What working on Wall Street taught a former NFL star about money

No two roads to financial literacy are the same. Some learn lessons in school, some from parents, others through trial and error.

In this episode of "Financial Freestyle," host Ross Mac is joined by Brandon Copeland, a former NFL player turned professor, author, and entrepreneur. Copeland, a 10-year NFL veteran, shares the motivation behind his financial literacy journey. "As I went into the league, it was all about startup capital," explains Copeland. "It was all about how to take this opportunity to make some money and how to flip it."

Copeland recounts his early experience with day trading, which he began during the early years of his NFL career. Armed with knowledge from his internship at UBS, he dives into the lessons learned, including a costly Nike-options trade that faltered due to geopolitical tensions in Greece. "I learned a tough lesson there, which was one don't get greedy," said Copeland. "I need to learn how to better understand leverage and de-risk some of my trades... I need to find things to invest in that I control." That lesson ultimately led him to real estate investing.

Today, Copeland and his wife, Taylor Copeland, are the founders of BTC Investments, which is a real estate investment portfolio holding $203 million.

"Financial Freestyle with Ross Mac" on Yahoo Finance is dedicated to promoting economic prosperity for all. Through expert insights, practical advice, and inspiring success stories, we empower you to build and grow wealth. Join us on this transformative journey toward financial freedom and inclusive economic growth.

This post was written by John Tejada.

Video Transcript

When you're in the NFL, you've invested and worked extremely hard through training and lifting and playing better than everyone else in the world to win that lottery ticket.

But that money is not promised for the rest of your life.

I was undrafted free agent out of Penn and that meant that I was signed to a three year $1.45 million contract.

I saw 24,000 of those dollars before being fired.

What's up guys?

It's your boy Ros Smack and welcome to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance no matter where you're at in your financial journey.

Look no further because I got you covered, man.

I'm gonna be talking to some of the most influential people in the industry and today I got none other than my brother, my good friend Brandon Copeland, who's a professor, tenure NFL vet and entrepreneur.

What's up?

How you doing, bro?

I'm good, bro.

Excited to be here.

Congratulations, first and foremost on the show.

Amazing.

I've got a chance to tap in and watch the way you are breaking down complex topics, but also making them more inviting for everybody.

But also, you know, with me my passions, younger versions of ourselves.

They looking at you and they're like, OK, we can make this happen.

So appreciate you my man.

Well, look to the people that don't know you, right.

Obviously I know him, Brandon and I we went to college together really good friends man.

But who is Brandon Copeland?

Let's talk to the people.

Yeah man.

Brandon Copeland is a Christian, a husband, a father, a son, a brother.

I'm an entrepreneur.

I like business, I like money.

I like helping people.

I like to make sure any place I go into.

I leave it better.

And so ultimately, what I've done is just try to find ways to monetize that in different ways, right?

I'm a hustler um and a hustler in every great sense of the word.

But uh yeah, I just want to lead the lead the world better, man.

I love it, man.

One thing that I love about Cope is no matter what.

So 10 year vet, right?

The one thing I love about you is that uh no matter where you were in your career, you were always thinking about life after football, year one to year five to year 10.

And so I remember some of your interesting stories and I would love for you to expound on it, but I remember you in the first year or two, you was day trading in the middle of a practice you was doing, you know, real estate let's talk about like that level of Brandon Copeland.

Yeah, man.

So, you know, football we know is not for long, right.

That's the NFL stands for what it stands for.

And then also I have a grandfather who played 11 years in the league.

So when you have your hero who you can see after the game has left him and he has three knee replacements, he can't lift his arm, his right arm beyond this.

And if anybody asked him for an autograph, he got tremors as he did it because he couldn't hold his hand still, right?

And, and to to the world he still was superhuman.

He was still go live, had a six pack till the day he passed away right in his seventies.

And um but to me, it, it, it made me realize like, all right, like I, I love this game.

I love what it can do for me, but that's only good if I do something with it.

You know what I'm saying?

Like I gotta get more from this than it gets for me.

God willing.

Right?

Um And so with that in mind, as I went into the league, it was all about start up capital.

It was all about how do I take this opportunity to make some money and how do I flip it?

