You are a business, athlete

When I speak to college athletes about NIL, I open with a sentence that changes the temperature in the room: the moment you sign, you are a business.

Not "you should think like a business." You are one. You have revenue (a contract, a deal, a scholarship), expenses, tax exposure, liability, a brand, and a very short product cycle. What you don't have — what nobody hands you — is an operating manual.

This is the first page.

The business has a structure

Sole proprietor by default; LLC by decision. The difference isn't a form, it's a separation: your business and your personal life stop sharing a bank account, a liability and a tax picture. In the workshop we go through when an LLC makes sense and which structure fits — because the answer depends on the deal, the state and the stage of your career — but the principle is universal. Draw a line between you and the company, and put the money on the right side of it.

The business has accounts — plural

One checking account is how most people run their lives. It's not how any functioning business runs. Every business needs a small set of foundational accounts, each with one job, so that cash for taxes never gets mistaken for cash for Saturday. We build the five together in the session; the point here is the idea. Money that has a name gets spent on what it's named for.

The business has a team

You are the talent, and the talent should not also be the accountant. Every business athlete needs an A-Team:

• Agent — negotiates the deals.
• Advisor — plans the money.
• Accountant — keeps the business legal with the tax authorities.
• Attorney — reads what you're about to sign.
• Advocate — the person with no financial stake in you who tells you the truth.

Each seat has a job, and each person should be able to tell you what theirs is in one sentence. If they can't, that's your answer.

The business has a season

Careers end. Deals end. The business keeps its books either way, so the decisions you make in year one — structure, accounts, team — are the ones that determine whether year ten is a beginning or an ending.

I'm not a fan of scaring young athletes with statistics. I'd rather hand them a manual. If you're one of them, or you coach one: start with the line between you and the company. Everything else is built on that.