This year, Florida became one of the latest states to approve name, image and likeness deals — or NIL — for high school student-athletes.
But if they don’t know the rules or how to manage their newly acquired cash, an endorsement that looks like easy money can backfire.
That’s where NILENT comes in. The Sarasota company offers education and financial literacy to help prepare them for the NIL landscape.
Co-founder Steven Simmons spoke about the company's goals and what’s ahead for Florida’s NIL future.
Can you tell me a little about what NILENT is, and how it works with student-athletes and schools?
Our focus isn't putting the brand deals together. Our job is saying, "Do you understand what a credit score is? Do you understand why you have to pay taxes? Can you understand things like how social media works?" It can be great when you're building a brand, but it also can be, as we all know, a cesspool at times, and sometimes you just have to be able to walk away.’
Do you think, with what you've seen so far, with a lot of high school athletes now having that possibility, have you seen that come up where they kind of just don't know how to navigate it?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, I work with our local lacrosse team here and the rowing team here in Sarasota, and the moment that the ruling was passed in Florida, (they were) like, "Hey, great! Let's start taking pictures of the team doing stuff, and let's go and start getting (NIL deals)." (I was) like, ‘Guys, you can't be wearing the uniforms. You can't be doing it on school property." There's so many specific rules and regulations these kids need to understand. It's a process, but if anything, it's a great educational component to get there. So when they're in college, the opportunities are very significant.
"You have the opportunity to create generational wealth at a young age, if managed properly. So that's one of the reasons why we try to teach the importance of compound interest, great if you're investing, terrible if you have credit card debt. But it's things like this that these athletes need to understand."Steven Simmons
What does your organization at its core do to help these athletes take those next steps and take them in a smart way?
The funny thing is, we're known as the least sexy company in the NIL space, and we're OK with that. We're a digital education platform. We provide the content level of a MasterClass, but delivered in a Tiktok fashion. So everything we've done has been based on feedback from professional athletes saying, "We would have liked to have known this,’" current athletes saying, "Hey, we don't know this,"and athletic directors saying, "This is what keeps us up at night." So we offer education in five-minute modules around financial literacy, mental health well-being, brand building and career transition. Our platform’s created so that when they finish watching an educational module, they take a short quiz. They complete that quiz, they get a reward token. When they finish, they can cash in their rewards tokens for rewards from corporate partners, whether it's gift cards to Chick-fil-A, whether it's gift cards to Dick's Sporting Goods, or whether it's things like opening up a savings account at a PNC Bank or a SoFi and having them put in $100 to match whatever they open up their account with.”
I’m gonna tell you right now that Chick-fil-A token reward is probably going to be the most popular.
Look, everyone loves Chick-fil-A, I’m not going to argue that one, man.
So let's say you see a student-athlete, they're able to get a deal going. What are some of the main challenges you see from a student-athlete when they get that first check or they make that first deal?
Well, you know, one of the biggest failures we see is not honoring the terms of whatever the deal is, right? Because typically it's about posting on social media a certain number of times, or maybe showing up somewhere and signing autographs or whatever it is. There is a responsibility that comes with this. This is a business transaction. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, you need an attorney or someone to review your deals. It's important to have the right team around them, because the other side of it, too, is you have to pay taxes. And kids don't realize that, right? Apparently last year, it was something like less than 12% of college athletes pay taxes on their NIL deals. And the most compelling thing of this, you have the opportunity to create generational wealth at a young age, if managed properly. So that's one of the reasons why we try to teach the importance of compound interest, great if you're investing, terrible if you have credit card debt. But it's things like this that these athletes need to understand.
In your eyes, what is the ideal scenario for student-athletes and high schools in Florida, let's say five years down the line. What does the landscape look like ideally?
Five years down the line, I would love nothing more than to see kids use NILENT’s platform for education all of a sudden, saying, "Wow, I didn't realize I could launch my own LLC and start building a business while I'm in high school. And you know what that does? That makes me more attractive to college recruiters when I'm applying for colleges. Look how much more well-rounded I am." 99.6% these kids are not going pro, but if I'm a corporate recruiter and I see you graduated from a great school, you played a sport, you engage with your fans online, all these things come into play that makes you a really, really compelling job candidate. And if we're able to help those kids and get that out there, man, that's a win all day long. I'll take it all day long. I'm happy to be the most unsexy group or person, I guess in NIL.
