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The podcast by NFL players for NFL players. Each week, we break down the biggest events in football and how they directly impact a player's career and money.
Join Former NFL Veterans Sam Acho (Bills, Bucs, Bears & Cardinals), Zach Miller (Seahawks & Raiders), Jeff Locke (Vikings, Colts, Lions, 49ers), and college coach, Riccardo Stewart, for a raw and unfiltered conversation about the game, the business, and how players can achieve generational wealth.
Riccardo Stewart: Hey, I wanna
welcome you guys back to another
episode of the A-W-M-N-F-L Podcast.
My name is Ricardo
Stewart, and I'm your host.
And as always, I am joined with
my friends and my coworkers, Zach
Miller, Jeff Locke, and Sam Acho.
You know, the last couple episodes,
or two episodes ago, we begin
this having this conversation.
Of having a human-centered approach.
And what we meant by that is essentially
when it comes to building your
financial plan, you know that these
NFL athletes you have in a life that
you've envisioned for yourself, and then
you usually hire a financial advisor.
We would say you need to hire
a family office so that you can
have yourself at the center.
So that everything, that is every plan
that is made, every decision that is.
Talked about every idea that is had
centers around who you are, your family,
and the life that you want for yourself.
And so we talked about that starting
first with what are your priorities,
what are those needs, and what are
those wants and what are those wishes?
And then today looking at, okay, if
I have a human-centered approach.
When it comes to building my
portfolio or my financial plan, we'll
use the word financial structure.
What is different between being
with the normal FA or being
with a robust family office?
And so I'm fortunate 'cause I get a
chance to, to lead this conversation
and I'm joined with my friends who are.
20 years plus NFL experience as
well as the financial expertise.
And so I'm gonna start first with
this idea of of an architect.
Alright?
I got a friend, his name's Jack.
He's an architect here in Phoenix.
He designs buildings
and homes and so forth.
And years ago he gave me a book
to read regarding his profession.
I cannot remember the title of the
book, but there was a quote that stood
out to me and the author says this.
That an, that an architect or anybody
who's trying to achieve perfection
knows that the job is complete, not
when he can't add anything else, but
he knows that the job is complete
when he can't take anything else away.
And the point there is whatever you need
is what you want, and that's what you get.
When it comes to these fas and these
brokers, there's a whole lot of just
junk that is put into your portfolio.
Oftentimes that benefits them,
that does not have you in mind.
It has a caricature of you
as opposed to your story.
So what does it look like to be a
part of a family office when you
build this financial structure?
Jeff, let start with you.
You're good as a professor at breaking
down some of the things we talk about.
I use the phrase financial structure.
For our listeners, that might be the
first time that they've heard of that.
Like what do we mean when we use that?
That word.
Jeff Locke: Yeah, I like
the architect analogy.
You started, and I'm gonna extend
it to just like a custom home build.
Not everyone's gone through
that, but it's a process to
build a custom home from scratch.
So your financial structure would
really be the blueprints and the
game plan to get that home in place.
And it takes a lot of work.
You've got the architect and
you've got the main person
called the general contractor.
He's the one calling all the
shots, telling everyone else what
to do to get that home built.
So when we think about financial
structure, that's what we think
about building the blueprint as the
architect going back and forth with
the client on what they actually want.
A lot of times clients don't know
what they want until they see it
in that first blueprint, then you
keep adjusting, keep adjusting.
And adjust from there.
As you mentioned, as a family
office, we can build custom homes.
Zach's gonna get into how some other fas
don't have that ability here in a second.
Riccardo Stewart: Yeah.
Okay.
Let me, let me shift to Z.
I know the area of Phoenix that Zack
grew up in, it's an area called Alwa.
Toki.
It's technically not a city.
The city is Phoenix, but they're so good.
They call themselves Alwa
Toki, and there's a lot.
Of track homes that are built there.
So Zach, you probably know what it's
like to grow up in a track home.
