Hey, hey, hey, we're back. We're black, we're brown and ambition ambisition and ambusition, ambition. I felt like I lost my voice five years ago. I never got it back.
Well, that little scratchy scratch, that little grit, you know what I mean. I love it. It makes you you. It probably makes people unfortunately take you more seriously and me not seriously at all.
Better voice. I'm like, I'm like, damn, I can't. No, I know it's nothing.
Once again, your decision to sing the song. It's been nine years. We're the boss, but we love it. I loved My favorite thing is seeing the guest's face when they're like, yeah, she's singing, it's happening.
We all freedom like, yes, we do not well, but we do have a guest. We're extra black in the suit today. We have a brother in the stew and yeah, I met Brandon some years ago, Brandon Copland aka Cope. If you guys are football fans.
He's professor Cope.
Yeah, yeah, so so many things. So man's gonna do his bio. But yeah, I can't wait to talk to to to someone who's had so many different careers.
Yeah, r a b A fan. So we have some company. As we said, company is in the house. Ever been beyond your best behavior? We're gonna welcome in our company. Brandon Copeland. Professor Cope is a ten year NFL veteran. Are you our first NFL player on the show? I can't try to think. I think yeah, I think so. We're you know, brand ambition, not our target demo. But but we love having you on the show. Just don't We're not gonna like talk about sports, are We're just
gonna like keep it money okay cool. Professor Cope is a ten year NFL veteran, the a, the author of the new book Your Money play Book, and the co founder of athletes dot org, which is the player association for college athletes. He's also a member of the esteemed CNBC Global Financial Wellness Council, and he's been dedicated to financial education, as well as being the first NFL player
to double as an IVY League professor. At No Big, No Biggie like U, penn It's fine city of Pennsylvania, Brandon, Professor Cope, brother, welcome to the show.
Thank you, thank you for having me. I love the music intro. I will say you know, we were down in Florida. We're down near the storm and so we my wife and I were supposed to go to the Usher concert and it got canceled because of the storm.
You know, obviously safety first.
But you know, I've been around the house practicing my my high notes over there.
I was about to join. I don't want to. I don't want to, you know what I'm saying.
Okay, you know, oh dang, yeah, the Usher concert. I've seen Ushering. He's excellent. So you guys will get a chance.
See that's that third kid energy, Like, yeah, we just had a baby, but let's go see Usher. You know what I mean. It's fine.
Yeah, we just found out that coach just had his third only one month old. So boy it was a boy, right, a boy?
Yep, yep, baby boy. Three boys. I was trying to get that girl. I was trying to get that girl. But you know, hey, oh I thought you had girls.
Okay, they're all boys.
Yeah, all boys. I love the boys, don't get me wrong. You know it's growing up. That was the dream come true. But then after two of them, you start to realize, like, hey, y'all, y'all.
Y'all, go to y'all mom a lot y'all, not me. Yeah.
Wait, if I need somebody to look after me, you know, I'm like, oh yeah, so anyway, but I know wife, she'll be taking care of She's.
Gonna have a oh yeah for sure. But yeah, girls, my dad is set for life. He's like, I don't I don't lift the finger with girls, right, boys be like, who's that that guy?
I'm ready and my boys different. They're going to be caregivers. They're going to love to just give and be generous. All right, But professor Cope, talk to you. You left the NFL. What would decide a little over a year ago?
Yep?
And what was that transition?
Like, how the transition? Yeah, the transition was.
I mean for most people they talk about how tough the transition is, and I am no different. The transition is tough. Is different not playing a sport that I've played. I've built my foundation off of my life, off of my schedule, around my livelihood, around for the last twenty four years of my life.
Right.
I started playing football in fourth grade just to you know, one get a lot of energy out to My grandfather played eleven years in the NFL as well too, so he was my hero. And you know, how do I continue to make him proud?
So to speak?
But you know, to have that part of your identity regardless of what you're doing off the field, it's a challenge just to change.
You know. I didn't shrink when I left the NFL. So you know, people still like, hey, you play for somebody, you know, not anymore?
Not anymore, you know, right so every time that wound opens. But I think, you know, the biggest thing for me was one talking to a lot of folks who, in my eyes, have successfully made the transition about Hey, what's next? How do you deal with this? How do you deal with that? How do you set a schedule?
Now?
How do you start to understand what's for you and what's not for you? Because as an NFL player, there's a lot of things that you can you can take on because it's fun.
To do in your free time. Right now, it's different.
Everything that you choose to do is you know, needs to be taken extremely seriously, right with your time and so and also things that a lot of folks don't necessarily think about or consider. I've always been extremely present. My family has always stayed with me when I'm doing you know, going to city to city or team the team, But there is a certain amount of reconnection that you have to do with your family as well in order to really be able to sit down, spend time be present.