What am I, what am I gonna do with it?

So my first year in the league started doing day trading.

That was coming from, um I interned at U Bs Union Bank of Switzerland uh for a couple of years in college.

So, you know, I came into the league like, ok, I've seen money, right?

Like you come into the league to make money, but when you've seen people trading away, you know, millions of dollars every single day, you realize how quickly like that, that league check is paid by somebody else.

Let me go figure out how to go get it.

And so started doing day trading options and things like that during my first year in the NFL.

And, and literally at the end of the year, I went to a Kanye West concert and, and uh Kanye put the, he put the battery in my back and made me feel like, you know, I chase my dreams and I can do this and I'm different and all that stuff and he was right.

He, he was right.

But I took that and one day I would take the off days in the NFL, which was Tuesday and I'd wake up, turn on Yahoo Finance, uh turn on C NBC, read different things and, and ultimately I day trade by noon, I'm up $1200.

I'm feeling good.

I go to the mall.

I'm window shopping like a mug.

I'm window shopping and uh I got greedy about 3:48 p.m.

I get back and I'm like, I got a hot hand today.

Let me go ahead and do a big trade.

I did a big trade on Nike call options.

And two days later, the whole market was down 2% because of geopolitical tensions over in Greece and it wiped out the majority of that trade.

And I learned uh a tough lesson there, which was one.

Don't get greedy, right?

You gotta know when to walk away.

You got to know when you done one day, hold them and fold them, hold them and fold them, right?

And two, I learned, I need to go ahead and figure out how I better understand leverage and derisk some of my trades.

Three, I learned I need to be thinking about the long term and stop this day to day hustle.

And then four and most importantly for me, which has culminated in my story.

Uh I need to find more things to invest in that I control.

And that's when I started looking in the real estate because with real estate for me, I can pick the floors, I can pick the paint color.

I, I designed the kitchens myself.

And ultimately, if we lose, I don't wanna lose.

But if we lose, I gotta look myself in the mirror and say, oh, that's, that's on me.

It's not on what's going on over in Greece so well, I like that, right.

Obviously, you know, unfortunately, Cope wasn't calling me to say, should I buy Nike call office?

Because I probably would have told him.

Absolutely not unless it was, you know, a very long term leap or something.

But, you know, you live and you learn, everybody wasn't in the economics investment club.

We'll get you there one day baby.

But no, no, seriously, you know, you had a lot of articles, especially when you first got into the league about like NFL player lives off 5% of his salary and does this with the rest, right.

And so when you think about the average career being like, what, three years in the NFL and within five years of retiring from the NFL or being out in the NFL, like 80% of NFL players have some type of financial hardship, right?

So talk about that, talk about how you obviously avoided being a statistic and then we'll say away into your life during the season as a professor as well, man, you have to realize when you're in the NFL, that you are basically a lottery winner.

Now, you've invested and worked extremely hard through training and lifting and playing better than everyone else in the world to win that lottery ticket, but that money is not promised for the rest of your life.

And so the more aggressive you can get with taking that money saving that money and then also doubling down and learning how to invest or put that money to work for you, the better off you're going to be right?

And I think that for me I mean, my career for those who don't know was a roller coaster ride, I was an undrafted free agent out of Penn and that meant that I was signed to a three year $1.45 million contract literally on campus in March or April of that year when they called for the first time, but I saw 24,000 of those dollars before being fired the first time.

Right when you're fired or you, you lose out, the average person is just gonna kind of pack their bag, take the ball and go home.

What kept you being resilient and said I still gotta keep going.

I'm a very rational optimist, meaning I can be extremely real and brutally honest with myself to get me where I need to go.

So if I would have went up to the league and people would have been bigger, faster, stronger and they would have been bullying me.

I would have been like, all right, this was cool.

Like I've probably been calling you, hey, Ross, can I, can I be your intern?

Let me, let me get a job.

Um But when I went up there, I was like, nah, I, I got this and I went through a position change when I came to the league.

So there was a lot being thrown at me, but somehow I was managing to make it happen first preseason game, I made top 10 getting a one handed pick against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

I got that by offensive lineman and everybody laughed at me.

