From NFL To Ivy League Professor: How Brandon Copeland Achieved Financial Success & So CAN

Brandon: For one, thank you for having me, Toby. I appreciate you. For me, I’m Brandon Copeland, as you mentioned. I’m a husband. I’m a father of two boys, two little wild things. I’m a real estate developer. I’m a venture capital investor. I’m a philanthropist.

I teach at the University of Pennsylvania in my off seasons. I have an off season, I played 10 years in the NFL. I’ve been on six different teams, the Baltimore Ravens, the Tennessee Titans, the New York Jets, the Detroit Lions, the Atlanta Falcons, and the Patriots. I’ve been around the block.

For a lot of people, they will call you in the NFL a journeyman, but doing it for 10 years, at some point, you understand that, hey, this thing isn’t going to last forever between one of those releases, firings, or whatever you may call it. For me, it was always important to maximize this platform and this opportunity, so it could be a trampoline for the rest of my life.

We’ve been fortunate to have done some pretty cool things. We’ve done Forbes 30 Under 30. We’ve done a show on Netflix by my house, which is a real estate version of Shark Tank. We’re working on another show now. And we built an amazing community for people to learn as we go, learn as we grow. That’s the Life 101 Community. It’s that simple.

I went to the University of Pennsylvania, and I pitched them on the name for the course. They’re like, Life 101, what does that mean? It is breaking down the money decisions we will have to make in our lives and breaking it down on a 101 level. Unfortunately, we never get these lessons. No one ever teaches us about these things, so we’re all starting at ground zero.

For us, it’s been one of the most amazing forms of our give back to the world. Again, you’re helping equip people with the tools, the resources, and the knowledge they need to maximize their life’s potential and their life’s work.

Toby: I just want to make sure people understand. You played in the NFL, you actually went back to school, and get your degree from the Wharton School of Business. You’re talking about one of the top business schools on the planet.

Brandon: Yeah.

Toby: Now you teach there, so you’re a professor. The course that you developed, what was the impetus? What caused you to say, hey, you know what? We really need this. I’m going to fill that need, and here’s how I’m going to do it?

Brandon: Like you said, I graduated from Wharton. I played 10 years in the league. In year five, I decided to go back and start teaching. For me, what caused that was two things.

One, when I came into the NFL 2013, everybody wanted to start talking to me about money. They wanted to start like, well, why don’t we do this with your money? How can we invest it? How can we grow it? All those things.

Growing up, my favorite song was Back Then by Mike Jones. Back then you didn’t want me, now you’re all on me. I’m like, how come you don’t talk to my mom about this? How come you don’t talk to my brother about this? If I twisted my ankle or stubbed my toe and I couldn’t play ever again, you would never teach me about my money. That’s a little off, I don’t really like that. I’m not better than anyone else. I just happened to have a different job title that makes me attractive.

But then, two, when I bought my first house in 2016, my wife called me from the closing office in New Jersey. I was in Detroit playing with the Lions at the time. They had emailed us the closing disclosure. She said, hey, babe, everything looks right? I remember just sitting there scrolling through 106 pages. I’m like, I have no idea.

All these numbers, it seems to add up. That’s the purchase price, but what’s all of these different warranty deeds, titles, owner’s insurance, and all those things? Like you said, I’ve gotten to the Wharton School of Business. I’ve been in some pretty prestigious schools throughout my life. The fact that I was facing one of the most important decisions in my life—signing my life over for 30 years at the time—and I had no idea what I was doing and we had never practiced this, but I knew that tangent of a 45 degree angle, for me I was like, that’s backwards.

We created the curriculum. We stress tested it. For me, I could have handed the package off to someone else. However, I was afraid that somebody would butcher it, somebody would make the information less digestible. If you don’t make this conversational, you don’t invite people into the room, then you scare people away from the conversation forever.

It was extremely important that at least initially, we were able to put my money where my mouth is, roll the sleeves up, and actually get in the classroom, get out of my own comfort zone, and make money conversational. Make it easy to understand. Since then, we’ve changed some lives legitimately. Hopefully, we just keep changing more for the better.

Toby: I knew you were teaching this in high schools, that the University of Penn got behind it, and the NFL got behind it. How many high schoolers have you been able to have graduated from your program?