Because for ten years of my life everything was about me. When I came into the NFL, my agent and the veterans in the locker room said, cope, in order to make it here and stay here, you got to be selfish. You can't spend time wasting energy thinking about other people's problems. You got to focus on making the team and sticking here,
and everybody will thank you because of it. Now you get out of the NFL, and now you got to go back and pour back into everyone else who's sacrificed in order for you to have the time, the freedom of mind to be able to be successful in the NFL for so long.
So yeah, and like marriage is last, you get that kind of peptile what And I'm like, as a wife, I'm like, that's that's huge, but I understand it. It's like also it's a give and take. It's very rare to have that like perfect fifty to fifty partnership. So thanks for being transparent about that, because I love that. They were like it was no bullshit, It's just like, yeah, this is how it's going to be. So a year in, what does success a successful transition? What were you what
were you hoping for and envisioning? And like did you start that transition even before you left, because I mean, you've got a book that doesn't happen overnight.
Yeah, it definitely doesn't happen overnight.
I think for me, I was always prepared for the day football ended.
When I came into the NFL.
I got fired like five times in my first season in the NFL, so I always knew I was I went to UPenn and in the spring when twenty thirteen they had the draft, and the Baltimore Ravens didn't call me during the draft. They called me right after and they signed me to an undrafted free agency deal three years one point four to five million dollar contracts. So I'm sitting there on a college campus and you know, to most people, I'm a millionaire. I've made it right.
I fortunately understood the path my grandfather took, and so I knew that the work was just beginning. But I only saw twenty four thousand of those dollars before being fired for the first time, and so for me, everything was like, oh, you guys, can you can take all of this away. So I need to make sure that I'm hoarding money and saving as much as possible and then eventually let me take that and put it into
things that make me money. But that also meant that I know that this platform will be taken away from me at some point. So how do I go out and connect with people and try different things and meet different mentors that I can leverage as I transition from the game. And I think a successful transition. Obviously everybody's version looks different depending on their life, but for me, it was one getting over football right.
And what I mean when I.
Say that, you know, depending on how you leave the game will determine in how you look at the game for the rest of your life. I fortunately got everything that I could have gotten out of football in my ten years. I started with my hometown team in Baltimore, I got fired from them and went to five other teams, and I came back to them ten years later and finished my career in Baltimore with the Ravens. And my goal coming in was for my kids to see me play and for me to be able to make more
money off the field than on the field. Did it, done it, happy, proud of myself. But to be able to walk away like that and not walk away with hey, you're not good enough, kid, or get out of here or whatever, right, that can make me look at the game for the rest of my life through like scarred eyes. And frankly, you know, I realized in my first few games, you know, I'm a competitor, which to be a competitor, you got to kind of be a hater. Right, I'm
going to call a spade of space. So when I'm looking at the game, I'm kind of like, man, I could do that for a million I could do that, right, And I didn't want that negative lens to affect my children's love of the game because the game is also provided so much for me, and so for me it was forgive and let go of hating football to reconnect them with my kids and getting to know them better because as you all know, you know, kids are different.
You know you think you can treat them all the same, No you can't.
They they different.
And then also starting to explore what things I was truly interested in professionally beyond the game was the most important making sure that I'm sticking true to the goals I set up to my for myself going into the NFL is like, when I leave, my goal is to do what I want to do whenever I want to do it, period. And that's in work, that's in business, that's with family, and so making sure that I'm really identifying what those things actually are.
So how far into your NFL career did you start as an as an IVY League professor? At you Paying So that's the school you w into. That was your undergrad Yeah, so that how did that happened?
Yeah? So that was a number of experiences.
A number of those experiences actually helped develop your money playbook and also help develop just my own mindset for like how do we scale financial education. But I started teaching in twenty nineteen spring of twenty nineteen, so that was six years, my sixth, sixth year in the NFL.
I was with the New York Jets at the time, so fortunately I was able to make a drive back and forth to Philly and the off seasons, so I'd literally be in Ota' spring training and then on Mondays I'd be going over to Philly a night and teaching a three hour lecture to at that time thirty students. Now we have one hundred and twenty students each.
What did you teach?
So the course is called life one on one.
It is all the money decisions we make in life that we don't talk about in school for some reason.
Right, so that's of our house. How to buy a car?
That three digit credit score? Well, how is it not perfect? Don't I feel like I never messed up? I never missed a bill, right, like all the things that we actually deal with in life. Instead of us talking about the tangent of a forty five degree angle, or hey, compound interest, it's great. Instead of us worry about the formula, let's just figure out what it is and how do we use it for our lives.
And so there were a.
Number of experiences that I had in the league my rookie year twenty thirteen, the NFLPA, the National Football League's Players Association, our association, came and taught us about this thing called a four to one K and hey, if you are playing with this team long enough, you will get put money into this thing. And they'll put money into this thing. And I'm like, Dang, that sounded like free money.
I might know they had a four to one K in the NFL, but.
