Agent Nicole Lynn talks about her new book "Agent You" and how her successes were earned through a combination of hard work, preparation, self-advocacy, tenacity, and faith. Nicole gives you a blueprint on how to fulfill your life's purpose by becoming your own agent. Lynn and Shawne discuss when is the right time to talk to a prospective client about the pitfalls of losing money. And Nicole gives her clients and you a transitional game plan for when their careers end.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Are you ready for this? Sean Merriman A one a
hand effect. Boom boom boom, out go the light. This
is Lights Out with Sean Merriman. Now what's up, guys.
We're back again with another Lights Out podcast with me
Sean Merriman. And we're back again this week and um
we we gotta. We got a really cool guest today
(00:23):
and and something that we don't talk about as much.
I know, I had a few guests come on, a
lorenz O'Neil um akbar R g B. Miller to come on,
and we talked about financial literacy. Today. We have a
great agent, Nicole land Um what happens to have a
book coming out and you know she is a is
an agent and a great agent at that. But one
(00:43):
of the one of the things that she's been talking
about over this this period of time, and one thing
if I've heard her talk personally about, is uh financial
literacy and helping these guys out, especially when they get drafted,
putting a plan for them in place, because I feel
that there's not a plan full lot of guys, especially
when you come out of school early, where you come
from a background like I came from, where a lot
(01:04):
of these things aren't taught. So we got a great
guest coming up, Nicole ln How are you? Hey? Thank
you for having me. Which which part of the country
you and I am in Houston, Texas? Okay. You know
I've been meaning to um kind of cross paths for
some time. You got a couple of guys I know
(01:24):
do you represent? And uh, I just thought it was
it was It was great to hear. And I've heard
you speak a few times, especially on the financial literacy
part um that I think that a lot of guys, Uh,
I need to hear, right, and I'm talking about my
ten year old self of mine too, um, because I
(01:45):
think we all go through that where um, you know,
you just come into your money, You just come into
successful the first time. Your head's kind of spending and
you don't have any experience in you know, a lot
of guys, especially the younger guys, you know, depending where
you come from, make a lot of mistakes. Um. And
you know, just to hear you talk about that has
just been unreal And you know I appreciate you for that.
(02:05):
Can you talk a little bit about your book? The
book is called Agent. You show up, do the work
and succeed on your own terms. You know, this book
is really me pulling back the curtain on how I
got to where I am. It's it's you know, my raw,
unfiltered story. But it also is a blueprint. You know,
the number one question I get all the time is
how did you do it? And so this is the
(02:26):
blueprint for anybody that's chasing their dreams, anybody that's you know,
chasing after a goal. I want to teach the reader
how to be their own agent, how to advocate for themselves,
how to negotiate their own deal, how to get a
seat at the table, how to find their life's purpose.
So this is the this is that you know, where
the checklist of how did it get there? Absolutely And
you know one thing that you know kind of read
(02:47):
about you, Nicole, is, uh, you know your upbringing and
some of the things you went through. And I relate
a lot to that because you know, a few times
growing up I was homeless and I lived in shelters
and back of the cars and things like that. And
I always say this, um, those things, even though I
was a terrible time in my life, has shaped a
lot of what's going on now my life and the
(03:07):
reason why I'm able to you know, always push forward,
always keep things positive no matter what's going on. How
much that has helped you and some of your upbringing,
the things you dealt with um to you know, kind
of your success now, you know, I think it. It
gave me the It made me an impact. So it
gave me the empathy for people that grew up like me,
you know, grew up like you. I've had the same
(03:28):
stories homeless, living in cars, not knowing what I'm gonna
eat the next day as a child, and so when
I'm working with people that have similar stories to me,
or athletes, I can just relate on a different level, right,
And it also gave me a different level of grit.
