The Parent's Guide To NIL (Name, Image & Likeness) w/ Joy Harris

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Welcome back to the racing elite competitors podcast. I'm coach Bri. Hey, mental performance coach for athletes. And I'm so excited that you are here. This podcast is for you. If you are a sports mom, whether you are just getting, going on this journey with your athlete, or you have a lot of seasons under your belt, this podcast is for you to help you know, how to build confidence and mental strength in your athlete. And also, so that. You can enjoy this whole sports journey too. So excited. You're here. You're in the right place. Today's episode is a really cool one because I get to welcome. Joy Harris, who was a student athlete advocate. All around this topic of name, image, and likeness. And I L now, if you're like me, you probably hear NISL and you think college athlete. And I was proven wrong when I spoke to joy. If your athlete is not in college, which most of yours aren't yet. Then they can actually still benefit from an I L and Joy's going to talk all about how, what is an I L and also a little bit about scholarships and how to fund your athletes college education through scholarship, through athletic scholarship, through an I L all of the things, she's a wealth of knowledge in this area. Now, before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to a, an athlete in our community. So an athlete or community named Augusta, she actually just recently finished up our program, the elite mental game. And this is what she said. She said my favorite part of program was how engaging the lessons were. Coach Brie was very supportive and understanding, and the videos I enjoyed learning about the tools I can use to shake off mistakes. Stop. Bad comparison and manage stress. And I thought they were really smart and useful. So Augusta I'm so proud of you, and I hope that you're proud of yourself through your progress inside the elite mental game. Keep going. All right, let's go ahead and welcome joy Harris. And she, like I said, is a student athlete advocate and entrepreneur who works to provide resources to student athletes and their parents from name, image, and likeness to scholarships with the goal of closing the financial. And career gap for student athletes in sports. So, as I mentioned before, I really was blind to what the implications of N I L word. We're for athletes and also athletes who are in middle school and high school and how they can benefit from. This opportunity so i hope that you enjoy this episode with joy as much as i enjoyed talking with her

Breanne Webinar: 2:27

Hi, Joy. Welcome to the

Joy: 2:30

podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

Breanne Webinar: 2:32

Yeah, I'm really excited about our conversation because this is a world that I do not know a lot about. It just kind of heard things, specifically talking about NIL and what that I was like, Oh yeah. Just even the nuggets that you shared with me were pretty eye opening and what's possible in this whole realm. So let's get into it. Joy, first, can you tell us a little bit about your background and what you do and how you got started in this?

Joy: 3:01

Yeah. So I am Joy Harris. I'm an entrepreneur. So I've launched until several service based businesses, and looking at the landscape of sports initially for my own children. I actually was deterred and Say like this is not a great opportunity, right? You don't want to go in a space where the only 1 percent are going to be selected and you're not and then your career once you do get paid last about three years, like those aren't good odds. And so because I'm a mom first and my goal is to always support my kids, and this is, you know, one of the things they wanted jobs like, all right, well, we'll like any hard business that I'm about to launch or a tough market. Let's figure out the strategy that's going to work best. And I came along around the same time as I was getting together. One of their strategies on how to capitalize and make them successful in the space, even if they weren't selected in the space, and did pretty well in getting them some brand deals along the way and started talking to other parents and found out that nobody knew about the information and nobody knew what NIL was and nobody knew what I was talking about. I was like, Okay. and so I thought, okay, well, more parents need to be aware of this information, not just from the standpoint of you have an athlete, but you want them to go to college and you actually don't want to incur student loan debt. And so I thought this is a great opportunity to educate parents in the space. And the more I began seeing about the more parents ask for resources. And so it's something that I'm, happy to do and I'm happy to be helpful to some of the other parents.

Breanne Webinar: 4:33

Wow. Amazing. And it's definitely needed. okay, let's start from the very beginning. What does NIL stand for and

Joy: 4:40

what does it mean? Yeah. So NIL is name, image, and likeness. It gives student athletes the permission to use their name. So if you think about it like their name, that might be like on the back of a jersey. Their image, which if you think about back in the day, you had athletes on like weeding boxes. So photos of themselves, and their likeness of something that looks like them, but that's not them. So think about if you see a player in a video game, or you see those little bobblehead action figures, they're able to use those things to their benefit where Previously, that right was held by the NCAA specifically, and they couldn't use it. So now they're able to monetize their name, their image, and their likeness for their own personal gain.