Yeah, they got some great benefits in the NFL. But I also had to realize, like, all right, if I don't make this team, if I don't make this tackle of practice, none of this matters. Again, I was fired a few times, so I was like, let me put this in the back.
Of my pocket, my brain.
But I'm like, I had to make it to the NFL to learn what a four to one K is, Like, who is.
Going to teach my mom this? Who's gonna teach my brother this? Right?
And then later on fast forward in twenty eighteen, my wife and I we bought our first house townhouse now it's a rental in.
New Jersey, and she called me.
I was in Detroit with the lines, went back to see the home inspection and all that type of stuff for a bye week, and then now we're closing. It's December twenty sixteen. I'm sitting in my locker room and they email me the closing package.
She's actually at.
The realtor's office and about to sign on the dot of line and she's like, hey, hey, babe, Hey, does everything look right? You know, I'm supposed to be the Wharton Business School guy. You know, I've enterned on Wall Street at Heads Fund. I'm looking and it's one hundred and six pages of closing disclosures.
I'm like, I got how are you looking at it? Not there? That's a huge stack of paper.
Oh no, I know. But I'm sitting literally in my locker on my phone, open up the PDF, and I'm just scrolling.
Us zooming in that exhibit. Jesus.
Yeah, I'm like, I have no idea whether this thing is right or not, and I'm about to sign over thirty years of my life.
And instead of us talking about this.
Which we all want to do at some point, whether it's rent own, we all want to have shelter, we were talking about things that I will never use in my life again. And so all those things made me decide, let's start a course for people use the platform of the NFL, and then let's also figure out how to scale it. And so now we have high school kids who take it and get credit and things of that nature, and we're continuing to build it out.
Oh that's amazing, Tiffany. That's like Kindred spirits over here, right with your curriculum in Jersey.
Yeah.
No, that's amazing because I mean to do both at the same time. I can't even imagine the amount of work that that took. But I'm sure because you developed these kind of like interests off the field, it helped with the transition. So it wasn't like you just transitioned to nothing. It was like, well, I was already teaching, you know. And I know you have a nonprofit organization, right yep, yep.
So my wife and I we have a well one. Like you said, I guess before I even go to that, I always trying to make sure I speaking, we and hour a lot because I've been very blessed to have an amazing team, amazing people who believe in the mission, believe in the vision of what we're trying to do, whether it's with Athletes dot Org or Beyond the Basics or Life one on one, which is the course, and they pour into it and make me much better than I ever would be without them.
So shout out to the team. Keep you know, I appreciate y'all.
And on top of that, I think you know, my wife and I we start a foundation beyond the basics inc our goal is to help young people realize their potential earlier, right, and the reason being, I'm not in the seat I'm in if I don't have a grandfather and a mother who take the blinders off of me
and just expose me to where my ambition can take me. Right, There's so many young people who are in neighborhoods that they only see the four blocks between their house and their school, and they don't see big cities and money and all these other things where now, if they had that ambition, they can see WHOA hold.
Up, I could do that over there.
So our foundation we do some amazing, unique, once in the lifetime experiences, and we also focus on helping take those blinders off of young people through exposure, through mentors and shadow opportunities.
We have.
One of our biggest event actually coming up for the holidays, which is December to remember, we take kids around the country shopping.
For the holidays.
All these kids underserved, amazing young folks who come into a Target or Walmart thinking that they're going to do community service and when they get there they get to meet one of their favorite NFL players from the local team. But then they also get two hundred bucks that they can go and spending the store. And the beautiful thing about it is most of them spend more money on other people than themselves. So it's been a experience. We've been doing it for eight years now and just been
fortunate again to have players around the league. One of the good things about getting cut so much and going to six different teams, I guess was you make a lot of friends around the league that want to continue to support different initiatives as well.
So I was wondering about that because how, you know, I think about the importance of listen. I'm not even like try Mandy, do not try to say anything about sports, because you really don't know. But with a team, there's so many sports metaphors in business. I mean, people love a sports metaphor. So much of the language that we speak around money is around it is like what the sports tend to at the team element and all of that. But when you're moving so frequently, Yeah, how what was
it like being the new kid so many times? And what grounded you?
Yeah, that is a phenomenal question, you know, I think that for me, you have to hone in on who you are and what your identity is some of the greatest plays talk about the fundamentals, the fundamentals like of the sport. So, you know, Lebron James is amazing. Obviously he's God has put a little extra on it, right, he said, you know what you Lebron, right, But he also is like extremely consistent in all the details of what makes him great.
His diet.
The years ago, he was at a little high school game and they were like, Lebron James got billions of dollars. You know, he's a billionaire now and he's eating you know, trail mix out of a ziploc bag. Well, most people are like, you know, oh, like he's trying to save money and not go to the concession stand. No, he's more so just protecting his health and his body as big as asset. He's focused on the fundamentals of what it takes for him to be great. For me, I
was always focused on my standard being my standard. So when I go into any room, any locker room, you know, one of the best pieces of advice was like, don't try to fit in with everybody, stand out.