And so let me ask you, in your first,
you know, experience of working with
an FA financial advisor, did you
have a financial structure and was
it even anywhere close to what we're
talking about as a family office?
Zach Miller: No, I had a model home,
So
exactly what I grew up
in was that kind of one
size fits all and.
you know, do it for scale.
And that's the opposite of what I bought.
Once I signed my long-term deal and
wanted to buy a house in Paradise
Valley, I bought a custom home
and that's what I should have
had in the, in the finance world.
That's what I should have
had with a family office.
And what I got was my advisor
broker at Merrill Lynch basically
putting together a portfolio.
And ignoring the financial structure,
ignoring cash flow, ignoring a guaranteed
contract with the Seahawks, ignoring all
those things of future cash flow, which
you have to take into account because it
ends up, you end up getting things wrong.
And so those generic investments
they make sense for for most people.
And then I would even argue that like
if you're gonna just do a portfolio and
ignore the financial structure, you'd
be better off just going to Vanguard
and paying as cheap as as possible.
But if you actually want to add.
Wealth through other ways,
which a family office does.
And that includes taxes, estate planning,
insurance private investments, like that's
where you make the most amount of money.
And So.
if I went back and looked at my deal when
I signed a, with the Seahawks, all of a
sudden I should have had a custom home.
I should have had financial
structure evaluated and I own,
I mean, in my particular case.
I wasn't a big spender.
I was pretty cheap as a player,
so I didn't have a ton of cash
outflow, so I shouldn't have
had as many bonds as I did.
And so why that hurts players is because
all those years I was in bonds with
future guaranteed money, fully guaranteed
money that.
money could have grown faster.
So if that money would've been growing
faster, you just can go back and do the
math and it, and it's an opportunity
cost, or what I would've been able
to grow my money to, of more than
conservatively more than $10M by
just being misallocated So if you, if
you get it wrong, when you're setting
up your financial structure and you just
think about the investments, you just
think about the, oh, what do I wanna buy?
What do you know?
What asset do I wanna buy?
And you ignore.
It from a high level, it can
cost you money, and I see it
all the time with players.
It keeps happening over and over and over.
Riccardo Stewart: It the, you
know, we have this metaphor, and
I hate the mix metaphors, but I'm
looking at Sam outro right now.
It looks like he just got off
of A-E-S-P-N show or something.
I mean, the suit's looking good.
I mean, you gotta, in some ways,
feel like when it comes to custom
is what we're talking about, that
it's not just a one size fit all.
A human-centered approach when it comes
to building your financial structure
means something a little different
when it comes to a family office.
I'd love to kind of hear your,
your points on that, Sam.
Sam Acho: Yeah, a human-centered
approach when it meet, when
it comes to a family office
is somewhat like.
getting a custom tailored suit.
I remember when I first got in the NFL,
one of my older teammates was like,
Hey man, we need to get you a suit.
And so I was like, I'll just
take whatever suit I can get.
So I don't know if we went to Dillard's
or some store and just got a suit.
I was just happy.
To be in the league and to have a suit,
right that my teammate wanted me to
have on, on road games or maybe even
travel to the stadium at home games.
But after a couple years in the NFL, I
started seeing some other of my teammates
around me that weren't necessarily wearing
just regular suits from the store, but
they were wearing custom suits, custom
suits that had been tailored to their body
every part of their body measured, right?
Not only custom suits,
custom jeans, custom.
I've seen even people with custom
boots and it's like this idea of, hey.
When you get a chance to try on this
custom fit, you'll never want to go back.
Now, I remember when I was first in
the NFL, I was like, Hey man, I can't
afford that custom fit, so I'm just
gonna stick with the generic, general,
hey, whatever, what, what have you.
But then after a few years, I got a chance
actually to go to Italy and meet with
this master tailor who'd been tailor for
his entire life, 80 something years old.
Didn't speak a lick of English,
but he made me a custom suit.
And I haven't taken it off since.