Breanne Webinar: 5:23

Okay. Awesome. That's good to know. And my second question off of that, is this only for athletes who are, you know, playing division one, like the highest of elite, that's kind of what I associated it with, but. Maybe

Joy: 5:36

convince me otherwise. Yeah, I think that's the headline, which is a big misconception, a big myth that I'd like to bust so that most more people get in the world. So it's open for all student athletes even down to the high school. And I would say even lower than a high school level high school is when it starts having, prohibitions around it. But it's open to all student athletes, regardless of your status, your Score, your ranking, what college you go to, D1, D2, D3, community college, right? It's wide open for student athletes.

Breanne Webinar: 6:10

That's so interesting. Okay, so knowing that, can you just give me an example of what an NIL deal would look like for an athlete? Like take me through like a typical high school athlete, like the ones I have in on my team or in the elite mental game program, you know, like just

Joy: 6:25

give me an example. So I'll give you a couple of examples, actually. So for a student athlete, an NIA deal can be a partnership with a local bakery shop. That local bakery shop wants to get the word out about their bakery, their restaurant, the deals that they have coming up, the specials that they're running, and they can partner with a student athlete to get the word out. Do some type of promotion to get the word out that promotion may be over social that promotion might be in person actually bringing people in that bakery on a certain day. So that's the idea of like a small local. Everyone has a bakery in their community somewhere that you can do. You can also do a deal with a brand that might be a clothing brand or a Food brand that happens to be mostly online that sells their products over the Internet. So that's another example of a brand deal that the everyday average student athlete can do. Okay.

Breanne Webinar: 7:21

And can they do this while they're still in high school or do they have to be in colleges that break any NCAA recruiting rules or anything?

Joy: 7:30

No, you can get started while you're in high school. Now, sometimes the way the NCAA decided to take the stand for the NIL, they decided to kind of defer a lot of the regulation to the state. And to the leagues at the school level, typically on average, and I say on average is very general. If there's a parent listening, you can always send me a message and I can tell you about your specific state. But in general, you're prohibited from endorsing things like alcohol or medications, firearms, things like that. So typically there's some prohibitions around those type of things. There's also some prohibitions around you can't Where your endorsement of your product if you're participating in a school activity. That's not every state with some states. Example, if you're representing Gatorade, you can't wear the Gatorade logo during practice, while you're practicing on the bill. So things like that. But other than that, in general, there's not restrictions to if you're in high school, then you can't have a brand deal participate in NIL. Okay.

Breanne Webinar: 8:27

And what's the, what's the overall benefit for athletes seeking out these deals or accepting these deals? Like why would they want to do this?

Joy: 8:36

Yeah, I think there are actually three benefits. Number one, the benefit I'll see is monetary gain. So the average NIL deal right now is, 1, 584. That's the average deal. so the way I look at that is if you do one deal a month, On average, that comes to about 19, 000. Don't quote me on the math, don't use the calculator. If you look at the average tuition, the average tuition is about 20, 000. So, it goes a long way in driving down the cost of college. That kind of leads me to the second, benefit is that doing NIL deals really early on, Actually helps you pay for college and graduate debt free, right? College is such a big thing that happens in a household with how are we going to pay for it? How are you going to be able to go to the college that you want to go to? You may not be recruited, but you may decide, hey, I want to go to this D1 school and the tuition is Right? Right.$40,000,$30,000,$20,000 if you can pay for it, and you can decide that you wanna be a walk-on and show yourself that, that's where you wanna go. So it eliminates that big, debt and that big stress that's associated with, now we have to get you to college, right? You can take care of that yourself. And then the third thing is it expands your brand in general. So, I always say recruiters and scouts and coaches are humans first, right? And so typically, popularity gets people's attention. And we've all seen the players who you're like, They're not as good as X, Y, and Z, but they get more playing time because they know somebody or they knew somebody the year before, and so they got more playing time. Recruiters, scouts, and coaches are humans first. And so popularity, being known, people being aware of who you are, helps drive the goal of getting you recruited, that's what you want to do, getting you, more exposure and not just in college, but also being able to. network with companies that you might want to get a career with later. So participating in NIL, not only helps your current athletic sport, but also helps your future. This is where my career might want to be after I finish playing my sport.

