From the NFL to Buying European Football Clubs: Parker Graham's Story

0:05Parker Graham NFL, you're with Vestival, bro. Can you hear me? Your investor came up to me outside and said you're a rock star. I will pay him his$100 right after we leave this stage. That's right. Give him extra stock right there. That's right. Nice. I like it. So tell me, where do you live? What's your life look like today? You have four kids. Yeah, yeah. Four kids from the Midwest, from Kansas City, go Chiefs, but played for Baltimore. I played for the Ravens in the NFL. I'm about 100 pounds heavier, so if you Google me, it will be a different looking picture. Just FYI. But now I'm running a tech company involved in sports, buying and selling specifically European soccer clubs.

0:41So for the soccer fans out there for World Cup, that's what I do every day. Football, right? European football. Okay, cool. People come here and they're like, this soccer thing. I'm like, no, it's football. It's football. I try to correct it. Don't tell the owners over there that we're calling it soccer. Yeah, you'll say football over there. I got it. Yes, yes. Okay. So give me what visualization affirmations did you use as a pro athlete to play at the most elite level in the world? Yeah, for me, faith was kind of at the center of everything. So really just sitting and praying and being very, very intentful around what was going to happen in that game.

1:11Walking through our, you know, probably first 10 plays in my head and then really visualizing dominating the guy that was going to be in front of me. I played offensive line. That's why I said I'm a little bit bigger in that picture on Google. And so I usually had the most athletic guy on the field that I was going against every single play. So you don't get to have a playoff when you're going against Von Miller in college, when you're going against Miles Garrett, all those terrifying defensive ends that were in the Big 12 back then. How heavy were you then? 325. I'm 245 today for reference. Wow.

1:39Yeah. Big boy. Yep. I've never made over 300. I got to 299 once. Your shins hurt really bad. I felt heavy. Yeah, I felt heavy at 299. What's a$1 million lesson that you learned being a pro athlete, whether it was financial or just in life? Yeah, I think take risks. you know a lot of my friends whenever they retire they don't really know what to do and they just kind of went into really safe safe roles in some form or fashion but the ones that didn't the ones that took the risk and used their pro status as leverage and you know getting really close with the boosters that were at the colleges that we attended getting really close to the owners in the NFL those are the guys that had the most radical jump after making that transition from the league into you know civilian life so it was about taking risk and building a network that is what's helped me get to where I am today it's what's helped me build a tech company a guy from middle of nowhere, Missouri now is a tech company involved in literally every single ownership transaction in the world right now when it comes to sports.

2:32And I don't mean that lightly. It literally stems from that exact opportunity. If somebody wants to be a 0.1 % in their world, their business, whatever it is, can you give them a couple of pieces of advice on how to out-compete other people? First and foremost is there's a cheat code and it's called mentors. People that have been there that have done that, that have scaled companies. I'm actually sitting here listening to Chris. I don't even know where Chris is. But just listening to his story, I'm sitting there like, gosh dang, I have so much more to learn. I don't know anything. And I need to go find that guy after this and learn more from him.

3:05But it's about finding mentors, people that can help you out-leverage where you are. You only know what you know. And so finding those folks that have been there and done that can help you kind of maybe either miss potholes or miss the walls that they ran smack dab into. That's the number one piece. And then the second piece is have a high pain tolerance. So many folks, they like comfort. And if you're used to discomfort, you're going to have a much more successful luck ratio, if you will, just purely because you're going to be willing to go harder, go faster, go through more pain than everybody else is.

3:40What is life about?

3:45I personally think that life is about finding purpose, finding what you're passionate about and just living in that every single day for some people like me that's my kids I really just get up every single day because I want to build a better life for them I grew up really really poor with a single mom somebody else had a single mom up here too and watching her pull us and my my two siblings out of poverty just by her own sheer will right like that that kind of stuff is something that I just never want my kids to to have to experience that I want them to be able to start where they are now and go further so that's that's it for me I think also finding the right people to do life with is really, really important.

4:23Surrounding yourself with folks that are maybe not even like-minded, but kind of push you to be better than you are today and have the gumption to actually tell you that whenever you might not even want to hear it. Those are two for me. Can you talk about mentorship? One, who has mentored you that's made an impact on your life? And two, then who are you mentoring to then pay it forward? um honestly i i probably have too many to mention and they've they've all come at different stages of my life um i have business mentors i have faith mentors i'm very blessed to have a combination of really god-like men that are centered around my life and in different ways um but uh how i'm paying that forward is really by doing the exact same thing to uh to younger entrepreneurs so in kansas city i'm probably one of the more famous founders that's there on the tech side of things and so it's just trying to find as many you know acolytes as I can and trying to you know give back as much as I can to them and so that they're missing all the potholes that I ran into and just trying to pay it forward that way awesome thanks bro thanks appreciate it give them a round of applause everybody applause applause

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