You know, there was no Plan B for me. There's
no trust fund, there's nobody to fall on. And so
it was either I made it or I didn't. And
so I always had that you know, that drive that
(03:50):
maybe others didn't. No, absolutely, I I say this, it
put something in you that most people don't have, right,
I mean, until you really struggle and you know what
you don't you know, you know what it's like to
um to kind of wake up and not knowing what's
gonna happen the next day. I remember coming home from
practice and seeing um if viction notices on the door,
or the sheriff's coming in, you know, to um to
(04:13):
kick us out. And you know, so when when people
say they're having a hard day, right, my my hard
days were a lot different. So I look at everything
on a grand scheme of things, and I'm able to
put a lot of things in perspective. Now, how however,
you passed this because you know, obviously these guys are
coming out of college, um, you know, young and sometimes
(04:36):
earlier I came out as a junior, and you know,
you've got all these people just coming at you, pulling
at you left and right. How how do you separate
yourself when you're going to you know, being able to
talk to new guys, right because you got these agents here.
Some of them are walking up on the college campuses.
Some of them, you know, just they're always around. And
a lot of these guys there aren't good guys right there,
just they're in there for the wrong reason. So how
(04:58):
do you kind of separate yourself when um, you know,
maybe discussion a new guy coming to sign with you. You
You know, I think my work speaks for itself. You know,
a lot of my guys have friends in the league
or in college and they talk and so, you know,
you get to kind of see that I do it differently.
When I'm meeting with recruits. You know, we're talking about
the contracts and the negotiation. All that's great, but that's
(05:20):
a bare minimum. You know. My conversations are always also
about what are we going to do when the game
is over? What does that look like? And how am
I going to be there right beside you when the NFL,
which I think stands for not for long and that
ends right, no, no, And you talked to talk about
what are you doing after the game. And so I
own a mm A league called Lights Out Extreme Fight,
(05:40):
and I have a bunch of former guys from NFL rugby,
former at pro athletes that are kind of transitioning into
the next phase and they want to fight. I mean,
I know it sounds like more of a brute kind
of thing to do, but there's a lot of guys
that are just strictly competitive to get done early. You know,
I got I got injured. I blew my knee out
of cane back from that, and I blew my Achilles
(06:01):
out right after that. So I had to back to
back major injuries. And I got done when I was
going twenty nine years old. Um, and so you still
have a lot of a lot of time left with
another career. For me, I got into this in May space.
How are you helping guys, because that's the hardest part,
that's transitioning. UM. I remember sitting on set, I had
to deal with NFL network, uh, And I was doing
(06:23):
a commentated thing when I got done, And when I
got out set, I was like, damn, this, this isn't enough.
Like I was still going through it for a year
or two trying to figure things out, even though I
had plenty of things lined up. How are you helping
guys transition? After the game? I start talking about it
on day one. It's a lot easier to talk about
Plan B when Plan A is still intact. It's a
lot harder to talk about Plan B. But we have
(06:44):
nothing else going. And so I find that let's figure
that out while you're at the pinicle or the height
of your career, not when you're on the way up.
You know you're in a better headspace to have those conversations.
And then I also you know, really encouraged and pushed
all my guys to finish their degree. Those are things
that you you know, you're forty and you don't want
to go back and do that. You want to have
that over with. And so we do that in the
(07:05):
off season with all my players, and we do externships
and you know, if they want to start a business,
we make sure they have advisors. All of that is
early on conversations, and I find that that's a lot
easier for their transition. Fox Sports Radio has the best
sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the
I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
(07:29):
I say that all the time. And you know, you
have a lot of guys that want to pick up
and start doing someone they get done, and you know what,
I what I tell them the co I said, look,
I'm not saying that's a hunted per safety case, but
when you're done, there's a lot of people that don't
don't give a damn right. I mean, you're not in
the same light as you were when you were playing
and you on top of the world, and you on
(07:49):
top of your game. Um, and so you have to
build these relationships early on. You know, don't go to
these people when you get done and you're trying to
figure things out. Um, you know, get get into your
local towns, getting get into whatever it is, charity or
whatever you whatever you plan on doing when you're done,
start doing it early on. I agree, absolutely, you know.