Brandon: It’s funny due to some of our relationships, over 90,000 at this point. Over 90,000 high school students accredited and still rolling, still counting, which is beautiful to say. We’ve been blessed years ago.

In year one, when we created the course, we had every publication come in because it was unheard of. A football player would be teaching in off seasons and then teaching at Ivy League school. I remember the Today show came in. I told them, literally, if it’s just here five years from now, I have royally failed.

I want this to be in my high school classroom. I want this to be in a kid in Mississippi’s high school classroom. We’re going to keep working lower. But five years later, we can say we’re actually activating on that promise to ourselves, I guarantee.

Toby: I think it’s fair. A lot of things you hear when you work in the world of finance, even in taxes, is people say, why aren’t they teaching this in high school? You see people, why aren’t they teaching it in college nowadays? There are a lot of people that are college graduates that have no idea.

You said the mortgage, but there are a lot of other decisions. Even going in and buying a vehicle, the car, knowing the difference between a lease and purchase, there are all these little distinctions that most people have no idea. It’s the premise that you wouldn’t go on the field without practicing.

You’d never go and say, I’m going to start on Sunday in the NFL, and you’re like, yeah, I haven’t practiced this year, I’m just going to go out and play. You’d never do that because you’re just going to get crushed, but we do it all the time in our money matters individually. This is a way for them to practice, to be part of a community, so that they don’t get wrecked on Sunday.

Brandon: Yeah, 100%. I think that, like you said, it would be backwards to think that you would show up to that work presentation and have not even thought about it before you walk into the big show. Again, like I said, in my mind, it seems simple. It’s a constant decision in life. Like you said, it’s buying a car. It’s buying a house, renting an apartment, whatever it may be.

For some reason, we don’t talk about it so people keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again. This is simple stuff right here. It’s just having a conversation, and that’s what we’re trying to do.

I tell my students this all the time. Batman has no superpowers. All right, newsflash. Batman has some money, he’s been able to put together a nice suit, and he’s got a beautiful utility belt. But Batman understands the tools and the weapons he has at its disposal. When he’s faced with a certain problem or villain, he can decide, okay, I’m going to go with the smokescreen on that one. Oh, no, I’m going to go with the bat star or the ninja star.

For me, our community’s job is not to tell you what to do with your money. Your perspective may be different. Your risk tolerance may be different. You might have different issues or family pressures that you have to deal with, but our job is to tell you what you have at your disposal in that utility belt so that now, you can make the best decision for yourself and your family at that time.

You still may make mistakes. I’m still making financial mistakes, but it’s not a mistake as if, oh, I’m just ignorant to what I’m doing. It’s a mistake that I might look back on it and say, man, I wish I would have done this a little differently. It’s really at this time with the same set of circumstances, nine times out of 10, I would have made that same decision over. If you can do that and say that, then you can live without regret on your money.

It’s hard when I hear people say, man, when I came out of college, I racked up 7 years of credit card debt, so I had to spend the next 15 years working myself out of it. Why? We can talk about these things and make sure that you don’t have to waste time going through those negative experiences with your money.

Toby: You come out of the world of the NFL. Do you see this with the players? I have a number of clients that are current players or past players. They oftentimes say that the people descend on you guys, when you enter the league, the average career is actually really, really short. Do you see people making a lot of mistakes in their first couple of years that they end up having to pay for the rest of their careers?

Brandon: Yeah, I think it’s the curse of the “overnight millionaire,” the lottery winner, where you’ve never had this information taught to you. It’s pretty hard to do anything correctly the first time. When you come into the NFL, like you said, there’s so much noise coming at you. There are so many people that are literally looking at you as prey.

Some people are there for good. Some people don’t need to think from you, they just want to help you. But it’s also hard to hear and listen to that when you also have another 50 people who are genuinely there to try to get their next meal ticket. You just have to hope that your mistakes, especially when you come to the NFL and you come into big money early.

Most people make their mistakes over their livelihoods, and their career earnings grow over time. For a lot of players, you just hit the top of your career earnings, and then the rest of your life is downhill. If you make a mistake, initially, that’s a pretty expensive mistake.

Unfortunately, we see it time and time again. But I will say that there are a lot of people who are being more strategic with their money and their spending because there’s more media around about not being the next person highlighted on 30 for 30 broke.