Be you right.
And so whether I was on the Jets, the Baltimore Ravens New England Patriots, the Falcons, whatever it was.
I'm brand. Yes, I did play from Atlanta out there we go, there we go.
Was it a good time or like? Listen, you know, I mean the paycheck those are some big you weren't. I mean, I know you said you got fired, but it wasn't like you didn't get hired by some great teams. Yeah, I mean those are some incredible teams.
Yeah, No, I was. I was, like I said, I was fortunate.
I mean, you know, the average NFL you know, career is two years now and whoa and you know I was fortunate to play for ten and so yeah, by by my own standards. You know, when we went out there, I made mom a proud you know, I made my wife proud. You know that they were proud of who I am and who I was. But yeah, it was
not an easy feed at all. But as you mentioned, it's locking on who I am, locking on my fundamentals, and I go into my locker room and I'm gonna make it better, right, And you have to drown out the noise and you have to really know who you are because a lot of young players do, especially, and I was no.
I wasn't above it.
But what a lot of young players do is they become a chameleon to the locker room that they're in. Right, you're twenty two years old, twenty one, twenty two years old, You're around money for the first time. You're around veterans who, on paper you think that they're doing it the right way, some of which are some of which aren't right, and you start to take notes from the wrong people, and
that can also, you know, lead to your derailment. So I've just been fortunate to be around the right people, take notes from the right folks, and just you know, be strong enough to be who I am in every locker room, whether people liked it or not.
Now, you said that one of your biggest goals was to as far as a transition, and what success looked like was to make more money out of the NFL than in it. So then you became a teacher. So I'm just like what I mean, I know you were a professor at school, but make it make sense. What does that look like for you? What are your like income streams post or is it a work in progress? Like we get we get there, we go there on Brown ambition.
No, No, that's these are the conversations we should be having. I think that you know what everyone needs to do. So when I took my first role at PEN, I was not paid a dollar, that was not paid a cent to be there and to show up, and they paid for my travel back and forth. I would go to for Lauderdale to train, I would fly back up in the off season, things of that nature. So they did that, but for me, I understood that the opportunity to take that and leverage it into so many other ways.
I'm I'm a hustler. We're gonna figure it out. And so I think that you know, for the Brown Ambition audience, there's sometimes where there's things that aren't giving you the value that you think you deserve at that point in time. But you have to be smart enough to ring that towel out and get every ounce of value that you
can out of it well on your own. So from that, for example, we've created partnerships with brokerage platforms and with education companies that have been able to pay me, been able to pay my team, been able to pay my production team. But also I've been able to get equity in those companies as well.
Right, we are now.
At the point where we're launching, like we launched financial literacy courses on college campuses now with partners like Robinhood. Right, so I'm going to Howard next week. Actually, we're launching money drills of a financial literacy course on Howard's campus for all those universities for all of those students, which I'm extremely excited about as well too. So we've been able to leverage something. It's speaking, it's building courses, it's consulting.
We help certain companies better basically make their employees more productive, because if their employees understand their finances better, then you can come in more productive, you can come in happier as opposed to just being like, man, I don't know how gonna keep the lights on two weeks from now, right, So that's one leg We've also, I'm very big in the real estate. We've done a show on Netflix, top ten,
top ten show. You know what I'm saying, Tiffany, I'm up, you know, up there with Tiffany on the Netflix crew and everything like that. But it was called by my house. It was Shark Tank, but instead of people pitching businesses, they were pitching their homes to me. Pam Leeman, the CEO of the Corcoran Group, Blane Kellman, the CEO of Redfinn and Denisia Wrights. They're an amazing investor and entrepreneur out of Los Angeles, and so you know, we've been
able to leverage those things. You know, I had my own trailer. I'm like, hold up.
This was right before we It launched the year after I was with the Falcons, but I remember shooting it right before going to training camp with the Falcons in twenty twenty one. But anyway, so we've done that. We do real estate as well too.
So I started doing flips when I was in Detroit with the talking you know, thirty two thousand dollars auction properties.
Things you walk into. I got videos. I'll show y'all one day if you ever interested. Things you walk into.
And my property manager like literally going through and just like hearing stuff moving and like, yeah, cope, I love you, but f this, I'm out of here, and like getting out of the joint right, turning it around, putting in forty thousand into it and flipping it for one twenty eight thirty seven and just doing that over and over and over again. And now we're at the point where you know, we're doing multi family buildings. We got a eighty eight unit in California. We got a couple affordable
housing projects in Newark, New Jersey. Looking forward to those things coming online as well too. And then now we're also doing land development down in the Florida area, but also Texas as well too, So now you're talking tenants more. So you know, a couple hundred acres. You got other NFL players involved as well too.
But now you got.
Literally Target and Walmart competing for a spot. And I think we just accepted a LOI from Lows. You got Chase Bank, Starbucks, et cetera. So just kind of I'll say, for me, I've always been extremely curious, Kevin Hart says in his podcast Heart the Heart.