But I was like, hey, I'm still on top 10 though.

You're supposed to take that to the I'm supposed to, you were right.

I ain't going to lie to you.

But there were certain moments where I was like, yo, I got this, I just need to be in the right place, right opportunity right time.

And that's translates to not just NFL players.

There's a lot of people in life where it's like I if, if you are in the right place, right opportunity, right time and you're prepared, then you get a chance to take off.

And so I just stuck with it long enough to get myself in the right place right opportunity right time to be able to create a, a 10 year career, be able to start, be able to lead teams, be able to come back to teams that had told me before that you might not be good enough and, and to, to make plays with them.

I love it.

All right guys don't go anywhere.

This is financial freestyle on Yahoo Finance.

We'll be right back with Brandon Copeland.

All right guys.

Welcome back to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance.

It's your boy Ros Smack and I'm here with none other than my dog, Brandon Copeland, man.

So we talked about your past right, 10 years in the NFL.

But the one thing that I found the most admirable is that when everybody else is probably, like, you know, obviously not lebron lebron putting a million dollars in his body every off season you was at school, not taking classes, but actually teaching, you were a professor at an Ivy League.

Let's actually talk about life one on one.

Why you did it and, you know, maybe some of the top, maybe three lessons you would give someone from, you know, your curriculum from life.

One on.

Absolutely.

So the way life 101 came about where there were a couple of moments in my career where I was learning about big money decisions, life changing money decisions, but I was learning about them on the fly and I had the pressure of making the right decision right then.

And those are, um, first when I was a Baltimore Raven, uh the NFL Players Association, our union came in and talked to me about the benefits that we got as being an NFL player.

And one of them that they mentioned was a 401k and I was like, dang 401k.

Like hold up.

I'd have been to the Wharton Business School.

I've been in U BS, I've worked all these different jobs and I'm just learning what a 401k is.

Exactly.

All right.

Well, cool, let me go make this tackle before they cut me.

But I'm gonna pocket that information.

And then in 2016, uh my wife Taylor and I, who Ross, you know.

Well, we bought our first house in Jersey and I'm in Detroit with the lions and she is at the closing table in Jersey ready to purchase the house and shes they send me off the closing package via email and I'm literally in my locker and she's like, hey, babe, does everything look right and I'm scrolling through 100 6 pages and then I see the purchase price, but then I see all these other numbers with all this other money and deeds and warranties and hold up.

Do I need that?

Do I not need that?

Hold up?

This don't feel right.

Right.

But I signed over 30 years of my life and I was praying and hoping I didn't just mess this up.

So long story short, uh came up with the idea to create a class on all the money decisions that we have to make in life, right?

And decided to go back to Penn to teach.

It had six amazing years with my co professor, Doctor Brian Peterson who's poured into to me and to the the students there.

The main takeaways for our class are first and foremost, we need to make sure that we're chasing our dreams.

So we could talk about identify why, what does money mean to you?

What does success look like to you?

What does happiness look like to you?

And instead of just saying, well, you know, I wanna do this, this, that now sit down and write it out, right?

Like what you want your life to look like five years from now.

What's, what's the, the time you wanna be able to commit to your Children as they grow up?

Right.

And, and literally get intentional with that.

So that now we're not chasing other people's dreams, we're chasing our dreams and we, we're not potentially putting ourselves in the position of being a hamster on a hamster wheel chasing money.

I'm chasing a lot of people talk, I'm chasing financial freedom.

You ask him, what is that ***?

Like?

Uh it, it's, I, I feel free.

I feel good finally paying off them student loans.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Like what is, what does it mean?

Right.

And so then two, we go to creating a budget class number one, every single year, we're creating a budget.

We want to know how many pennies leave your pocket on a monthly reoccurring basis.

And the reason why we do that is because my definition of financial freedom has evolved now too, when my passive income outpaces my monthly reoccurring expenses, right?

Passive income outpacing my monthly reoccurring expenses.

But now because I have a budget because I know exactly how much money it costs me to live per month today.

I now have a math problem to solve of how I'm going to work to put this passive income stream together to get me blank and then this passive income stream together to stack that up.