Toby: Is your course being taught to the incoming players? Have they approached you on that and said, hey, we want to have the basics that these guys actually understand the main principles?

Brandon: Yeah. The NFL has not mandated it yet. However, I’ve been brought in by a number of teams at this point to teach the players. We’ve created webinars in the off season, we call them mastermind conversations. Our union has hired us as well too to teach, like you said, the basics to people. It’s been extremely helpful to folks.

There are players who reach out all the time just trying to set up time to talk, set up time to meet, set up time to learn. Again, I’m thankful. That’s another reason why we built the community so that we can replicate myself.

Can we give this information at scale? If I have to have one on one conversations with everyone, be a father, and invest it, it’s tough. But if we can use our production company, and we can partner with folks like yourself, then we can get this information out to the masses so that we don’t just bottle it up in here.

Toby: We’ll get the word out, don’t worry. When somebody joins up, so they become a member of Life 101, what can they expect?

Brandon: You can expect a positive community. You’re going to be immersed in a bunch of different resources and tools that you can use to take advantage of the decisions that you might be currently making, but also, more importantly, prepare for decisions that you will be making at some point in your life. I think you can also expect to be motivated.

I’m my little husky guy. I’m a little husky individual. For me, when I went on diets for the NFL, for those who don’t know, you get fined per pound that you’re overweight. They give you a weight limit, and you get fined about $500, I want to say $74 per pound that you’re overweight. You can’t play around with those fines.

I operate better with accountability buddies. It’s easy for me to go ahead and have a cheat meal. But when other folks, friends, and family members are on the diet with me, it’s a lot easier for me to stay disciplined and stay on path. One of the most important things that you’ll get is being surrounded by like-minded people who are all working towards their own visions of positive financial futures for themselves.

The final thing is that a lot of people don’t see or don’t know that money is great, and we’re going to talk about that. But we will also be adding in a lot of self-esteem work, self-confidence work, motivation, quotes in the mornings, a lot of positivity, just so that you can maximize your life because I’ve wasted time in my life second guessing myself, doubting my decision-making, and doubting that instinct in my gut.

For me, that is one thing that is not covered as much or highlighted as much about Life 101, but I want you to be able to walk out of your doors with your head high, your shoulders back, and just knowing that you’re attacking the world, and you’re being the best version of yourself.

Toby: Okay. If somebody joins up with Life 101, what’s the roadmap for them? Should they just go through? I’ve been through the course, so I know that the course is laid out in a way that you can go through step by step. Do you recommend someone just go through it? Or should they have a direction that they go through, skip ahead, do this one, that one? Why should they go through it one at a time?

Brandon: First, the course, you should definitely just go through that one at a time. You can do it at your own pace. When you all get into the course, you’ll see how it’s laid out beautifully. We try to keep things short and digestible so that you can pause, go handle some business, come back, listen to it, and pick it up as needed.

You should also be aware that it’s growing and it’s evolving. We’re actively shooting courses. Right now, we’re shooting a whole carbine course in a dealership with a bunch of different salesmen, different opinions on what you should and shouldn’t do. As you become a part of this community, you’ll see that things will just continue to build on top of each other just to provide more resources and value for you.

The final thing is, yes, I’m an Ivy League professor at that. We are not talking over your head. We’re having a conversation just like this. We’ll have webinars, we’ll have office hours, things of that nature, where you can ask any questions that you may have or dive in deeper, but understand that we’re at the warm-up level.

We want to make sure that you’re willing to invest in yourself first before you start coming to the webinars and things of that nature and chiming in with questions. No offense, that’s great. But make sure you put in an investment into yourself and check out the material that we already have out there first.

Toby: Yeah, so get in there. You’ll be able to see, it’s one, two, three. It’s a great course. It goes by quick. You guys did a really good job of making it bite-sized. For somebody who pontificates too much, I can appreciate that. You’re very succinct, you did it really well.

Have you had anybody that went through where you said, hey, they transformed, and you saw them go from somebody who’s making really bad decisions consistently to somebody who’s making excellent decisions consistently?

Brandon: I’ll give you two of my favorite stories from the course. One year, we had a young lady who was actually about to graduate college. On our first lesson, we go through the budget. During that experience alone, she saved herself $16,000.