And also while your name is still hot. Unfortunately, you know,
(08:12):
when you're an athlete, that doesn't always your name does
not continue to stay, you know, with the buzz, and
so use your brand and your hype while you have it.
I think that's the most important thing. And I said this, um,
and I see it all the time about building a brand,
and a lot of guys have to understand what that is,
right because it's that's not necessarily that you you have
(08:35):
to be a star at NFL. UM. You know, you're
gonna have you a couple of big name guys per team,
but you know, the rest kind of on the rest
of the roster, you're gonna have a lot of guys
that people don't know, especially when they get done playing.
But you still have a brand, and so just talk
talk talk a little bit about helping guys build their brand,
whether it's through you know, intellectual property, whether it's through copyright,
(09:00):
just something something that you kind of help don't put together. Um,
so they had that longevity. Yeah, you know, I actually
talked about this in my book. And it's not just
for athletes. You know, every single human is a brand. Lawyers, engineers, accountants,
whoever you are. You should be building your brand professionally
and personally. And so I encourage my guys to come
up with pillars, you know, three or four pillars that
(09:22):
are basically the basis for your brand. What is what
are those pillars of the faith? Is a family, is
a comedy, And every single thing that you do should
fall within those pillars, you know. And then like you mentioned,
finding if you have a logo, making sure legally that
you you own that by getting a trademark, or you know,
if you're doing any of merchandise business, making sure you
have the right business entities so that your taxes are
(09:43):
done correctly. And so building a brand is twofold. But
that second part of the actual physical merge brand we
we help with all of the business formation and making
sure everything set. That's extremely helpful because I was fortunate enough,
you know, I had lights Out and I bought Lights
Out from another company in Irvine, California, back in two
(10:04):
thousand six. You know, but I had the kind of
the mindset to already start getting those things set. But
when you start talking about intellectual property or guys owning
their brand or building their brand or showing them with
their brand worth. Um, you know a lot of guys
that come in, they just don't they don't understand right,
They've never heard of it. So, um, that's that's big
up to you for kind of putting these guys up
(10:25):
on it early on, because time just changing. Like when
I when I play, guys are getting paid, but like
now they're really getting paid, like they're the contracts are
are just astronomical and out of this world. And so
how do you how do you um what? He's one
of the things. But it's a personal question for me too,
what are some of the biggest downfalls you see what guys?
(10:47):
Early on? For me, it was, you know, kind of
separating the whole family thing, Like family was my hardest
thing to deal with when I first got into the
NFL and I first got my own. Um, are you
still seeing this anything? You know, family or close friends
and kind of all the people that were around growing up.
Oh yeah, I mean that is still a day to
day issue. Um, But it's because most of my guys
(11:09):
have big hearts. They want to help everybody, you know,
they want to everybody along the journey with them. And
it's tough. I deal with this personally myself, but it's
it's saying, hey, I've got to protect me first, and
that's hard for us. Like we're taught, we grow up
of saving the hood, saving our parents, saving bloody and
so I have to help my guys say hey, it's
(11:30):
okay to think about you. Okay, Well, Nicole, I appreciate
your time. I appreciate you for jumping on and uh,
you know, getting these guys um together right, because especially
when a lot of us come from we don't have it.
And so I appreciate you for um, you know, keeping
these guys on track and more success and good luck
on that book, hope hopefully list number one. Thank you.
(11:55):
Thanks guys. Listening to another lightstot podcast me Shawn Marimon. Um,
and that was really cool, um that Nicole jumped on
and just talked about won her book. Um. I think
it's gonna be a great book if if it's anything
like I've heard her talk about over the last couple
of years, UM and helping guys out, being a great
agent in the industry, being a woman agent in the industry,
and just doing her parts. So thank you guys for
(12:16):
listening to another lightsole podcast me Sean Ram and keep
leaving those reviews, those great reviews. I try to read
as many of the messages as possible. UM. And when
you hear the podcast, makes your repoke and tell tell
your friends, cousins, uncle's brother and sisters, brother and all
that to uh subscribe and uh well always I appreciate
your support. Thank you
Are you ready for this? Sean Merriman A one a
hand effect. Boom boom boom, out go the light. This
is Lights Out with Sean Merriman. Now what's up, guys.