And then I do that a few times and now I've outpaced that monthly reoccurring number.

So by us creating a budget now it's a puzzle.

It's a Rubik's cube.

It's a math problem for people to go solve.

And then finally, the most important lesson is you gotta put your money to work for you.

You either put your money to work for you or you're gonna work your entire life for money, right?

And so that's all about investing.

That's all about growing your money.

I would say, hey, you know, um how many of you have ever invested before?

And some people will keep their hands down and like how many of you have a dollar?

And I'm like, oh, like I do, then you're an investor.

And I said what you mean?

Well, if I have a dollar, whether I choose to put my money under the mattress, whether I choose to put my money in a high yield savings account, a traditional bank account or the stock market or real estate, all of those different decisions are giving me returns on my money under the mattress.

0% right?

High yield savings account, maybe 4 to 5% right now.

You might not have invested but you did.

You're just a bad investor.

Yeah, exactly.

So all of us are investors.

If you have a dollar, you're an investor, you just need to choose wisely what you do with that.

Money.

I like that.

So staying on a life one on one, give us three financial literacy principles that every viewer should take away right now.

Facts.

One, learn the language of money, learn the language of money.

If you walk into a room and everybody is speaking a totally different language, you're gonna be uh OK.

Listen room is not for me.

Let me get on out of here in, in order for you to, to have a chance of mastering your money, you first got to learn the language the way you do that.

Download apps.

Yahoo finance market, watch C NBC Bloomberg, turn on notifications, it's free.

But now those things are just gonna start telling you what the market is doing and what's going on and why, right?

And just by osmosis over time, you're gonna start to pick up things that now you'll double click into and learn and read about more, right?

So one le learn the language of money, two, as I just said before, for my students create a budget.

Absolutely a budget.

Uh Most people in life don't necessarily create a game plan for their lives.

And we think about the Chicago Bears before they go in and play a game.

They are sitting all week for six days before that seventh form.

When they play, they're doing a game plan that they plan to take into the game and as life starts life and or the game goes up and down and the ebbs and flows happen, they go back to that game plan and say, ok, this is what we plan for this.

Let's let's do that.

Now, most people in life haven't even started with that game plan.

So as life starts life and and chaos just starts picking up.

You are falling back on just hustling and just winging it.

So by sitting down creating a budget, you are also giving yourself the opportunity and the space to create a game plan for where you wanna save up next and where you wanna make cuts to next as well, making that budget.

And then finally, uh you gotta pay down debt and you know, right now, um for a lot of us, um a lot of the world, the pressure of debt can seem overwhelming and at times I'm sure insurmountable, right?

But there's a lot of us who are skipping to investing.

Oh, I wanna take my money and invest because I see that and, and I'm gonna be able to give me 6 to 9% returns annually and Xy, but if you're paying down debt that's charging you 20 percent, then you're robbing Peter to pay Paul, you're losing and you have no chance of keeping up and, and creating the, the lifestyle that you want.

So that's what I would say.

And if anybody else wants to, to learn more about the, the class, you can go take it at uh Brandon copeland.com or life 101 dot IO.

Well, I love it.

Well, one, you also got the ability to grab the book, right?

Don't grab that.

My arms.

I used to be a little longer.

But your money playbook, let's talk about it.

And you know how to earn more bill, wealth and win in life.

Let's talk about what it is and what made you start it and what would the average person take from it?

Yeah, man, when you are teaching, um you understand, everybody learns differently, right?

You might show up to some athletes and you're gonna teach them a little differently than you may teach employees at a Fortune 500 company.

And so as you're teaching, you, you are finding my job is to find different ways to get this information to land for you and for me, um this is my first book.

Um and this is another tool in the arsenal to teach people about their money.

We, we, we spent so much time going back and forth on the book and when I say we, it's me and my team, we've actually tested it with my class at Penn for a couple of years now.

And it's the money journey that we all can take to reach financial freedom and create the life that we want, the life and the lifestyle that we want.

Uh But it's broken down into a football game.

So, uh obviously the sport that I know and love and it's changed my life forever.

But you have a training camp and how are you getting prepared for the actual season?

