Show #75 – Former NFL Player Marques Ogden Joins To Talk Life After Football & The Success Cycle

On today’s show, former NFL player Marques Ogden joins Ryan to talk about his life after football. He talks about some of his struggles and what he used to transition that into being a successful entrepreneur. His new book, The Success Cycle, is making waves in the business books section and is a must read.

 

Show notes from Marques Ogden Interview

Ryan Knuppel: Today we talk with former NFL player Marques Ogden about his life after football plus a look at his new book, The Success Cycle.

Ryan Knuppel: Everywhere you turn, it’s the same old sports talk, the same headlines, the same news, and the same boring information. This podcast is here to change all of that. We bring you hot sports takes, winning sports betting strategy and picks, reliable gaming industry news, and breaking interviews with some of the biggest names in sports business. My name is Ryan Knuppel welcome to the Knup Sports Show.

Ryan Knuppel: Hey, what’s going on everybody? It’s Ryan Knuppel back at you again with the Knup Sports Show. Hey, really appreciate you guys tuning in each and every time to the show. Man, on today’s episode, we talk to former NFL player Marques Ogden, played in the league for six years. Once he left the league, struggled with life a little bit, had some issues in the real world, has now bounced back, taken three pillars and really transformed his life into a successful entrepreneur, a successful speaker, successful business owner, and really is doing great things, has a new book in Barnes and Noble. We’ll get more into that in the show. I just wanted to prep you for that and make sure you tune in and listen to those whole show as we talk to Marques Ogden.

Ryan Knuppel: But before we do that, I wanted to do just a quick little, thank you. I’ve been getting a lot of feedback lately about this show from people listening, audience members, LinkedIn people, just people that I talk to every day that they really enjoy what we’re doing here at Knup Sports. And I wanted to say thank you. Just thank you for tuning in, thank you for your ratings, thank you for subscribing on iTunes. The show is growing, things are going well.

Ryan Knuppel: People ask me all the time, “Man, you must stay awake all the time. How do you have all the time for this?” We do our content business, we’re doing domains, I’m hosting shows, I’m doing interviews. I don’t know, I just love it. It’s my thing. I’m entrepreneurial at heart. When you love something, when you’re really passionate about something, it makes it not feel like work. So I wake up every day just excited to be part of this industry. And really, it’s all of you guys, it’s all of you listeners. It’s everybody in this space that I get to talk to each and every day, I get to learn from, I get to understand your struggles, understand your successes, and kind of do my small part in this iGaming industry that is about to boom, is booming right now. It’s just really exciting to me and I’m having a blast doing it.

Ryan Knuppel: So I wanted to thank everybody here that listens and tunes in to all my shows. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I encourage you to keep interacting with us. We’re going to start going live with some of our videos. That’ll be fun. So I encourage you to maybe interact with that, give us some engagement, give us some comments, give us some questions, hook us up a little bit. Sometimes this gets exhausting hosting these shows. So any kind of feedback is great feedback in my world. So thank you. If you do want to be on the show or if you know somebody from your company or somebody that should be on our show, please just reach out. We love scheduling guests in the iGaming space or even in the sports business space. Like today, our guest is not iGaming related, not sports betting related, but has a sports background, has a lot of entrepreneurial stories for us. And I think that’s something we miss a little bit and that’s something that I’m really passionate about myself is just the entrepreneurial side and how you really stay successful with that. So without further ado, let’s jump into this interview with Marques Ogden.

Ryan Knuppel: All right, welcome back to another episode of the Knup Sports Show. My name is Ryan Knuppel. I’m here with you each and every time we join this show. Today I’m joined by a very special guest. Marques Ogden is with me. Marques, you with me?

Marques Ogden: What’s up, Ryan? How you doing, man?

Ryan Knuppel: Man, I’m doing well, man. I feel very privileged to get a little bit of time from you, Marques. For those of you that don’t know, Marques is a former NFL player, had a great career in the NFL, has now transitioned that into the entrepreneurial world where he’s a speaker, does some book writing, and recently has a book that he has released. I’ll let him talk a little more about that. But Marques, I’m really, I guess, inspired by what you’ve done both on the field and then from there taking that into kind of the business world. And give us a little background about yourself and what you’re up to these days.