With an interview with Jay Z.
Always says, you know, people will let him into the room, but then there be a door, and you know, they let him behind one door, and then there be another door, and most people get excited about being in that room, right.
And You're just like, yeah, I'm here, I'm on Netflix.
Yeah, you know, but I'm kind of like, now, like what's behind there?
Like just just.
In that curiosity for me also eventually leads to some action, and fortunately our actions have been good thus far.
So pray for you boy a lot.
I just had my team, my team meeting this morning, two hour long. I like start strategic planning, and you know, you look at all the stuff, You're like, ha ha, these all our projects and so I understand the pray for your girl part. So then, so how did this lead to? So you're doing all of this and somehow you managed to write a book? Yeah you know, Okay, tell us more about your book. Who is it for?
Yeah?
How did you even find the time to like to get to it?
Yeah?
So it started as we started the book, and I say, we get my team because you know, like you said, you got to expand yourself. But we started the book three years ago now, and it was really started as forty pages just for our class, because for every semester, you know, with the curriculum for the course, the syllabus, plus the assignments and the homework assignments, you're pointing them
to other books. I'm pointing them to Everyday Millionaires and rich Dad, Poor Dad and this YouTube video and stuff like that. And eventually you get to the point where like, all right, well, I'm going to establish my own set of rules and standards here that you.
Can all that are evergreen, that you all can can use in your own lives and go ahead, share it with your friends, share it with your family, et cetera. And so after the first semester of doing that, one of the things I was thinking was like, Yo, this is cool. But yeah, I'm my biggest critic.
Typically this is cool, but is anybody walking away with something that they can actually like go sit down and build their actual plan with or are they walking away with a bunch of tips and a bunch of advice and what is a four to one K and why it's important what.
You can find anywhere? No offense? Right? Like, but but.
Ultimately, are you actually giving me Okay, this is the this is the play call. I'm gonna go football for saying this is the play call. This is how you actually executed. This is how you executed in your life. For example, third third child, third baby boy, we just set up his roth Ira in about six minutes this morning, like fresh hot off the presses, right, he already in my you know what I'm.
Saying, babe off, Yeah, he got on.
You know, they're all looking at me like, I can't wait so we can get a bag. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, my downfall.
You know they got to be on the payroll.
Right, Yes they are. They models. I get them in everything.
I get every single thing.
But again, but now taking that process that I did for that and also putting it into the playbook, so now you as an individual can take it and actually apply to your life.
And one of the.
Best pieces of feedback I've gotten. It's been a couple of them, but one in particular my one of the guys, Danny Mac who goes around with me sometimes and he's shooting things and again making me look better than I am.
One of the things he said, he.
Was like, man, I tried to read your book, but it wasn't no easy read. This wasn't no no sit down and like just nonchalantly read it.
Like I had to break out my own notebook and like write out my goals and and write out my plan and all this stuff. And I was like, that's what I'm talking about, That's exactly what I want. Like when you leave this thing, you leave it better.
And I got a d M from a friend that I used to train with. He ran track and uh, you know, tried to make the Olympic team and unfortunately fell a little bit short. And one of the things he said, he was like, man, I had to thanks for holding me accountable this morning. I had to go back and read the fourth quarter about blank blank blank blank blank to make sure I'm buttoning up this stuff with my legacy.
He just had his second.
Child as well too, so so anyway, that to me is what was missing years ago. And so we went back, retooled it and tried to make sure that every single time you go through a quarter, what we call a quarter because of the football realms, you know what I'm saying, you know, trying.
To make sure I'm bringing.
Twenty percent of the game is a quarter. I do know that, you know.
We tried to make sure that that you can walk away from that quarter with something that, if you put in the work, you can actually go and apply to your life. You walk away with that playbook and that blueprint, which was important to me.
Okay, Yeah, who do you think the book is for? Yeah, like, who's your ideal reader? Are they younger?
Yeah? Young adults, young adults.
I think I truly think that everybody can find something in it for sure, because I mean, I'm sure as you both know, right, like, financial education is not something that anybody has been formally taught for the most part, right, So, like there's people in their forties fifties who just never had these lessons, right, and now instead of them necessarily potentially using it for them, they may use it for their children or how they you know, engage with their children.
But for me, it was originally as for young adults, that college age, that college graduate, who's really like going out and really planning a strong financial life and a strong financial future.
Perfect. We get that question a lot, and I think it's not a one size fit all answer, but talk to us. You mentioned the roth iray for your baby whose belly buttons still ain't fallen off. Personally, I was like, you can might tell my husband you can catch it. I don't want to touch, but like talk about like if you were going to give parents of small children or any age child really some tips on setting them up for financial success just from your personal experience, what would you say.
Yeah, yeah, and sorry, you talked about the belly button and this is probably something my wife will will kill me.
