How this former NFL player went from linebacker to real estate investor

The Street

Former NFL linebacker Brandon Copeland joisn TheStreet to explain how he went from playing football to playing the real estate market.

Transcript

00:00So you boast an impressive real estate portfolio, right?

00:03So walk us through your financial journey.

00:05How did you get started?

00:09Yeah, so one, for me, I was extremely fortunate.

00:12We talk about it in the book as well, too.

00:14I was extremely blessed to play for a coach.

00:17His name is Biff Poggi.

00:19He's now the head coach at University of Charlotte, UNC Charlotte.

00:23And he actually ran his own hedge fund.

00:26It's now evolved into a family office in Baltimore.

00:29And I ended up asking him for an internship in the summers.

00:33And when I did that, that was my first time ever seeing Bloomberg terminals

00:37and watching CNBC and seeing stock tickers and things like that.

00:41And so it walked me into a world of like, oh, wow, you can make money

00:46and you can actually be sitting behind a desk and managing and delegating.

00:50When I come from a situation where it was you put on your uniform

00:54and you go into the office to make money, so to speak,

00:58and you go to work, you roll up your sleeves.

01:00And so for me, that was eye opening.

01:04And then over time, I went to the University of Pennsylvania,

01:07Wharton School of Business, interned on Wall Street, UBS for a couple of summers.

01:11Also came into the NFL and would still take internships at hedge funds

01:17and things of that nature in the offseason.

01:19And the goal was to just learn as much as possible.

01:22And in 2013, you speak about my investment journey.

01:25In 2013, my rookie year, I was with the Baltimore Ravens and the Tennessee Titans,

01:29and I was day trading during that season.

01:32And I was doing extremely well in my account,

01:35playing with house money at a certain extent.

01:38And then at the end of the year in December,

01:40I decided to take one big swing trade and hoped that the luck I had in the past

01:46would just play into this trade and I'd make more money in that time

01:49on this one trade than I had made thus far.

01:52And what happened was the entire market went down two days later

01:57because of geopolitical tensions happening over in Greece.

02:00And at that moment in time, the whole trade was wiped out.

02:04It was an options call trade.

02:06The majority of it was wiped out, the majority of the value.

02:09And that's when I started saying, hey, I have no control over this.

02:13Let me figure out something else that I have more control over.

02:17And I don't want to lose money.

02:20But if I lose money, I'd much rather be able to look in the mirror and say,

02:24hey, I made all these decisions.

02:25I'd still make them again, and I still lost money.

02:27And that's OK.

02:28It's more on me, more in my hands.

02:30And so that's when I started diving into real estate.

02:33I was researching it for a couple of years,

02:36started doing single family flips in Detroit with the Lions when I was with the Lions.

02:40So I would do that on the side.

02:42And again, being around some great mentors who showed me multifamily properties.

02:47They showed me houses where they were knocking off the roofs

02:50and adding a whole second level onto the houses.

02:53And these were all former NFL players.

02:56Right.

02:56It made me feel like, oh, I can do this, too.

02:58They welcomed me into the fold.

03:00And now we've evolved our portfolio to the extent where we're doing multifamily projects

03:07across the country.

03:08We've got, you know, 88.

03:10I just went to check on a property in California.

03:13We're doing doing a first beachfront property,

03:15multifamily, extremely excited about that.

03:18We're doing land development now.

03:19We got acres, hundreds of hundreds of acres with other NFL players where,

03:25you know, you got companies like Home Depot and Lowe's trying to bid for their spot on the land

03:31and Starbucks and Target and Walmart and all those things.

03:34And so it's just been an incredible maturation.

03:38But I'd say to, you know, double down or double back for your question.

03:42I'm just extremely curious about things.

03:45And I ask a lot of questions and I don't put limits on myself of what I can and cannot do.

03:51And I've been extremely blessed to have an amazing team and also amazing people around

03:55me that will welcome me into the fold to learn.

03:59And then I've been strong minded about getting an opportunity to own as much as I possibly can.

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