Marques Ogden: Yeah, thanks a lot, Ryan. My name is Marques Ogden. I’m from Washington DC. I currently live in Raleigh, North Carolina. Married, two children. I played in the National Football League for almost six years, got out of football, had a really tough time transitioning, left the NFL, struggled for about six months. Depression, alcoholism, painkillers, what am I going to do next? Then I found a construction business in 2008, grew it to one of the … I’m sorry, the largest African American subcontracting business in the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland. It was minority owned and I ended up literally growing a business that was eight figures a year per year. But unfortunately, Ryan, as the company grew, so did my ability to not listen. I also think I knew everything. You couldn’t tell me anything, and inclusion was a thing of the past in my mind. And when that culture city came to me, my employees picked up on it. And once they picked up on it, it was the beginning of the end.

Marques Ogden: I was taking on a big project for a big client who I worked for, I thought I could trust, did the project, spent about two to $3 million in less than 90 days, get the job site issue rectified, got it rectified, and then they denied my change order, Ryan. And in the, I guess that’d be like the spring, late winter, early spring of 2013, I filed a bankruptcy. So yeah, it was basically, it was like January of 2013 I saw the writing on the wall. By March of 2013, two months later, I knew it was over. And that April, that next month, we had moved to Raleigh, North Carolina and we left behind 177 creditors and about five and a half million dollars worth of debt that I had amassed from my business failure.

Ryan Knuppel: Wow. Wow. What a story. So that transition from NFL field to, I would call it, real life. I can’t imagine you’re the only one that’s kind of experienced a little hardship going from that transition. I mean, is that a common thing you see with other NFL players? Something that’s just a tough thing to kind of transition out of that world to another world? Is that something you see every day?

Marques Ogden: Every single day. That’s why they now have the NFL trust. Senior NFL, the senior NFL … Oh, I’m sorry, the NFL PL, Retired Players Organization. The NFL legends. They’ve got these things that are put in place to help current players when leaving the game. Like for example, I saw Connor Barwin just retired, played for the Eagles, great player. And there’s several other guys. What they do now is they take the guys as soon, as they retire, if the guys are willing, they go to Washington DC for wrap around sessions. It’s usually about two or three day sessions of different exercises, breakout groups, different activities to help the guys that are having open dialogue and discussion about what they’re going to be now facing as they leave the NFL and go into everyday society.

Ryan Knuppel: So tell me a little bit more about your path now. So let’s get into the book. So you started The Success Cycle. It’s been very successful. No play on words there. Really, I think, you can tell us more, but it’s really to help people succeed in areas that maybe you have already failed in, things that you have learned along the way. Tell us a little bit about the book. And props right away for the success you’ve had with it.

Marques Ogden: Thanks a lot, man, Ryan. And so The Success Cycle, which is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble online, and then it’s in every Barnes and Noble bookstore, we found out this past weekend, in the country.

Ryan Knuppel: Congrats.

Marques Ogden: Appreciate it, man. In the business section, top shelf, next to Dave Ramsey’s books. So someone must believe that the knowledge in this book is that good to put it next to one of the thought leaders in our society of money and business. And what happened is, man, when I got to Raleigh, I was working for Merrill Lynch for about two months, got fired. All my fault. Nobody’s fault but my own, wasn’t doing well on the practice tests. I ended up getting to a construction company the next day. Company truck, phone, line, everything. First weeks pay. Five days later, I’m fired. Five days later. And then I ended up transitioning from there to doing football training for the kids, my community, which was great. But the problem was as my kids would start going back to play football, the session stopped, the training stopped, the money got tight because people stop renewing for sessions. Well then it ends up, I took a job as a custodian making $8.25 an hour on the graveyard shift in 2013 in September in downtown Raleigh.

Marques Ogden: And I tell people all the time, I look at people as people, I don’t see your title, I don’t see how much money you have. Because end of the day, money can come and go. And [inaudible 00:09:15] time, when we pass off of this earth and you’re trying to go upstairs or downstairs, money means absolutely nothing. They don’t judge you at the door on how much money you have because what good is money to do? Nothing. So it’s all about how you treat people. Like what was your legacy? So as a custodian, Ryan, people treated me so bad. They were like, “Get out of the way. Clean this up. Throw this out. This, that, and the other.” Nobody had any idea about my past, about playing in the NFL, a business owner, nothing. And friends and most friends and everybody else was gone. Most family gone, friends. It was just like out there by yourself.