Breanne Webinar: 10:41

That's, such a great point and learning how to market yourself and what your own personal brand is, you know, you and I are both entrepreneurs and I didn't really understand any of that until. Pretty recently, you know, and I, recently spoke at a high school and to a, like a business class. And I was like their entrepreneurship unit basically. Cause they were like, we don't have any like lessons on this. Like, can you just come in and teach us about entrepreneurship? And I'm like, oh, it's like, I don't even know where to start, but your brand is so important to it. So I love that you, you bring that up. Yeah. Okay. And so I understand all of this now, I'm just thinking of like the athletes that I have. So, what's the benefit, I guess, to like seeking out a deal in their community, for the goal of helping to like close this gap so that they can, you know, attend college relatively debt free, hopefully, you know, in the direction of that, what's the difference or the benefit of doing that versus like getting another, job, maybe the branding is one of them, but is there a benefit to doing that versus like, I'm going to go get a job and work. To try and close

Joy: 11:51

that gap. Yeah. So I always say a student athlete is a special breed of a person, right? They're not like the general population. Typically, if they're really serious about their sports, they are at practice at least four days out of the week. At least and then they still have to squeeze in school So being able to do a brand is something that can be done on your own time a lot more flexibility and leeway to it Whereas if you have to go to a retail store, you have to work from you know, five to ten you're locked into that place and space but you have practice on wednesdays at 6 p. m So you can't work that day, right? So being able to monetize your brand, opens up a door of revenue that you wouldn't be able to have because you are an athlete, right? It also allows you to generate more income than you would at the normal after school job that you might hold. So yes, if you are like, hey, I want to work at this place. I'm not saying that don't have a job. And because you're only going to do if you want to do both, you're free to do both, but it opens up another avenue. I kind of liken it to pre YouTube era, right? For us, adult, you went somewhere and you work in a building. That's what we did. Right? And then YouTube era. And then there are people who are Still working, but they have the flexibility of working from their own home, making content that they love, putting it up on YouTube, right? It opens the door of opportunity and flexibility that you can earn right in another way. That's what NIL does. It opens the door of flexibility and opportunity that you can earn income a different way.

Breanne Webinar: 13:28

This is such a mindset shift. And I think for you know, a generation of, like you said, pre YouTube, where this is not normal. Like you put in the time and then you're compensated for the exact time that you worked. This is a much different model of mindset, but I mean, I think it's so valuable. You bring up a great point. Student athletes are a special breed and their schedules are intense. I don't know how, some of them are able to juggle a job. Most aren't. So yeah, this is great.

Joy: 13:54

One of the things that I like to point out, we're just talking about kind of at the high school level when you get to college, especially if you're playing at more competitive schools, right? The benefit of college when you actually boil it down and think about it. I know a lot of my educators, you know, tend to not like me to say, you know, cause it's for everybody. But when you boil it down, the benefit of college is networking, right? College initially was created to provide people with networking experiences, right? I can send my kid, they can meet other kids whose parents do X, Y, and Z. When you're a student athlete and you have to plan your schedule for training, You don't have the same networking opportunities, because you're on the road, you're going to the game, you're training. So NIL helps you kind of bridge the gap and make those networking opportunities because you have a chance to interact with businesses and brands that you otherwise wouldn't interact with, because you don't have as much time to with. Be in the clubs and do the internships that require you to be there all summer, right? You go to school actually early typically because you're training. So, it's an opportunity to provide you with the opportunity that you miss out on because you are a student athlete. Mm

Breanne Webinar: 14:58

hmm. That's such a great point. So good. Can you talk about why now is a really good time to jump into this? Like what's your forecast of what might happen with NIL? You know, is it kind of open territory right now or what's going on