You have a first quarter.

You have the art of the hustle.

What am I actually doing to go out and make money and produce money?

That then gives me the ability to go and have the power of growth and go invest it and go save it and go put it into emergency fund.

You got the commitment to smart spending.

Once you start winning, once we start making money, it's easy to start allowing some of them expenses to continue to creep up on you.

So what are you doing to put structures and, and discipline metrics in place to make sure that you can stick to your goals and stick to your dreams and, and not overspend your way to working for the rest of your life.

And then finally, the, the, the art, the power of legacy, it's great to be hustling and be doing these things that we do to not only change our lives but change our kids lives, give them options, right?

Um, but you do such an amazing job of it.

You take the time to also invest in their education so that they can deal with it.

They're gonna start with uh a different set of circumstances than we ever started with.

And now how do they deal with the money?

How do they make the tough decisions?

How do they deal with the pressure of people potentially reaching out and saying, hey, let me, let me borrow some, right.

Um We have put this book together to help people with this entire money journey from A to Z and just couldn't be more excited for people to, to digest it and, and take it all into account.

Congratulations, man.

Y'all make sure y'all get the book, your money playbook la last question, right.

As we get ready to wrap, let's talk about what else you have going on, right.

Let's talk about athletes.org because I think that is something that the world needs to know about.

Absolutely, man.

So, uh for those who don't know, uh college athletes have been um in, in the news a lot lately, the NCAA has been sued multiple times to finally pay college athletes.

And so just for, for markets sake, in, in 2022 the NCAA generated $17.1 billion in revenue, right?

The NFL was around 11 billion, the NBA was around 9 billion, 9 to 10 billion.

Um So there's, there's a lot of money being generated there and, and the people who have not been paid have been the college athletes who we turn on the TV to see.

And the problem in that is one that's stifling a lot of potential generational wealth.

Um It's also stifling a lot of generational wealth for people that, that look like you and me as well.

Too.

Um Two.

there was an introduction of Nil uh name image and likeness in 2021 and, and what Nil did was make people think that, oh, college athletes are finally being paid.

Not really.

That's a, a marketing deal.

That's uh Nil is Patrick Mahomes doing a state farm deal or a subway deal.

It's not his check from the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Kansas city chiefs are the ones who get the Roy from Pat Mahomes being the quarterback, taking them to the Super Bowl, et cetera, et cetera.

And you know the same way that the schools that we turn on the TV to see they get the Roy from the athletes being out there performing.

And so we built athletes.org to be their Players Association, uh which basically is their agency as a group to go to all of the negotiating tables alongside them, not just on their behalf with them alongside us and to demand that they get what they deserve of this pie.

If you look at the NFL and the NFL Players Association, there's a reason why NFL players make the, the salaries, they do, the NBA players make the salaries that they do because all of them have their representation that sits across from the NFL or the NBA to get those athletes, their fair share of the pie.

So we've been going out advocating for athletes, they've been getting alongside us.

We got over 3000 members now strong.

Um The NCAA just agreed to actually pay athletes for the first time in history.

Um So over the next 10 years, it's gonna be about $20 billion of money and revenue shared directly with college athletes, which is phenomenal.

Um But we're doing our job to one, make sure that they are partners and how that money is shared.

But two also make sure they got the support, they got the understanding because because our mission is to impact athletes, to impact the world.

I wanna make sure that they are taking economics.

They are understanding like, ok, hey, I'm making this bread now.

But what am I doing with it?

That is going to pay off for me?

10 years from now?

20 years from now, 30 years from now because hey, we were all in college at one time.

It's, it's a lot to deal with.

Well, listen, that sounds remarkable, right?

The the reason that, you know, in another five years that we're going to start seeing billion dollar athletes, billion dollar contracts like the we's of the world and the Lucas is because of collective bargain agreements because of new TV deals.

And because like you say, they got representation that is negotiating on their behalf.

So the fact that you're doing it on a college level is remarkable.

Congrats on that.

I just want to thank Brandon Copeland for being here guys.

Thanks so much for joining us here on financial freestyle.

On Yahoo Finance, make sure you tune in next week and have a good one.

This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.