From pg 49 All In Together Now years and then I partnered up with a firm and then I got exploited and in 2013, I was with the firm for a few years. We joined with a client each and then it grew into 10. I was flying our New Year’s Eve, Christmas Day signing guys getting exploited making pennies on the dollar. The night I got inducted into my high school Hall of Fame, I told my wife, “I’m not happy where I am in my career.” I told her that I wanted to have my own firm and she said, ”let’s draft the termination letter today.” I walked away and I had signed a Non Compete so I had to walk away from all of those guys. I had one loyal client that said, “I signed with you, you’re my guy.” He never played a down in the NFL after that point and he said, “I’m leaving and coming with you.” Like Jerry McGuire walking out with Ron Tisdale, a receiver and goldfish – I walked out with an unproven long snapper and a pet boxer dog named Sly. I remember when I left that firm, they said that I would never make it in the industry. But my whole life people said that I was too small to play football, that I wouldn’t play Division I or play pro. I feed off of and that’s all I needed to hear and my wife was my witness and I put my head down and went to work. I signed my first player, Bryan Braman, who won the Super Bowl last year, he kept me in business and I made a pact when I got into the business and I said I would never go to the SuperBowl unless I had a client in the Super Bowl, and the last 5 years I have had my guys every single year play in the Super Bowl. My drive to be an agent is to be the best and football lifted my soul when I would step onto the field. It brought me so much structure and joy to my family’s life and my life as well as the ability to have an education and to network with the ability to meet people and to interact. It's a spe-
cial place in my heart. I have been inducted into 3 Hall of Fames which I am so proud of that as I was statistically not supposed to be here in terms of how I was raised, my size. I never let my greatest asset – my work ethic, down. That is what I stayed true to! AM: What is your day like during the season vs off-season? For those players that you rep, how much contact to you have with the team and the league? SS: My day to day – my mornings start off very early. I can only workout very early because my phone is always blowing up with 100s of calls and 100s of emails a day. That’s a big part of my lifestyle that I approach every day as I lift and I run. I get my mind right and I try to read a book every 2-3 weeks. I'm finishing my second book and it all comes down to time of year right? So obviously, if you have clients who won the Super Bowl, you just go balls to the walls to try to monetize and to expose them and align brands with them that are in line with their missions. In terms of post SuperBowl, when you win, you’re talking about shifting gears. So let me rewind. In the fall, you’re talking about recruiting kids for the 2019 the following draft. You’re going to college games and evaluating films. At the same token, you’re servicing your guys with their needs and what they want. Then you have the guys that are on the street. You have to designate x amount of hours to make sure that they are employed. For the guys that are playing during the season, you have to make sure that you get them appearances for their marketing. Right when the season is over, you go into guys who are unrestricted free agents that are able to test the open market - so gauging what their value is and seeing which teams best suit their needs. You’re constantly trying to work on your relationships with teams as that’s
