- Hey, hey.
- You gotta get comfortable.
- Boxing me out. - I wanted to start with,
like we all know how hard it is
to become a professional athlete.
It takes a lot of time, effort, skill, work ethic.
It also takes like people around you,
a team, an inner circle,
people that have your back through adversity,
through the good times, all those things.
And I know for Travis and Angel
that crew is here today with Rey, Dre and Aaron.
So, Angel, I wanna start with you.
Give us the backstory, how you met Rey
and why he's become so important to you.
- Yeah, I was in the middle of my career,
playing for Atlanta,
and I really didn't have a team around me,
but I had a friend that said,
"Hey, I have a guy, you should talk to him."
And I'm like, "Ugh, this again."
And Rey was telling me all the things that he does.
And, and I said, "It sounds good."
I said, "But people have told me this time and time again."
- Right?
I said, "You got one month to show me what you can do."
Well, I gave him one month.
- Thirty days. - Whoa.
- Right, and then literally I think the next week
he got me into Sony Studios
to pitch something that I wanna do.
And I was like, "Whoa, that's huge."
- I knew somebody that worked at the studio.
I didn't think she was gonna pitch her show.
I just thought like, oh, she'll get a tour of the studio.
And once she's in there, somebody will realize who she is.
And maybe one thing will lead to another.
So she got there, she pitched it
and everything worked out perfectly.
- Look, now you guys are here right now.
So, Trav, with you, with Dre and Aaron,
I know you guys have a little bit different story.
You guys go back 10, 15 years.
- Wow.
- Where did that friendship begin for you?
- We actually met through like the AAU basketball circuit.
Obviously my talents were more suited
for the, for the football field.
- I'm sure you were pretty good in basketball.
- There we go.
But yeah, when we met in high school,
it was a genuine natural friendship.
They started the management business
around their junior year
when - we're all the same age -
so around my junior year.
They came to me and they saw the vision of what I had done.
- I also knew that he was different.
And he was different because of his friend groups,
because of his upbringing.
He played one year, really at tight end.
And I like, he had amazing numbers,
and I thought he should've been
a first-round pick that year.
I knew like it's really about putting an idea in place,
putting a business model in place,
for what we thought his career would be,
and what we thought he needed to do.
And it was different.
It was really different.
- Yeah.
- And it showed people like what we thought of him
isn't what it is.
- We're all grownups here.
We can take care of ourselves.
We live our lives.
But I think it's so important to have the people around you.
Family, your friends, your business, people, whatever it is.
You had an injury at the height of your career.
How was he able to pick you up?
- That was, it was my first injury.
I tore my ACL.
I'm in the prime of my career.
Everything's just going up and up.
All of a sudden it stops.
And you're like, "Whoa, what?
Who am I?"
- Yeah. - "What is my identity?
What am I supposed to do?"
I'm playing since eight years old, always on the go.
I think the first thing Rey said was,
"Everything's gonna be O.K."
The one thing that stuck with me,
he said, "Basketball's not your identity and who you are."
I said, "But it is my identity.
It's who I am."
But he showed me that there there's
so much beyond the sport.
- So you are, you are a badass, like I'm just saying like
because you're like great on the court,
but you have all these things -
you're, I think, producer, you own a team.
Are you part-owner of a team?
Like you have all of these, this laundry list.
Just killing the game.
- Killing it.
- I think that is like inspiring.
Not just for young girls coming up,
but like everybody.
Just to know that you're more than your sport.
So, Travis, for you,
was there a moment where you knew these two
just had your back?
- I knew that they saw the vision early
and that I could trust them, you know?
And that was everything.
The confidence to be able to trust the people around you
is everything in this business.
And it's a two-way street.
They were very - how do I say this?
They told me exactly who I was.
- Say it, say it. - You know what I mean?
And they say, they told me exactly how I was perceived.
- You need to hear that. - And I needed that.
Everybody else blows smoke and tells you how great you are.
- Yeah.
- But Aaron and Andre,
they're gonna tell me exactly when I'm messing up
or when it's not gonna look right.
- Yeah. And that I just have the power through something.
And that's huge.
- What are like some of the toughest conversations
that you guys have had as a team or on a personal level?
- We use a software to like kind of categorize expenses.
And I don't even know if you remember this,
but when we were going through that process,
I took all the expenses and categorized them
and like showed him where most of the money was going.
I don't know if we should name 'em.
- Right.
- But you know, entertainment, things like that.
And it was just more like, see it, you gotta see it.
- Social media has really changed
the way we kind of live our life.
It can be a really positive tool,
but it can also be a negative tool,
I think at times.
- I mean, it's definitely been learning over the years.
And I've become way more guarded
of what I put on social media.
The biggest thing is, what do you really feel comfortable
with letting everybody know?
And having a team in place
to be able to help protect that.
You know what I mean?
And that itself is protecting you,
because now they hear it from you firsthand
about everything that you're doing.
- So I can't wait for your book to come out and....
- Book?
Oh man.
- It's gonna be way down the road.
- Will be like an audio book.
- Someone keeps telling me to write a book,
and I'm like, "Do I have to tell all the truth?
Or what?"
- My rookie year, my house got broken into
twice during a game.
They didn't take much -
but like I moved, I was like, "Dude,
they know where I live, my address is online."
- Yeah.
And this was home game.
They know when I'm going away or I'm staying home.
But, yeah.
Like the privacy's really challenging
when everyone knows where you're at at all times.
- Right.
- Especially now. That was 12, 14 years ago.
Now it's even worse.
- Yeah.
- And as you guys obviously know, data is currency.
- Yep. - Right.
So even when she'll -
now I gotta put you on Front Street.
But there'll be times where it's like,
"Hey, we gotta have Angel do this."
And we gotta pass through her social security number, right.
I know it because we've done it so many times,
but I'm always scared.
Like don't send the intern your social security number.
Right. - Right.
- Like, don't do that.
Now she's a pro, she's gotten that stuff down.
But, yeah, like those are little - you know,
it seems like elementary-type things.
But those are all things that come back and bite you.
If you want an Uber, my name is not my name on Uber.
- Oh really?
- You know, people will know where you live,
or even when everybody always asks me your phone number.
They wanna work with you.
We got the Google number.
You know what I'm saying?
- Smart, yeah.
- There's little ways to go about it.
- The Uber thing is a good idea.
- That inner circle that we keep talking about,
how important is this conversation
just to have and to spread that message?
- It's really important, right?
And this all goes back to like knowing the why.
You know you're protected,
you can trust the people around you
if you know why certain things are going on, you know?
And I think we pride ourselves on that,
letting him know, right.
- You hear a lot of horror stories
about guys and their representation.
I feel like people need to see
what real representation looks like.
- You could literally tell the athletes
who have a great team around them.
- Yeah. - Then the ones who don't.
You can see it.
That was fun, guys.
- Clap.
- Amazing.
- Awesome, appreciate.
- Awesome.
- Nice to meet you.
- Yeah, we definitely gotta connect.
- Yeah, I'll give you my number.