The way she did that, she went through our entire budget, she was going to be a nurse in DC. Originally, she was going to rent. Her rent would have put her negative $14,000 in the hole. Her parents live in DC. She said, listen, sitting here doing this experience, I might move back in with my mom for a little bit. I might take my time. By doing that one decision alone, she was up $2800 on that year.

This was the first class 20-minute walk through a budget. In that moment alone, she just had that eureka moment of like, okay, maybe I don’t need to be a little too cool to live at home with my parents. I also shared with her my first three years in the NFL in the off season. I went back home and stayed with my mom, this big old NFL player. I was making decisions and making investments in my future life that I wanted for myself. But again, we’re sharing our own vulnerable stories. That’s one thing.

The second thing, we had one young lady. She’s at Peloton now, actually. She graduated and took our course. It was the first year we did our course. She paid down $130,000 in student loan debt in two years. She would send us check-ins every few months. She had it all on her whiteboard. She had the start goal, she had how aggressive she was paying it down, and she reached out and thanked us for getting that burden off of her back early.

One thing that I told her, I was like, I’d love to see it. I love that energy that you had with paying down that debt. I want you to keep that same energy. Now, what are you doing with that extra surplus of money? Are we investing now? Are we saving for your first home? What are we doing?

Keep that same energy. You’ve proven it to yourself. To see two people like that, and we’re talking five figures savings and six figures in debt paid down in a couple of years, that says that I’ve done my job.

Toby: Yeah, you’re setting some goals. You’re showing some people the right way to do things, that they’re actually making intelligent decisions as opposed to emotional decisions. It’s really interesting. You went home during the off season and lived with your mom?

Brandon: Man, I’m telling you. If I wanted to have a night out back in my single bachelor days—I’m married; now, I go home—I’d just pay for a hotel. Actually, when you realize, like you said, the NFL is not for long, in my rookie year, I saw a guy have four different leases in different places. He kept getting traded, he got released. Literally, he had a wife and a newborn child, so he wanted them to be with him in every place that he went.

By the third time he got us in Tennessee, he’d said, you guys don’t have to stay home. I can’t keep taking out these 12 month leases. I’ve been fortunate to have certain experiences and see certain things that I’ve said, you know what? I’m not going to make that mistake because the stats, which you can make stats say anything, but the stats say 78% of players go broke within 2–3 years of retirement. If I know that 78% of us are bound to be living the life that I don’t want to live, I can’t make the same decisions as you.

As we talked about earlier, I want people to understand that why, because if you understand your why, now it’s a lot easier for me to avoid those distractions and avoid falling into peer pressure and trying to keep up with the Joneses. I understand why my money is important in my vision for myself. Now, I can stay on that path a little bit easier. That’s what we want to do with all of our members in Life 101.

Toby: It’s interesting. I’m going to go back to the NFL, obviously. You just mentioned the stat. Is it 70%–78% of the players you say go broke, but it means that they’ve gone through their fortune, they’re signing bonuses and everything else within two years of leaving the league, or is it just within two years?

Brandon: Within 2–3 years of leaving the league or retirement.

Toby: They’re living large while they’re playing, and they’re trying to keep up with everybody else. Then when they leave, all of a sudden, those bad habits follow them. The next thing you know, they’re burned through it. What happens to those guys?

Brandon: It’s a great question. Maybe they call me and try to get on the right path, but no. That’s a really good question. I’m sure some of them find ways to pick themselves up, but honestly, I wouldn’t really know.

Toby: We deal with this a lot as an aside, Brandon. We deal with this a lot in estate planning, where people are always talking about leaving something to their kids. Sometimes they said it’s one of the worst things you could do because the stats for lottery winners and people that have windfalls are about equally as horrific.

Within four years, the bankruptcy rates go up compared to the regular public. In other words, giving somebody a short-term windfall oftentimes does more harm to them long term than if you just withheld it, so it’s going to cause some problems. As your course is designed to smooth that out and make sure people don’t fall for that, hey, here’s the easy money. No, you’re just, here’s some staking money that you can now get to your investment goals faster.

What are you positioning yourself to do with that type of money? For the player that comes in and all of a sudden, they do get a big signing bonus, or for the person who gets a big inheritance, or who has a business deal that comes through, what’s the type of advice you give to those people?