We're back again with another Lights Out podcast with me
Sean Merriman. And we're back again this week and um
we we gotta. We got a really cool guest today
(00:23):
and and something that we don't talk about as much.
I know, I had a few guests come on, a
lorenz O'Neil um akbar R g B. Miller to come on,
and we talked about financial literacy. Today. We have a
great agent, Nicole land Um what happens to have a
book coming out and you know she is a is
an agent and a great agent at that. But one
(00:43):
of the one of the things that she's been talking
about over this this period of time, and one thing
if I've heard her talk personally about, is uh financial
literacy and helping these guys out, especially when they get drafted,
putting a plan for them in place, because I feel
that there's not a plan full lot of guys, especially
when you come out of school early, where you come
from a background like I came from, where a lot
(01:04):
of these things aren't taught. So we got a great
guest coming up, Nicole ln How are you? Hey? Thank
you for having me. Which which part of the country
you and I am in Houston, Texas? Okay. You know
I've been meaning to um kind of cross paths for
some time. You got a couple of guys I know
(01:24):
do you represent? And uh, I just thought it was
it was It was great to hear. And I've heard
you speak a few times, especially on the financial literacy
part um that I think that a lot of guys, Uh,
I need to hear, right, and I'm talking about my
ten year old self of mine too, um, because I
(01:45):
think we all go through that where um, you know,
you just come into your money, You just come into
successful the first time. Your head's kind of spending and
you don't have any experience in you know, a lot
of guys, especially the younger guys, you know, depending where
you come from, make a lot of mistakes. Um. And
you know, just to hear you talk about that has
just been unreal And you know I appreciate you for that.
(02:05):
Can you talk a little bit about your book? The
book is called Agent. You show up, do the work
and succeed on your own terms. You know, this book
is really me pulling back the curtain on how I
got to where I am. It's it's you know, my raw,
unfiltered story. But it also is a blueprint. You know,
the number one question I get all the time is
how did you do it? And so this is the
(02:26):
blueprint for anybody that's chasing their dreams, anybody that's you know,
chasing after a goal. I want to teach the reader
how to be their own agent, how to advocate for themselves,
how to negotiate their own deal, how to get a
seat at the table, how to find their life's purpose.
So this is the this is that you know, where
the checklist of how did it get there? Absolutely And
you know one thing that you know kind of read
(02:47):
about you, Nicole, is, uh, you know your upbringing and
some of the things you went through. And I relate
a lot to that because you know, a few times
growing up I was homeless and I lived in shelters
and back of the cars and things like that. And
I always say this, um, those things, even though I
was a terrible time in my life, has shaped a
lot of what's going on now my life and the
(03:07):
reason why I'm able to you know, always push forward,
always keep things positive no matter what's going on. How
much that has helped you and some of your upbringing,
the things you dealt with um to you know, kind
of your success now, you know, I think it. It
gave me the It made me an impact. So it
gave me the empathy for people that grew up like me,
you know, grew up like you. I've had the same
(03:28):
stories homeless, living in cars, not knowing what I'm gonna
eat the next day as a child, and so when
I'm working with people that have similar stories to me,
or athletes, I can just relate on a different level, right,
And it also gave me a different level of grit.
