Building a Legacy Through Philanthropy | A Conversation with Hannibal Navies

Um, it's a lot of different reasons I think it's important to think about.

But if you think about athletes in general and why it's important to them, um, why it's important to, you know, the overall picture, I think it's just because they're leaders, right? They, they, they're leaders in the community, leaders in the locker room, however you want to take it, right? They've been...

To be a professional athlete, you've been a, seen as as a leader for a very long time.

Absolutely.

Whether, whether you consider yourself a leader or not, being a professional athlete, people look up to you.

Uh, so you've been, you've been in a leadership position for a very long time, whether they know it or not.

And so I think it's important for leaders to step up, right? It's not an obligation.

I know some athletes are like, "I'm not obligated to be a role model," or this and that and the other, but you are, whether you want to or not, right? And so for me, it was just an opportunity to, to show how they could take it to the next level.

Um, and it was also an opportunity to me because, you know, I truly believe this, that philanthropy is a business and, and they're not...

You know, if you really...

A lot of athletes want to get into the business world, want to get into business, and what better way to get into business when the brand is sort of revolving around how you give back, your brand and how you give back, right? And building it around cause and building it.

So I am super intrigued and s- I was super interested, and still am obviously, and continue to teach this, but the, the fact that we give people the opportunity to run businesses around giving, around impact is, is really what this is, social entrepreneurship.

I use that word all the time, as you know.

Um, it's in our mission statement at Athletes Charitable-

Mm-hmm

... because it takes it out of nonprofit.

Yeah.

Which is, I kind of call it a bad word because people really think it's, like, no money involved.

I don't know why, right? So when you talk about social entrepreneurship, it kind of brings it f- to forward as this is your business.

This is your-

Yeah

...

this is your business.

You're still an entrepreneur.

You still gotta go out there and get it just like any other business.