Off-Court Opportunities

CHRIS EVERT:

Welcome to Episode 8 of What Moves You, an audio miniseries for Morgan Stanley in support of the WTA. Hi, I'm Chris Evert.

In this set of episodes with Morgan Stanley private wealth advisor, Scott Lamson, we’re looking at how you set yourself up as the CEO of your own business, and build a professional organization to support you through your whole career.    

SCOTT LAMSON:

Hi, I'm Scott Lamson and I'm a Morgan Stanley private wealth advisor and a Global Sports and Entertainment Director.

CHRIS EVERT:

It can be difficult to think about what life will be like when you stop playing professionally.

Before I retired, I knew I wanted to have a family, and I wanted to go into TV commentating.

So, if you start planning early and exploring what makes you feel energized or curious, you’ll be in a great position to make the rest of your career very rewarding.

SCOTT LAMSON:

A good friend of mine who's a professional athlete had a goal that every time he traveled to a new city, he would reach out to an alumni member from their university for a coffee. And the goal was not an endorsement deal. The goal was not an investment opportunity. The goal was purely to learn about this person — what do they do for a living and to find out what was most interesting to them.

And after five, six, seven years of doing that, you can imagine that he met hundreds of people.  And he was able to have a very clear vision of, okay, I'm 26 years old, but when I'm 40, I now have a couple ideas of what I want my retirement to look like. And I now I have this great network built around me to start working towards my next phase of life.

And so I encourage all of my athletes, but particularly young athletes, to ask a lot of questions, and figure out what you'’re interested in outside of tennis. Whether it be business, art, cars, gaming, investing, philanthropy, there are so many different areas.

And doing this is important for two reasons.  One, it'’s a phenomenal outlet from the day to day of your sport. And two, you'’re sitting in this very unique position where these business leaders and industry experts want to talk to you. They want to get to know you and learn about your sport and your experience.

And you could go in a thousand directions, but as an example, in the world of business and finance, I'’ve seen athletes who start to network with venture capitalists and they’re trying to learn — what the heck does a venture capitalist do? And so for many athletes, that'’s evolved into becoming an actual investor in private companies and then using the brands and partners they have around them to help those businesses grow. And then when they'’ve retired they'’ve actually become a venture capitalist themselves, or a general partner of a fund. But it all started with, “Who are the best VC funds? What are the questions I should be asking them?”

And the ultimate goal is to build a really good community of trusted people that are successful in their areas of industry or businesses that you find interesting. And in the short term, these relationships might lead to a partnership or an endorsement opportunity, or really just a friendship. But longer term, a lot of these connections could help you figure out what you want to do with your post playing career.

CHRIS EVERT:

There are so many ways for you to build up your professional network. Next time, we'll talk about some of the unique ways professional athletes can give back to their communities. 

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