You know, there was no Plan B for me. There's
no trust fund, there's nobody to fall on. And so
it was either I made it or I didn't. And
so I always had that you know, that drive that
(03:50):
maybe others didn't. No, absolutely, I I say this, it
put something in you that most people don't have, right,
I mean, until you really struggle and you know what
you don't you know, you know what it's like to
um to kind of wake up and not knowing what's
gonna happen the next day. I remember coming home from
practice and seeing um if viction notices on the door,
or the sheriff's coming in, you know, to um to
(04:13):
kick us out. And you know, so when when people
say they're having a hard day, right, my my hard
days were a lot different. So I look at everything
on a grand scheme of things, and I'm able to
put a lot of things in perspective. Now, how however,
you passed this because you know, obviously these guys are
coming out of college, um, you know, young and sometimes
(04:36):
earlier I came out as a junior, and you know,
you've got all these people just coming at you, pulling
at you left and right. How how do you separate
yourself when you're going to you know, being able to
talk to new guys, right because you got these agents here.
Some of them are walking up on the college campuses.
Some of them, you know, just they're always around. And
a lot of these guys there aren't good guys right there,
just they're in there for the wrong reason. So how
(04:58):
do you kind of separate yourself when um, you know,
maybe discussion a new guy coming to sign with you. You
You know, I think my work speaks for itself. You know,
a lot of my guys have friends in the league
or in college and they talk and so, you know,
you get to kind of see that I do it differently.
When I'm meeting with recruits. You know, we're talking about
the contracts and the negotiation. All that's great, but that's
(05:20):
a bare minimum. You know. My conversations are always also
about what are we going to do when the game
is over? What does that look like? And how am
I going to be there right beside you when the NFL,
which I think stands for not for long and that
ends right, no, no, And you talked to talk about
what are you doing after the game. And so I
own a mm A league called Lights Out Extreme Fight,
(05:40):
and I have a bunch of former guys from NFL rugby,
former at pro athletes that are kind of transitioning into
the next phase and they want to fight. I mean,
I know it sounds like more of a brute kind
of thing to do, but there's a lot of guys
that are just strictly competitive to get done early. You know,
I got I got injured. I blew my knee out
of cane back from that, and I blew my Achilles
(06:01):
out right after that. So I had to back to
back major injuries. And I got done when I was
going twenty nine years old. Um, and so you still
have a lot of a lot of time left with
another career. For me, I got into this in May space.
How are you helping guys, because that's the hardest part,
that's transitioning. UM. I remember sitting on set, I had
to deal with NFL network, uh, And I was doing
(06:23):
a commentated thing when I got done, And when I
got out set, I was like, damn, this, this isn't enough.
Like I was still going through it for a year
or two trying to figure things out, even though I
had plenty of things lined up. How are you helping
guys transition? After the game? I start talking about it
on day one. It's a lot easier to talk about
Plan B when Plan A is still intact. It's a
lot harder to talk about Plan B. But we have
(06:44):
nothing else going. And so I find that let's figure
that out while you're at the pinicle or the height
of your career, not when you're on the way up.
You know you're in a better headspace to have those conversations.
And then I also you know, really encouraged and pushed
all my guys to finish their degree. Those are things
that you you know, you're forty and you don't want
to go back and do that. You want to have
that over with. And so we do that in the
(07:05):
off season with all my players, and we do externships
and you know, if they want to start a business,
we make sure they have advisors. All of that is
early on conversations, and I find that that's a lot
easier for their transition. Fox Sports Radio has the best
sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our
shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the
I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
(07:29):
I say that all the time. And you know, you
have a lot of guys that want to pick up
and start doing someone they get done, and you know what,
I what I tell them the co I said, look,
I'm not saying that's a hunted per safety case, but
when you're done, there's a lot of people that don't
don't give a damn right. I mean, you're not in
the same light as you were when you were playing
and you on top of the world, and you on
(07:49):
top of your game. Um, and so you have to
build these relationships early on. You know, don't go to
these people when you get done and you're trying to
figure things out. Um, you know, get get into your
local towns, getting get into whatever it is, charity or
whatever you whatever you plan on doing when you're done,
start doing it early on. I agree, absolutely, you know.
And also while your name is still hot. Unfortunately, you know,
(08:12):
when you're an athlete, that doesn't always your name does
not continue to stay, you know, with the buzz, and
so use your brand and your hype while you have it.