Brandon: I want you to, first and foremost, understand how hard you worked for this money. Obviously, if you hit the lottery, you worked hard. You drove to the station and picked it up. But I think a lot of the time, for us as players, people use the term “overnight millionaires.” I started playing football in fourth grade. I was working about 12-plus years before I ever got paid to play football.

I outworked a lot of people, I outlived a lot of people, I outran a lot of people, I skipped spring breaks. There were times where in college, people were drinking and I would not be drinking. There were times where I’d be taking my pill. While interning at UBS in college, I’d go and work out, train, and get less sleep than everyone else so that I can invest in myself and make it to the NFL.

To come into the league, and people think you’re an “overnight millionaire,” when really I’m a really good investor. When you think about your money like that and you change your perspective on it, it’s like, oh, it’s going to be a little harder to just give that away. It wasn’t that easy to really make.

For me, I was actually talking with a buddy of mine about this the other day. To get back to your point about the estate planning aspect, we talked about generational wealth. What good is that if you aren’t educating the next generation? For those people, if I’m just trying to save all this money to pass it down to my sons, then they get it, and they just blow it, well, I might as well blown it myself.

What am I doing to provide them with the resources that they need to actually take care of this investment that I’ve made into them? And into their children? What we’re trying to do is provide that money playbook, that blueprint, so that you can, like you said, go through some of these things before you actually have to go through these things.

Going back to that example of me with the mortgage, when my wife was trying to close on that home in New Jersey and I’m in Detroit, everyone around the table is incentivized for her to just go ahead and sign on the dotted line. Being a real estate investor now and a developer, I have literally saved myself thousands of dollars by now knowing what I’m reading through the closing disclosure.

Hey, why are you charging me that? That’s $1400 I shouldn’t be paying. You’re right, Mr. Copeland. Wow, okay. There’s literally a home. We were about to purchase a property we’re going to convert it to a multi-unit rental property near Johns Hopkins Hospital, and they tried to add a little over $7000 extra on to my bill the night before the purchase. We ended up walking away from the deal.

I I had no idea of how to read through those things, I walk away and I lose that money. I don’t know about anybody else out there, but I can use $7000. The money I worked out for, I want to spend it myself, not just give it away to someone else. All of these decisions matter, and we’re just trying to arm you with the information you need to make them confidential.

Toby: Get through the course, go through the course. You’re going to learn the basics. You’re going to learn some of the bigger events like buying a car, buying a house. Those types of things are in there, building up your credit, all those things are in there. What’s one major takeaway that you want your students that go through this to walk away with?

Brandon: My favorite course is the business of ME or ME LLC. That’s a lesson that I did not get until I entered the NFL. I entered the NFL as a Baltimore Raven, at least. That was my experience. People talk about it and other teams as well, too. They say, you are a Fortune 500 company, you are a business. You are a walking asset, you have to take care of your body.

You are the thing that puts food on your family’s table. That’s the same thing for all of us. That’s the same thing for you, Toby. That’s the same thing for everyone here. You’re the one who keeps the lights on, so you have to think of yourself as a company.

Who’s your board of directors? Who’s the team around you? Who are those people you surround yourselves with? What are your core competencies? What are your strengths and your weaknesses? Are you valuing what you do like a business, and are you evaluating your circle as such?

When you flip that switch in your mind, for us as athletes, now, we consider our social media, we consider our marketing, our brand. We consider how we show up in rooms. That actually has a dollar value.

I think, for me, I love that lesson because I know that it’s something that a lot of people don’t get and don’t talk about, so I know it’s a differentiator. But I also see the light bulb switch for a lot of people to say, oh, you’re right. Then you start evaluating the people around you and like, oh, every time I call you, it’s something negative and it pulls me down a little bit. All right, I’m going to start calling you a little less. Or even practicing saying no, practice and dealing with pressure, and things of that nature.

Again, life advice, it is those major financial decisions, but it’s also dealing with some of the common themes of being a breadwinner in your circle, a breadwinner in your family. Again, if you don’t have the coaching, the circle, or the community that can help you feel confident about those things, then you risk derailing your financial future because you’re learning about these things on the fly. Like I said, when you learn about something for the first time, most of the time, you have to make a mistake.

Toby: Yeah. There are not too many times when you get to do a dress rehearsal in life. Usually, it’s going to be hitting you really fast and hard. If you haven’t been doing your study, you’re going to end up being roadkilled.