Marques Ogden: When I had my pivotal moment and I said, “I’ve got to get my life back together and take full accountability.” That’s when I did that and I came home that day, looked myself like Michael Jackson song, The Man in the Mirror. I have got to stop blaming everyone else for my failures. And that’s what I did. And I came home, write my goals out, be a speaker. I was just meeting with a young man today and I started with my strengths, Ryan. Football programs, middle schools, Boys and Girls clubs, start out small. And it took time. People think, “Oh Marques, how do you have such as a serious brand?” It didn’t come like, “Oh, hey man, give me a brand.” We just went … No, I didn’t snap my fingers. It took years and it took me finding the right people around me. And I have a power team now I wouldn’t trade for the world because we all work together. So when that happened, man, and I finally had that moment, I started speaking, got my first break for a [inaudible 00:10:47] company, about six months after I started. It wasn’t a paid job. Got my first paid job in September, I’m sorry, in April of 2016. I haven’t turned back. I haven’t looked back.

Marques Ogden: I’ve worked for AXA Advisors, Home Depot, NFL player engagement. I could go on. I’m actually in Boston right now. Across the street from me is Liberty Mutual who I speak for this afternoon. But really man, this book, The Success Cycle talks about three major things, Ryan. Ambition, drive, hard work. Ambition’s all about creating your goals, creating your roadmap for your life, doubling down on your strengths, delegating your weaknesses, getting around, creating a blueprint, right? That’s what ambition is all about. I was talking to the young man ago, he said, “Man, Marques.” Said, “I’m working hard, but I’m not going anywhere.” I said, “Well, yeah, you can work hard all day, but if you don’t have a roadmap of where you’re trying to go, hard work means nothing. Because all you’re doing is you’re being that hamster spinning the wheel. That’s all you’re doing.” So that’s ambition.

Marques Ogden: Then drive is being inspired to make a long systemic change versus just being motivated which comes from the word locomotive or motive to move on a short distance. You got to be inspired and you have to break out of your comfort zone into the breakthrough zone. And you have to create strong values and have your habits reflect those values to get where you want to go.

Marques Ogden: The last part is just good old fashioned hard work. Focus on yourself, not the competition. And if you do just that and then hit repeat, whatever you want to do, Ryan, podcasting, own a restaurant, be a developer, real estate, technology, it doesn’t matter. It’s this book can go across multiple platforms which exactly why I feel Barnes and Noble put it up in a position because it doesn’t matter who you are, what age you are, what gender you are, your sexual preference, none of that stuff matters in this book. It only matters about do you want to succeed? Yes or no? If the answer’s yes, pick it up, it can help. One of my good friends who owns a mortgage company, Ryan, said, “Anybody who’s in sales, entrepreneur, or a leader, needs to read the book.” And he has a multi-eight figure a year producing mortgage company, Ryan, in Cleveland.

Ryan Knuppel: Amazing, man. I mean, some of the stuff you’re saying here, I mean, it’s a formula. It really is. It’s a formula. It’s such good advice and it’s something that we don’t talk about a lot on this show. I mean, this show, we have a lot of, I would call, iGaming, sports betting professionals, a lot of entrepreneurial type people. So this advice is really probably is going to hit home with my audience pretty well. So I hope everybody listening is really taking note of what Marques is saying here and definitely urge everybody to go grab a copy of this book. Read it, digest it. If anybody, I mean, so like I just said, these people are sports betting type business owners. So they’re owning sports books or websites or different platforms in the sports betting, iGaming world. If they needed a little advice or a little help, do you do consulting? Do you reach out to people? How would they get ahold of you?

Marques Ogden: That’s a great question, Ryan. The answer is yes, I do executive coaching, which is phenomenal. I’ve been very fortunate to do some great things with some great people through executive coaching, consulting. And here’s the reason, right? This is what it is. The coaching comes from these three main facets. So why. The why I do it is to help people succeed where I have failed. That is the why behind my executive coaching. The how. We do it through one-on-one coaching calls every week, 40 minutes in length, that’s customized to help you with your individual goals and aspirations. It’s not a cookie cutter program. Every client I work with one-on-one is different, so the program is customized to their individual needs to get them from A to Z. That’s the how. And then the what can they expect? They can expect to get a great system and process to grow their business. But more importantly, Ryan, they can expect a two to three times ROI. Whatever you put in with me and our program, you’ll have the knowledge and you’ll also have the human capital and grow your inner circle to be able to get that ROI on your investments. So the why I’m doing this to help people succeed where I failed through the coaching.