Joy: 15:10

with it? Yeah, so I'm not a genie because if I was, I'd be, you know, much more wealthy and doing something like the lottery. But what I will say is, NIL is only two years old. NIL took about 12 years to be. Forced to get here. So for something that took about 12 years to get here, having to basically the NCAA got sued and that's actually what happened. So that's documented. You can look it up. Then it means it's important, right? It means it's important anytime someone doesn't want to relinquish power because they are benefiting from that power. And it's two years old and they're already, bills that are being put for this upcoming election to change how NIL happens. There's already a state. That wanted to put NIL back in the hands of the colleges directly. And so anytime you have something that's so powerful that is beneficial financially to people, then there are people who want that benefit to either stay with themselves or they want it to be a shift in power. And so my goal is to get as many people through the door of NIL as possible while it is As open as it is. So NIL does have restrictions. Again, you can't have pay for places. Somebody can't pay you for, you know, scoring goals or shooting baskets or ranks. They can't pay you directly for that. Even though there are a lot of headlines about what students are getting paid for, but. If they're working with brands, brands are businesses, right? So brands typically aren't giving away free money. But while it is in this stage, it is important for people to become aware about it and take advantage of it. Because like with anything, like beachfront property, the more people find out about it, the more the market becomes saturated and people start figuring out, okay, how can it benefit me instead of benefit who it was intended for, which is the student athletes.

Breanne Webinar: 16:52

Okay. Yeah. I think you laid that out really well. And so how would students and, parents get started in this whole process?

Joy: 17:01

Yeah. So I have a step by step guide out called how to get paid before going pro. You can get it off Amazon and it really outlines each and every step. But what I like to tell people just in general is you have to start by building brand. You have to start. By making people aware of who you are and what you do. And the easiest way to do that is through social. Now, I know because your audience is a lot of parents, there have been parents that I've heard, Oh, I'm so concerned about my young person being on social media and putting themselves out there. And there are a lot of, you know, crazy things happening on social. And to that, I say, well, if you've given them a phone and they're on social now, they're already on. social media. And so as the parent, what you can do is open up a dialogue with your young person about, hey, putting their personal information, their addresses, their location, what they're talking about, putting that information. If they're a student athlete, they've already been drilled about, hey, make sure that you're presentable on social issues. You're having to be crazy in the background. Right, but brand works a little bit differently, right? Brand needs some personality with it. It needs you to be personal. I like to say, this is not the media trained version of your athlete that you want to put out there. This is who they really are. And it started with building a brand that is really authentic. Right? And I have a whole formula, but once you figure out what's there. Brand is then figuring out what's the best content method for them. Again, it has to be something that's for them that they will genuinely do that they're interested in and then figuring out what content lanes and cars, meaning what type of information they want to put out, whether it's more artistic or more news driven or more gadgetry. That's where you start as a parent, as an athlete, is that building that brand first.

Breanne Webinar: 18:46

Mm hmm. Okay. Yeah, that's great. And so I'll link your step by step guide. That sounds like a perfect place to start where you just lay it all out. Is that an ebook or is that a paper book that

Joy: 18:55

they? It's both. It's both. So, if you're a phone reader, you can have it sent right to your phone, or if you like to have something in your hand and you can get the paper back and it's an easy guide to get through and outline step by step exactly what you should do based on where you are.

Breanne Webinar: 19:10

Okay, great. Now, I do have a couple more questions, but because we're on the book, there's something really cool with me about those that choose to jump in and grab that book. Can you share that with us?

Joy: 19:21

Yeah. So, as a bonus of the book launch, there is a 1, 000 note essay scholarship that's out right now. It's the, how to get paid for one pro scholarship. You can actually go to my Instagram, which is. The joy Harris put the link in the bio, and it's a really quick application. I want to help as many as possible. So this round gives one, 1000 scholarship to a student athlete to use at any institution that they want. So something that people don't always know is that people hear the word for a ride and doesn't always cover all of the costs of tuition. So sometimes it covers tuition, but not room, board, not book. So this gossip, you can use it for any aspect of your college education.

Breanne Webinar: 20:01

That's so awesome. Cool. Okay. Well, that's a good segue actually to the question that I had. And that was about scholarships. And first of all, I loved when we were chatting offline about this mindset shift that I think is necessary for student athletes and students in general, right? When we're considering, college as the next step and this whole, Oh, I'm not being recruited or I'm not going to get the full ride and you know, kind of this like, That's I'm going to sit back and wait and no one's noticing me. What's a different mindset that these student athletes can have around this? And how is that connected to scholarships?