For him.
So that's fine, you don't put it in the jar and keep it.
Yeah yeah, we eat it now it's.
Like dehydrated, and polarize it and wear it in a little necklace.
I will say this, and this is you know, maybe I'm naive, you know, but my wife and I, you know, we planned for our first child in terms of the pregnancy.
We had a doula in there.
Who's my wife's best friend, shout out the YACHTI her best friend and the godmother of our first child. But nobody told me about the placent the bag. All right, so I know this. I'm not trying to get you all in a different rating category.
Oh let's go there. Female anatomy we do know about.
Yeah, well yeah, I'm sitting there. You know.
You know, baby boys start crying. The first one, you the Bryson is his names twenty nineteen. He started crying, and then I, for the I ain't gonna lie, I started crying, you know, I started. I said, oh oh snap, it got real, oh real responsibilities, okay, and then they start pulling and I was just like, what's.
What else is in there?
Oh?
Yeah, but nobody, lady, nobody told me that that was a part of the process. Right, So anyway, that's just one thing for any of the fellas listening going into that situation, just know that there's it's not over once the baby comes out.
He went south of the border, and I don't think a lot of men even do that. You know what, you put yourself in that position. Congratulations, You please yourself.
Men will little pass out? You're like, come on now, we've got to focus on this lady over here passing down.
No one told you, well.
You know, but uh yeah, so anyway that nobody tell me. But your question, well, I ever forgot your question about.
Like new parents, Like, so if you're a new parent, you have because that does come up a lot, like I have a kid or you know, like you know, maybe that kid's a little older. What are some tips And you're like, oh, now you're on your third and you're like, like you said, baby by name, even fall off you already got a roth ira for your child, Like what are some things that you're like, Oh, now that I'm third, third kid in this is what I know my financial steps for this kid.
Yeah, so my my plan for every child is I set them up with four accounts, right, and it may differ for whoever you are and all that type of stuff. But savings account, how your savings account its number one thing I set up. As soon as I get the SOLI security card. Go to for me, I go to Ally. You can go wherever you want it. I'm not plugged by Allied. I don't pay me nothing like that. I'm just telling you what I do, so don't sue me Allied too. I set up an investment account, a brokerage account.
Don't need my kids saving up a lot of money, especially not that young. I need their money working for them.
Three.
I set them up with a roth Ira because although I battle in my head a lot about the wroth Ira, the wroth iray is an amazing tool tax free growth and wealth, you know what I'm saying, that can be generated. I also, you know, I'm putting away money, you know, literally from my one month old for when he's fifty nine and a half. And sometimes I'm like, you know, hey, if he's in a buying at thirty three, you know, obviously
he can pull on some of that stuff. And the rules may change and differ, but it always, you know, I'm always balancing between the regular investment account and the wroth IRA and then finally a five to twenty nine account five to twenty nine account to try to make sure that as they are continuing to grow and start to have more education expenses, now there's a pool of money that we can tap into specific for them. And so however you end up making it work. You know,
that's what's worked for me. I do pay my kids from the business, you know, I don't don't hide from that day. You you see them promoting the book, They out there working, They out there. If you look on my account, look like.
So does does Bryson is a Bryson LLC. And then you pay him. How does that work?
So they get paid as an independent contractor on my from my company. So for them their models on my company. So I've had Bryson do TV shows with me. Actually he's come on TV shows, Brailn. He'll do promo videos and things like that. Bryson is the oldest one. Braylan is the youngest one. Brendan he's a little too young right now. But he's going to.
Why don't you do that to yourself?
Because he said, what's your wife?
What's your wife's Dave brishetta now joking, Yeah, her name, her name is Taylors. I offered, I'm like, you want to tea something in there, but I know for a fact you guys are like stumbling over your words in that house.
I was gonna say that because you know you're getting that boy.
You here, it's number one, number two, number three, You gotta you gotta do that.
I literally literally had that moment this weekend. I called my second like, you know, two different names. I'm sixty, and I'm like I literally turned on, like this is the rest of all?
And sure, so question so.
That that that is that a custodial account, the investment account that.
Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, all of them are custodio accounts. And yeah again when they when they do things to earn from the business and they'll get paid directly from the business.
And you don't have to be taxes if you keep it under a certain amount. I think it's like twelve or thirteen thousand dollars for the year, then you know they don't occur income tax because it's too low. So I do the same type of step daughter I give her. She does like social media for me because she's eighteen now, but for the last she's been like fourteen or fifteen.
I just I you know, she has social media, and then I pay her whatever the max is for the four one k like this year is like seven thousand dollars.
And you have to be earning an income to yes, to put money, have to be putting money in for your yeah, child. So like for someone who's working nine to five, is there a way for them to take get access to that as well?
Well, I would say you got to be creative, start an LLC. Yeah, I mean you got to have a business. Listen in case the you know listening, I'm telling you straight up pay your taxes and pay it on time.