Marques Ogden: How we do it is one on one coaching, 40 minutes a week, one call a week, 40 minutes in length on a customized plan. What can they expect? They can get the results, the inner circle, and the least … Always happy with the service and will refer me and they’ll want to come back for more.

Ryan Knuppel: Amazing. Amazing. Well that wasn’t part of this plan here. That was just something I wanted to bring out. So I’m going to put you on the spot here. I got a question for you. So being that we’re in the iGaming space, the sports betting space, what’s your take on, and you may not know a lot about this, but I’m curious as a professional, ex-professional athlete, and what’s your take on United States starting to now legalize sports betting? Do you think it’s going to fit in well with sports or do you think it’s really going to harm the sports industry?

Marques Ogden: At this point, honestly, I think the sports industry won’t really be affected as much because people are doing it anyway. So what’s the difference? And at least now our country will stop complaining about people making a bunch of money off of it, it’s not going to make money. So from a business perspective, great for the country and they don’t make money off of it. As far as sports goes, if you have an inkling what people are doing with gambling on your game, you have the wrong morals. You shouldn’t be playing anyway. So I don’t think the games will be affected, but at least now the US and the country can make some money off of it to hopefully help with other issues in our country, like sometimes when it comes to roads or it comes to poverty, whatever the case may be. So I’m hopeful that it’s very positive on both sides.

Ryan Knuppel: Yeah, I agree with you. It’s good to hear from somebody that’s been there and kind of has an inside game. Because a lot of people will say, “Oh, we legalize it and you’re going to have athletes cheating. You’re going to have athletes shaving points and things of that nature.” But they’re, most professional athletes, I would hope, are well beyond that. Right? I mean, I hope they’re well beyond that.

Marques Ogden: Man, the kind of money they make in a day, it’s not worth being caught over a few points and then you’re fired from that sport, from that team, you probably won’t get picked up again for that league, and you have a tarnished legacy. Any player that’s even thinking about that, and I don’t know any players that are making … I mean, there’s too much money, Ryan, today. Now back in the ’60s and ’70s when guys weren’t making the money, all right, maybe. But today, we talking about it [inaudible 00:17:55]. There’s no way guys are going to do that.

Ryan Knuppel: Absolutely. Do you miss playing?

Marques Ogden: Of course. Of course. You miss Sundays. You don’t miss practice, but you missed playing. Of course, of course.

Ryan Knuppel: Yeah, I bet. So you have some kids, they’re playing football now, is that correct?

Marques Ogden: No, nope. Two daughters. No sons.

Ryan Knuppel: Oh, daughters, okay. Well you said you coached. I was kind of trying to … I thought maybe you were coaching your sons.

Marques Ogden: No, I coach youth in my area. My brother has a son who’s playing football. He’s a sophomore playing high school football in Vegas, so that’s going to carry on our legacy right there.

Ryan Knuppel: Amazing. Amazing. Well, awesome. Well, I’m not going to keep you much longer. I know you’re a busy man, got a lot going on today. I do appreciate your time. Any last words for our audience? Anything you want to speak of that you haven’t already?

Marques Ogden: So what I’ll tell them is two things. One, they can find me on my website, which is www.marquesogden.com. You can also find me, you can find out about our coaching on there. You can email me at marques_ogden@yahoo.com. You can also go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and also Barnes and Noble stores and pick up our book. And the last thing I’ll tell you all the time is that in business, right? People that you said that are entrepreneurs in business, create value before you make your pitch. Make yourself a valuable asset to someone before you pitch them for their business.

Ryan Knuppel: Love that. Love that. 100% on board with that. Marques, I truly appreciate you. Everything, all the links that you put in there, we will have in our show notes so people don’t have to be scrambling to write it down. We’ll have links to your Amazon book. We’ll have links out to everything. Also, I’ll be running into Barnes and Noble today to try to find my copy of the book because I need to get it. Man, I appreciate you being here. Thank you again.

Marques Ogden: Absolutely, Ryan, thanks for having me, my friend.

Ryan Knuppel: All right, listeners, appreciate you guys tuning in. This is Marques Ogden. Until next time, everybody have a great day.

Ryan Knuppel: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Knup Sports Show. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing to our iTunes channel today. Plus visit us at knupsports.com for more pics, previews, strategy, and news. That’s knupsports.com.

 

 

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