I think that's the most important thing. And I said this, um,
and I see it all the time about building a brand,
and a lot of guys have to understand what that is,
right because it's that's not necessarily that you you have
(08:35):
to be a star at NFL. UM. You know, you're
gonna have you a couple of big name guys per team,
but you know, the rest kind of on the rest
of the roster, you're gonna have a lot of guys
that people don't know, especially when they get done playing.
But you still have a brand, and so just talk
talk talk a little bit about helping guys build their brand,
whether it's through you know, intellectual property, whether it's through copyright,
(09:00):
just something something that you kind of help don't put together. Um,
so they had that longevity. Yeah, you know, I actually
talked about this in my book. And it's not just
for athletes. You know, every single human is a brand. Lawyers, engineers, accountants,
whoever you are. You should be building your brand professionally
and personally. And so I encourage my guys to come
up with pillars, you know, three or four pillars that
(09:22):
are basically the basis for your brand. What is what
are those pillars of the faith? Is a family, is
a comedy, And every single thing that you do should
fall within those pillars, you know. And then like you mentioned,
finding if you have a logo, making sure legally that
you you own that by getting a trademark, or you know,
if you're doing any of merchandise business, making sure you
have the right business entities so that your taxes are
(09:43):
done correctly. And so building a brand is twofold. But
that second part of the actual physical merge brand we
we help with all of the business formation and making
sure everything set. That's extremely helpful because I was fortunate enough,
you know, I had lights Out and I bought Lights
Out from another company in Irvine, California, back in two
(10:04):
thousand six. You know, but I had the kind of
the mindset to already start getting those things set. But
when you start talking about intellectual property or guys owning
their brand or building their brand or showing them with
their brand worth. Um, you know a lot of guys
that come in, they just don't they don't understand right,
They've never heard of it. So, um, that's that's big
up to you for kind of putting these guys up
(10:25):
on it early on, because time just changing. Like when
I when I play, guys are getting paid, but like
now they're really getting paid, like they're the contracts are
are just astronomical and out of this world. And so
how do you how do you um what? He's one
of the things. But it's a personal question for me too,
what are some of the biggest downfalls you see what guys?
(10:47):
Early on? For me, it was, you know, kind of
separating the whole family thing, Like family was my hardest
thing to deal with when I first got into the
NFL and I first got my own. Um, are you
still seeing this anything? You know, family or close friends
and kind of all the people that were around growing up.
Oh yeah, I mean that is still a day to
day issue. Um, But it's because most of my guys
(11:09):
have big hearts. They want to help everybody, you know,
they want to everybody along the journey with them. And
it's tough. I deal with this personally myself, but it's
it's saying, hey, I've got to protect me first, and
that's hard for us. Like we're taught, we grow up
of saving the hood, saving our parents, saving bloody and
so I have to help my guys say hey, it's
(11:30):
okay to think about you. Okay, Well, Nicole, I appreciate
your time. I appreciate you for jumping on and uh,
you know, getting these guys um together right, because especially
when a lot of us come from we don't have it.
And so I appreciate you for um, you know, keeping
these guys on track and more success and good luck
on that book, hope hopefully list number one. Thank you.
(11:55):
Thanks guys. Listening to another lightstot podcast me Shawn Marimon. Um,
and that was really cool, um that Nicole jumped on
and just talked about won her book. Um. I think
it's gonna be a great book if if it's anything
like I've heard her talk about over the last couple
of years, UM and helping guys out, being a great
agent in the industry, being a woman agent in the industry,
and just doing her parts. So thank you guys for
(12:16):
listening to another lightsole podcast me Sean Ram and keep
leaving those reviews, those great reviews. I try to read
as many of the messages as possible. UM. And when
you hear the podcast, makes your repoke and tell tell
your friends, cousins, uncle's brother and sisters, brother and all
that to uh subscribe and uh well always I appreciate
your support. Thank you
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