Don't you ever run.
We endorse this message?
Yeah, exactly right.
But I think that you know again, Ultimately, as as I started learning about as I started prepping to teach the course, because my biggest fear was was getting in front of these students and then somebody calling you out for something you don't know. Right, So I'm very comfortable saying hey, I don't know that. I'm very comfortable. We bring the subject matter experts all the time. But one of the biggest.
Discoveries I had was taxes and tax strategy and how all the wealthy people talk about tax.
In real estate and depreciation and all this stuff, and so going into it, you find out that most folks get extremely, extremely proactive when they're trying to find ways to save as much money as possible via strong tax strategy. So I guess that's my long window way of saying, if you have a nine to five.
You should at least consider it.
You should consult with a tax advisor accountant and consider are there any opportunities for you to keep money in your last name? Taxes are your biggest bill, and so if I can keep money in little brus names, I'm always going to do that as opposed to giving it over to a pothole.
And it's other tax benefits, Like you're five twenty nine, you don't need to have a business to have to do and that's a tax advantage. H Also the HSA, right is HSA? Yes? Right? That's like tax that who
does stand for Health Savings account Ye? Right? So like there there are that's a really great tax benefits for the HSA because I think you can put money into it, save taxes, you can pull money out, don't have to pay taxes and then if you don't use it, I believe you can roll it over into like a retirement account. I believe. So that's so there are other ways even if you never start a business. There are other tax advantage accounts. Maxing out your four O one K or
are traditional IRA. You know, you'll save taxes now and then pay taxes later when you pull the money out. So I mean, yes, starting a business is one of the best ways to navigate taxes. But even real estate to your point about buying real estate and depreciating, you know, and when it comes to real estate, there's a way to save taxes. So yes, I mean not everyone's built to start a business because it's not just so simple as sign up at LLC. You know, there's taxes, there's staff,
there's hr child, it's a man now. And then.
So I mean you went to Wharton Business School, is that right? So like when you set up your business, like as you were adding new you have these nonprofits like how many is it all? Like Brandon Copeland Inc. At the top, Like how have you structured it?
Yeah?
I have a holding company, okay, and then underneath that I have the different businesses and So for real estate, for example, I have certain businesses, there's certain properties that I have that are in their own LLCs that you just do to make sure that nobody can slip and fall at one house and then try to take everything,
you know, your whole life's work. So there's just an umbrella organization that is now structured out all of these different things, and I keep the nonprofit completely separate.
There's some people who.
Would probably tell me you put it underneath, and there's benefits of that, but I just never want anybody ever even questioning what happens with the nonprofit money or think that that's to benefit me, because I don't.
That's not the case at all.
What's your advisor stack?
Like?
How many When I say advisor stack, I mean like how many do you have accountants? You say your team? But who is managing your property? Stuff? Like just to give a breakdown and let a little bit behind the curtain of how the sausage gets made.
Yeah, yeah, So for me, So I went my first nine years in the NFL with no financial advisor at all, and in year ten, I decided, you know, I need to have somebody who's thinking about this all day, every day.
The same way that I at that time thought about football or real estate or whatever.
Right, And so now I have an accountant, I have a general financial advisor who is a.
Generalist and can understand.
He understands real estate, he understands venture capital, he understands all these things, and he doesn't have a skew on him of like please invest your money in these things because I get commission or bonus off of that stuff.
So that's kind of like my overarching lift.
Fiduciary A fiduciary, So financial planning.
Good, okay exactly.
And then I have a financial advisor that is with a brokerage firm that you've all probably heard of as well too, and they give me great advice and all that type of stuff. And what I do now is I set up quarterly financial meetings. Do I need quarterly? Probably not? But I do quarterly financial meetings because the reason why I said do I need quarterly, probably not is because I have my own money anxiety that I
am just always constantly looking checking, reevaluating, reevaluating. My wife and I we started last year doing our own family board meeting so that we can be planning out what we want twenty twenty five to look like, because as you both know, as you continue to get older, you continue to get pulled in different directions. One you lose you may lose sight of the vision and the dreams that you set out for as a kid, or that you want and have for yourself because other people's ambitions,
other people's brown ambitions are pulling in their direction. So that's how my team looks. And then my wife, she's effectively our CFO. She actually works at Google and she manages their money and their books, and she's the CFO for a portion or the creative arm of Google, so she can manage their stuff.
I mean you're married, Well yeah, I sugar mama.
That's that's like Ross Mack. It's bunch. Because people be looking at him. I'm like, do you know who his wife is?
All? Do your Google exactly? You thank?
I mean for them for the ways people walt.
His wife is there there? You know, well remember Lusters you know pink oil?
Yeah yeah, right, Luster?
So Ross Mack's wife, they hit their family is the founder of Luster, so all the Lusters products. All the people look at Ross like, oh, You're a big deal.
I'm like not really, baby husband.
