogroup.com bottom.

Change up some stuff too.

Yeah. What are you gonna change up?

I might be going to Pro Tech. Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

I like all the technology stuff behind it.

I like, you have to leave some vowels out. You'll get a higher valuation.

Yeah, leave some vowels out.

That's, that's, that's how they do it in the Valley. Right.

That's how they do it in the Valley. I'll keep that in mind.

So now, and as you look to scale that business, you partnered with some people obviously to kind of help get going.

Right.

What, what will you do to really take that thing to the next level, do you think?

Well, I'm looking to partner in with the National Football League Players association to get players to take better care of their merchandise. See, I kept all of my. If you know a little bit about my history, I kept my very first touchdown football all the way through my last touchdown football. Really, I collected 164 touchdown footballs.

Wow.

I hold a record for 164 in the National Football League. And the reason I did it was because my father told me this the day I got drafted or right before the season got started. He said, son, keep everything that you have. Cause you never know your place in history. Now I say that is because once I started collecting all my touchdown footballs and I was mounting them up in 2002, I started. I knew I was gonna break the record, so I started tagging all of my jerseys. So for the last two years or three years of my NFL career, I collected all my jerseys. I collected helmets and everything else. So with Tom Brady throwing his 600 touchdown last week, or when it was that jersey, that helmet. Yeah. That football could sell for 50, 100, $200,000 to somebody out there in the marketplace that wanted it. And if it had our smart tag on it, you wouldn't have to worry about somebody switching it out.

Is it going to have your smart tag on?

No, it doesn't. It doesn't, it doesn't.

Come on Tom, Try to get them.

Yeah. All right.

Sometimes they. They're handlers. Their agents think get in the way a little bit.

Yeah.

But that's part of it is getting everybody on the system.

Strategic partnerships.

Strategic partnerships. Strategic alliances would be. Would be preferred. And we'll even white label it if we had to, because at the end of the day, it's all about the patents and the processes that we implement that ensures these items are legit.

Absolutely. You. When I first met you, you had a smile on your face. You got a smile on your face. Now you seem like a pretty happy guy. He's sitting facing this way because you lost one of those beautiful earrings recently. And he was telling me about it, but he was smiling the whole time. How do you stay in the right place, in the right mindset?

You know, I'm a firm believer that your attitude determines your altitude and your approach on life will dictate where you go in life. I try to stay positive, try to stay upbeat every day. I enjoy, and I love what I do. I love being who I am, and I love being grounded. I like to keep it real with myself because I can easily get caught up in this whirlwind of stardom, fame, and fortune. But if I do, I miss out on the opportunities to connect with people and where they are. Yeah. The beautiful thing about connecting with people and where they are, if you hear what I'm doing and what I do and who I think about, I think about people. Yeah, I think about people. I think about how this will impact your life, not only how it would impact mine. I know it's going to impact me, but. But how will it impact your life? And that's just the approach that I've taken. My mom always told me, no matter how high you go, never forget where you come from and the same old people you see on the way up, you might see them on your way down. So treat everybody with equal respect. Command respect for yourself. Treat them with respect as well, and just live the best life you possibly can. I'm trying to live the best version of myself that I. I possibly can.

Seems like you're doing a pretty good job.

I do all right.

That's awesome.

You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Frasier. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information, go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening.

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