I mean, once I tried that on, I
was like, man, I gotta get more.
But the thing is like,
that's what I deserved.
That's, that's what I had been able
to earn from being an NFL athlete
and achieving what I, the level of
success I've been able to achieve.
Now, that's just me.
Think about where you're at in your
career what you've been able to achieve.
Do you deserve a, a off the rack, like
regular, like, Hey, I'll just go to
Dillard's and pick up this jacket.
Or would it be better
to have a custom fit?
What that means, like what that looks
like specifically, even when it comes
to giving, I know there's a good
friend of mine who played a bunch of
years in NFL still playing right now.
There are some times where he was homeless
and so he spends a lot of his Christmas
time giving back to homeless people.
He spends a lot of his time
doing Christmas drives.
And so this idea of, Hey, what if
I just, I'm just write a check to
this organization, Well you could
actually donate appreciated stock.
You could actually give 20% more.
Let's
say there were a thousand
families you were helping.
You could help 200 more.
Families just by this human centered
approach of people knowing what
you care about what you're doing
currently and adjusting some of
your decisions in that same way.
And so there's even more so we can
go to the investment piece of it,
but that custom fit, once you try
it, you're not gonna wanna go back.
Riccardo Stewart: So if I'm
sitting and I'm an NFL athlete,
I got 40, 50, 60 million.
Clearly I'm in a different like category.
When you get to a different
category, Zach alluded to it earlier.
I mean, he just said, Hey, I got
a custom home in Paradise Valley.
For those you don't know,
that's one of the more lucrative
places to live in Phoenix.
Sam just talked about a Taylor suit.
He talked about Dillard
here in Scottsdale Mall.
Then he talked about some
dude that's in Italy.
Okay.
When it comes to these NFL players, Jeff.
What does a financial structure,
or what could a financial structure
look like for someone who's made
60, 80, 90 million in their career?
Jeff Locke: Yeah.
A couple examples we see from guys are
talking about that jump from kind of
that rookie deal to the never work again.
Deal.
Right.
Is.
Literally you can build
your custom home, right?
You can start thinking about,
I'm paying for education for
my kids and all their kids.
And all their kids' kids, right?
Sam talked about it.
Maybe it is time to pull the trigger
on the private foundation, right?
I'm gonna hook up my community, set
them up for years at a time, right?
These are the wishes during your
first contract that now become
wants that you can actually afford.
because all of your needs
are already taken care of.
Right.
So as Zach talked about though, other
places are gonna just try to stick all
these things you wanna do back into
the same model home, or they might
build you another home, but it's gonna
be the same exact model home, right?
And they gotta try to make what
you want fit within the homes that
they can build, and that's it.
Whereas we're gonna look at
what you can do with your new
net worth and your new assets.
And say, Hey, are we building
a whole nother custom home?
Are we adding wings to your current home?
Right?
All to try and get your goals
achieved in the most tax efficient
way possible that makes the most sense
for you and your family, not what
necessarily makes the most sense for us.
Riccardo Stewart: Yeah, so I
started this episode with talking
about my buddy Jack, the architect.
One of the things he does whenever he
builds a home and whenever he builds the
building, he goes to the owners, those
who are going to build the building,
he goes to the company that's gonna
build the office or the building, and
he has them tell them the story of their
family or the story of the company.
Because once he hears the story of who
they are, where they've been, where
they are, and where they're going, it
begins to give them a picture of what
that particular vision of that building
could look like at a family office.
When you're at the center as the human,
as the family, we listen to your story.
That's what we begin to discern
your needs, your wants, and your
wishes, and then begin to cus
build the custom financial plan
that you and your family need.
Not just now, but, but also in the future.
Listen, if you wanna learn more about
what is this financial structure, what is
a family office, and why don't athletes
even hear more and more about that, we
would love to be able to give you some
resources and answer your questions.
You can feel free to call us or you can
send us a text at 6 0 2 9 8 9 5 0 2 2.