You're Not Just an Athlete Anymore: You're a Player and a CEO

Congratulations. You had the high school success, you made the jump to the bigger college stage, and your talents are now being compensated. With scholarship money and the wealth-building potential created by your university's Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) ecosystem, you are now officially a business owner and an entrepreneur.

Your job as an athlete is to constantly focus on performance—to train, compete, and win. That's the Player Mindset, and it must remain your priority. But now, you must also adopt the CEO Mindset. Your personal brand—your name, your image, and your performance—is your core asset. To make this opportunity last, you must run this brand like a business.

The Business Goal: Honest Profit

The CEO's fundamental job is building a system to manage revenue and expenses, returning an honest profit.

This profit is not just a leftover number; it is the fuel for your future. Honest profits result from intention. Those profits are available for your long-term wealth building, setting up your family, and taking care of those you love. But that honest profit is only available after you have paid all your operating expenses.

The Cost of Peak Performance: Your Operating Expenses

Your business is your body and your brand. Your operating expenses are the things necessary for you to run your business at peak performance. These are non-negotiable costs you must budget for:

• Peak Physicality: The right diet, supplemental exercise, and recovery—possibly beyond what the university provides. This is an investment in your main asset: your sports talent.

• Logistics: Transportation to and from events, trainings, or marketing opportunities.

• Content Tools: If you create content, your tools are your shop floor: cameras, lighting, video editors, and production services.

• The 1099 Warning (Taxes): You will soon learn that the two numbers "10" + "99" are the signal to the Federal and State governments that you have to pay income tax. This is a non-negotiable business expense. Fail to budget for it, and your "profit" is a lie.

Your System: The Budget as a Blueprint for Trade-Offs

A budgeting system is the blueprint for managing these costs and for managing life itself, which is a series of tradeoffs.

All a budget is is a prefabricated set of tradeoffs where you declare your priorities. For instance:

• You trade-in setting up investment and retirement funds.

• You trade-out the monthly payment on a luxury car in favor of a practical, reliable transportation.

Or, thinking about your schedule:

• You trade-in dedicated time to attend to your schoolwork. This grows you as a citizen and improves the overall strength of your brand and business for life after sports.

• You trade-out time-wasting activities like endless social media scrolling or video games.

Or, thinking about your physical self:

• You trade-in building an emergency fund that can handle an injury or unexpected cost.

• You trade-out constant eating out for preparing healthy meals, which is an investment in your physical asset.

Having this system in place ensures you always fund your wealth-building goals and your long-term success first. Everyone is different and has different priorities. There is no judgment. The point is having a system to declare and implement those priorities ahead of time.

Ultimately, this business system leads to the smart deployment of your profitability. This means:

• Building Your Safety Net: Setting up emergency funds and having excess cash in case an amazing opportunity arises.

• Investing in Your Future: Setting up investment funds and retirement funds.

• Giving Back: Planning for future growth and taking care of those who take care of you, such as Mom, Dad, your family, and community.

The Crucial Order of Operations

You now have a clear path to scale:

1. Your Sports Talent (Your Core Asset)

2. Scholarship and NIL Money (Your Revenue)

3. Build Your Business and Wealth-Generation System (Your System)

4. Engage Agents/Brokers (Your Sales Team)

The big mistake many new entrepreneurs make is getting the order of operations wrong. They jump to hiring an agent before they build their business and wealth-generation system.

Agents are great. They are specialized sales professionals who bring in revenue to feed your system, but their incentive is to drive revenue today (they get paid on commission). If you haven't built your system first, that new revenue has no place to go except immediately out. This is why we hear stories of athletes finishing their sports careers penniless: They hired their agent before they built their business and wealth-generation system.

Your system is what protects you. It is what ensures you pay yourself first with long-term wealth building and that you take care of those you love.

This is what PFR does. We offer Founder's Copilot specifically for student-athletes to build your business and wealth-generation systems. We also have a portfolio of trusted sales and marketing agents to help you drive revenue deals, on top of the financial systems you have created.

Your Founder's Copilot gives you peace of mind your long-term wealth and goals are managed via a business and wealth-generation system. Learn more about building your system and Build Wealth Beyond the Game.

Jeff Hulett is a Personal Finance professor at James Madison University. He is the founder and president of Personal Finance Reimagined, a decision-making and financial education organization. PFR provides courses, curriculum, and seminars to High Schools and Universities. PFR provides the Founder's CoPilot to help entrepreneurs build wealth via a disciplined business system. PFR's system includes textbooks and empowering technology.