Behind every great woman, there's a little man. I'm sorry, Ross, don't call me brother. I love you man, but yeah, and then also i'd be remiss. My brother has been key to me. One of the reasons why I mean, Tiffany we spoke about it before the show, but I got the amazing opportunity to work with Tiffany's sister Tracy for our book and the public relations around it and
everything like that. And one of the reasons why I felt so strongly about that is because this was a sister sister duo, and I have a dynamic duo with my brother Chad, who's been my business partner since twenty nineteen. He's been my brother forever obviously, but he's a younger
brother by a couple of years. But you know, to have somebody who truly, truly wants your best interests that can also stand his own ground in all these rooms, you know, I've had a lot of people who say, like, you know, when football player told me, man, I want you to speak to my brother, They're like, oh, man, But you know, when he walks in the room, they kind of.
Like, oh, okay, right, and they can see it.
And so he's been also just extremely effective at managing the people that helped bring these visions to life.
That's amazing.
Well, thank you for the transparency. This was a really great conversation.
I j I don't know the guys that I like. Finally, the three guys that listen, see we'd be having y'all back sometimes.
And now they know about the placenta bags.
I don't even know how you found a way to talk about that. You must have come into the show wanted to.
It's only been a bandy, she said.
Was belly button. You can never unsee it. So you never had a cat when you were a kid, never watched your cat give birth on your mom's bed and had her placenta. That was me. That was my villain origin story.
Yeah you knew.
Well. I mean, good luck with the the mustard poop stage of newborn life. Sometimes I will make a sandwich and it brings me right back to the pellette stage. When's the pellet? When they start solids, that's more like a river, like a thick, muddy river.
You know, oh man, and you're well, and it doesn't smell as much, you know what I'm saying.
I didn't think it did either. People thought I was crazy. When I said that, I'm like, something, this space is all good, you know?
Right now?
Does your five year old wipe zone butt? Though?
Yeah?
Yeah yeah.
I try to get you trustworthy about it, though, Like.
Do you trust my five year old is pretty pretty incredible, I will say, But my three year old, he's the one you gotta watch. I got a video on my three year old where I put him. He's two and a half. I put him on the toilet. I haven't posted this because that's trying not to scar and embarrass his tale. But I put him on the little the toilet and little seat and all that stuff. And I walk out of the bathroom and I come back and he's sitting on the seat and it's poop on the ground.
And I'm just like, man, he said, not in this toilet.
But here.
I'm like what And then he just sit there and look at me and smile. I'm like, oh.
See, I'm kid number two. They take you for the loop.
Yeah, they know, they know. They like, I'm gonna push every button.
But where if people want to fight one, where can they find money? Playbook?
Yep?
If they go to Brandon Copeland dot com, they can find all information on me. They can find your money playbook, they can find a class if they want to, and then you can also connect with me if they want to talk further. So www dot Brandoncopland dot com. On socials b Cope fifty one, b c O p E five to one.
We'll put it all in the show notes b A fam Brandon Copeland. So much fun talking.
To Yeah, do you have your book with you? Can you hold it up for us?
It's right there?
No, well, you know it's like you know how it is with the little Oh yeah, yes'll cover. I love to go to Brown and Barnes and Nobles and see how many books now don't just have white men's faces on it.
Who is your publisher?
Ben Bella? Ben Bella and they do stuff through.
Pengmin Okay, the what if I think called me? It's like Penguin is a book publisher.
Than imprint in print, okay, in print awesome? That is exciting. Do you feel that accomplishment in your hand? Like you're just someone who collects accolades and achievements, but does it feel like you achieved something that's a that's a whole person's dream right in your hand? Yeah?
Yeah, I think yes, I will say yes, it does. I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything like that. This is this is amazing. I think was more rewarding is when people talk about how they've used it or what they've gotten from it. This is really cool, you know, like you said, I have a few awards. I will say,
and God has been good. This is cool because this is one of those things like being a professor that I would have never ever ever thought I when y'all saw me in detention, you know, growing up and all that stuff, you're like, not this guy, right, and so to be able to be doing things like this, yeah, this is pretty incredible.
That's incredible.
But the trouble maker too.
I was a trumble maker. It was well a Nigerian trouble maker, which means you know, talking back. We're not talking back, but talking a lot and getting See that's a Nigerian trouk because you were not allowed.
To do too much.
It's like oh no, no, no, no, no, you would have lived right, Okay, there's no sex, drugs rocking roll up in here, you know. But it was just like I see, all right that game, Yes.
Go take a nap or go just let your wife take a nap or something.
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate y'all first, and I really also wanted to say thank you for having me because I've been following you guys for a long time. I've been listening to the show. I actually literally genuinely have been listening to the show.
Well, you know.
Again, appreciate you guys for having me and taking the time, and also thank you for a dope conversation as well to whoever thought we could talk about.
For one K's Plas sent the bags and belly.
Buttons we did. Thank you all right, Bye Brandon