We really enjoy working with you guys. We think it’s a great partnership because on the Infinity Investing side, so often we get people that focus just on the making money part, making their money, making more money, they’re looking at real estate and stock.

And a lot of times, you’re looking at it saying, yeah, but if you have a hole in your boat, you’re going to have a lot of problems. And this is a great way to patch that up. We really enjoy the content that you create and the message that you’ve created to get out there. We support it 100%, which is why we’re so excited to partner with you.

Is there anything else that you want to touch on that you’re very passionate about, that you want someone to really understand before they go into Life 101, that they can understand Cope?

They say, all right, who is this guy? I get a gist for what’s motivating you, but is there anything else that you could tell people out there, where they can get a little more insight into who you are and why you’re doing what you’re doing?

Brandon: For me, the feeling is very mutual on what you do. This partnership that we have together, we’re extremely thankful for this relationship. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that here live.

This is going to sound really, really egotistical, but I want to relate it to you and what you built with Infinity Investing, also what we’re trying to do, and answering your questions. We don’t have to be doing this. Probably, it could be a lot more profitable just focusing on myself, being selfish, and being a shark. But for me, I want to see other people living their dreams. I want to see other people unlock their fullest potential. That is what I’m passionate about.

This is my legacy and my ripple effect. This is helping me put smiles on faces of people I’ve never even met. If you take our course, it’s not just going to impact you, it’s going to impact your children, your neighbors, or your community. You might be able to donate a little bit more to your local shelter. This is what makes me tick. This is living beyond my lifetime here. That’s the thing that I would say.

I want people to come into the community, and I want you to share it. Not selfishly just share it for me and for our community’s sake, but more importantly, for your community’s sake. When you reach those levels of financial freedom that you’re trying to, I don’t know about everyone else, but I want to look around to see my friends and family there as well, too.

I tell my students all the time, it’s not just about you. It’s about us arming you with the information so that you can go out and you can feel comfortable sharing it with your mother, your uncle, your aunt, your cousins. You can be a changemaker in your community.

Once you get the gift, don’t just keep it to yourself. Share it because again, when we all retire, we want to have financial freedom, we’re all on that Life 101, Infinity Investing yacht that we go in together on. We want to look around and, again, see all of the people and all our loved ones there with us, not that we had to foot the bill, but they were able to afford it themselves.

Toby: There’s the old phrase, it’s lonely at the top. No, not as long as you bring all of your friends in your community and the people that you care about, then it’s not. It’s absolutely a big old party at the top, and everybody’s having a good time. It’s just the difference between that scarcity mentality. So many people think it’s attrition we got to waste.

I can only imagine what you went through in the NFL. I imagine that there are players that are supportive to other players, and there are players who are secretly happy when you sprained your ankle. Like, hey, there’s one less competition for me. It’s just a different mentality.

Some people are like, hey, I want everybody to be their best, and I want to be at my best with the best, and we’re going to elevate everybody’s game. Then there are the people that are like, I just want to win at all cost. I think that we’re firmly in that camp of, we want everybody to be successful. We want everybody to be at their best. That’s our calling. I think that’s your calling. I think that’s why this is a great partnership.

Brandon: Amen.

Toby: Anything else, Cope?

Brandon: Join the community. We’re excited to see you. We’re excited to have fun and also ask questions. I will say this, I don’t know everything, and I don’t claim to know everything. There’s a reason why you hire a realtor to help you buy and sell a home in your area. There’s a reason why you hire a financial advisor to help you manage your money, an accountant to help you file your taxes, a credit repair specialist to help you with your credit.

We know a lot of people. We’re going to have some amazing guests come speak to you all as well, too. But there is no dumb question. We’ve never learned this stuff. Ask any questions that you have, and I promise you, anything I do not know or have an opinion on, I will bring in someone that can give you their professional opinion on it as well. Don’t be shy. Let’s have some fun with this.

What do you have to lose? Put it like that. That’s the biggest thing. I will add that. In life, at some point, you have to jump and put yourself out there. At some point, you have to take the risk.

If you’re on the fence—ah, I don’t really know if this is for me—make the investment in yourself. Again, take the risk if you’re on the fence. If you’re not on the fence, then I will see you soon.