Joy: 20:36

Yeah, I think of NIL and scholarships as a way to put the power back in your hand. So especially NIL, NIL is something that you can drive. You can reach out to brands. You can build your own brand. You can start developing your community and making those partnerships that lead to monetization. income, revenue, money that you can pay for college with, right? Same thing with scholarships. Scholarships still have a little bit of that. You have to be selected with them, but you can be aggressive and apply for scholarships. That way, no matter what school you want to go to, you can go. If you decide, hey, I want to go to this B1 school. University and play this particular sport, then you can pay for the tuition and go and choose to be a walk on if you want to, and they're all walk on who make the roster right end up doing really well. And so you don't have to wait to be selected, you don't have to wait for somebody to give you permission to be great, you don't have to wait for somebody to know that you're amazing and wonderful you have skills, you can actually take your own course of action in your own hands and say, you know what, this is where I want to go. These are the tools that I'm going to use to get there. And then I'm going to show and prove that I can navigate my own life how I want to.

Breanne Webinar: 21:46

I love that. It's so important. I just see it so often where it's like, yeah, no one's talking to me and like, go out and talk to them and you know, decide where you want. And as far as the scholarships, do you have, I don't know any tips around where athletes and parents can find scholarships that might not be super obvious.

Joy: 22:04

Yeah. my general tip without knowing the individual is if you go to Google, And then search for scholarships, and then put in your state, so put quotation marks around it. And then that will give you a list of scholarships that are in your specific state. So that's an easy, low hanging fruit hack to get a list that at least is specific to your state so you know your site. What's the first part of eligibility covered? Hey, I live in this state, the scholarship is for people who live in this state. So that's an easy one that everybody can do. Cool.

Breanne Webinar: 22:35

Okay. Yeah, I think that's, that's awesome. I know the school that I used to teach at too in the career center, they would also have like some specific scholarships like that too as a resource, but I dunno, I was even just perusing your Instagram before we got on and you were like, here's one from like pizza hut or something like that. It seems like there's just so many random things out there, that could actually be super beneficial to

Joy: 22:58

our athletes. Yeah, and I think people don't always know that you can look outside of your small community, your school, your network of people that you know, for the opportunity that you want to make happen, right? The world is super huge and if you are social, you know that, but sometimes we don't connect the dots. When it comes to Atlanta student athletes, you're like, this is a local thing. You have to only talk to these coaches and these people and these athletes. But there's a way for you to actually gain access to information that's beneficial to you that may not be in the community that you live in. Mm hmm.

Breanne Webinar: 23:29

Yeah. Very cool. Okay. Well, this has been super informative joy, thank you for sharing your knowledge. Is there anything though that maybe I didn't think to ask or anything that you think would be really beneficial for our audience to hear in this

Joy: 23:42

space? Yeah, I think to not be afraid of NIL, to not be afraid to put your student athlete out there or let them put their damaged cells out there. I think, I often run across parents who go, well, my coach hasn't said anything about this. And what I like to say is coaches are in the business to know how to get you to play better. That's what they study. That's what they pay attention to. And though they try to be great resources, NIL is business and entrepreneurship. And so you wouldn't necessarily go to your dentist. For your ankle injury, right? Same thing applies in this new space. You want to make sure that you're getting information from people who are aware about what's going on in the space and not necessarily sit back and wait for your coach to present the information. So, reach out, ask questions, get the information you need, but please get in the space while the opportunity is available.

Breanne Webinar: 24:40

Yeah, that's great. Awesome. Well, Joy, thank you again. We will make sure to link out to your step by step guide to help parents and athletes get started in all of this. You mentioned you're at thejoyharris on Instagram. Any other places that we should look to follow you or are those

Joy: 24:55

main places? Yeah, you can find me on TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, all those, thejoyharris. I'm happy to answer any questions. Don't be a stranger. I do answer DM. Some people are shy introverts, even though they're great athletes. They don't want to always put their face out there. So shoot me a DM. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Breanne Webinar: 25:14

Awesome. Well, thank you again, Joy.