NFL star Emmitt Smith talks player contracts, his businesses

Emmitt Smith is best known for his feats on the football field. But he's making a splash in the business world too, founding a commercial real estate development firm and construction management firm. In an interview with Yahoo Finance's Seana Smith, he explains how he took what he learned on the field and translated it for the business world.

Smith says he had to "immerse" himself in the real estate space, noting that it took time for him to develop a team and learn how to trust that team to help him execute his vision. Smith also spoke about the current state of the NFL, including whether players should have an ownership stake in pro football teams.

Emmitt Smith also has a wide range of brand deals. He recently partnered with Emergent BioSolutions to raise awareness for the company's opioid overdose treatment Narcan through its "Ready to Rescue" campaign.

Key video moments:

00:00:45 - Emmitt Smith on being a business owner

00:02:00 - Smith on housing market

00:06:28 - Smith on player contracts

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: We are here at the Chase Make Your Move Summit in Frisco, Texas, where we're putting a spotlight on small businesses. And when you take a look at the recent survey, the recent data out from chase, it shows that small business owners remain very optimistic, and nearly half are looking at how to grow their business, looking ahead to 2024.

So we want to talk to somebody who knows a thing or two about that, NFL Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith is here with us. And Emmitt, you had tremendous success obviously on the football, field but you have also parlayed that into the business world. When you talk about your various ventures that you've had, everything from real estate, to construction, to technology, how have you-- I guess, how would you characterize being a business owner today?

EMMITT SMITH: Well, I would just say that being a business owner is not an easy thing to do because it's not as glamorous as people may think because of the grunt work and the challenges of earning the right to do business with other folks when they already have an established network of people that they're working with. It's always a challenge.

But like anything else in life, you're just looking for an opportunity. And the opportunity is to actually get in and get some work and prove that you are worthy to not only work with the individual company, but you're earning the right to do business with them on a much larger scale, especially if you have the capacity to scale it up.

Scale is extremely important to any business. And so for a lot of big businesses, they don't want to give up some of that scale. And so as a young entrepreneur or a small minority business, our job is to try to get in where we fit in, earn the right to do more business with that company, and then just grow the relationship from there.

SEANA SMITH: And we were talking to a number of business leaders a number of small business owners here over the last 24 hours. Also my colleague Brian sozzi sat down with JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and talked to him just about the current economic environment right now. Some of the troubles, some of the challenges that are ahead. He talked a little bit about his outlook here for the housing market, some concerns that he has. I'm curious just how the broader landscape affects how you strategize various investment opportunities.

And I can understand what Jamie is coming from because housing market, even though there's a housing shortage, but you also got to be able to have-- we talked about affordable housing, but what is affordable housing? Affordable housing is only what someone is willing to pay for. A lot of people don't have the capital to pay for affordable housing. So we got to figure out what is really affordable housing. We got to really define it correctly because a large segment of the population is not living in affordable housing.

And so to try and create that gap and close that gap is some of the programs that FHA is trying to create small business. SBAs are trying to give lending capital to bridge the gap for families that meet certain criterias. And the criteria themselves can be very stringent on individuals. And so learning how to get through it, learning how to deal with it, and learning what to do and how to position yourself is extremely important when it comes down to affordable housing.

But overall, we're dealing with the challenges of commercial. Commercial properties with its office buildings and so forth now coming out of the pandemic, a lot of us like to work at home. And since the cloud has brought home into the play for a business, it's making working from home a little bit more convenient.

But at the same time, here's the most important thing that we need to remember while we are working at home. It's important to be around other people. It's important to collaborate. It's important to have someone to where you can have a conversation or a dialogue around a project not necessarily over zoom. Maybe lay it down on a board or on the table and talk through the program itself as well as the development, overall development. So there's times when we should come together. But then I also understand that there are times when we can we can do things apart.

Emmitt, talk to us a little bit about how you reinvented yourself, for lack of a better word there. When you talk about your success on the football field, how you've transitioned that to the business world? What were some of the keys of that success?

Well, the key for me in football was it all started with a vision. And then I was able to learn what was required to achieve that vision. I had to go through the process to become a professional athlete because a vision of being a professional athlete started at the age of six and seven. But at six and seven, you're never going to be a pro. So you've got to go through the process of learning the game itself and allowing people to bring out the best in you and teach you some of the things that you don't know about the game. Teach you some things about yourself that you don't know about yourself. And challenging you to become the very best, and meeting that challenge week in and week out.

Business is very similar. When you transition from a sport like professional football, or basketball, or anything like that, and you're walking into some other person's arena, obviously, they're looking at you. What do you know about my business? What do you know about business itself? You're coming from the football field. So I had to immerse myself into the real estate space. I had to immerse myself into the construction space. I had to learn different components of what they all meant and how these things kind of come together.

Hence, that's how I started to develop a construction company, a real estate company, a solar company to bring these things vertically integrated, so I can create a platform to where if you said, no, you only said no because you didn't want to do business with me. It's not because I couldn't do it. It's because you didn't want to give me the opportunity.

But learning these things took time. It took time for me to not only learn them but develop the team that had the skill set to execute against a game plan and had to develop the trust and other people, like I had to develop the trust on the football field with Troy and Michael and everything else.

So similarly, these things kind of work together. And I've taken some of the things that I've learned through sport, and the leadership that I've learned through sport, and the values that I gained through the process of becoming a professional athlete and applying them in the business world.

Emmitt, let's talk a little bit about football very quickly. A couple of key issues. The first one, I want to bring up though is player contracts right now because there's been a lot of debate about whether or not they should be guaranteed, whether or not it is unfair that the NFL does not guarantee player contracts. What do you think about that? Does the NFL need to reassess their stance?

No. I can understand why they don't want to guarantee contracts because we play a very brutal sport. Injuries can happen at any point in time to anybody. And it can be life-threatening injuries, as you saw with Damar Hamlin last year. It can be season-ending injuries, as we saw with Nick Chubb. I mean, it could be career-ending injuries. All these things play a major part in our in our sport. So to guarantee contracts could hurt the whole entire National Football League. However, but to ensure that players are again compensated fairly and for a duration, that's something that can be worked out in my opinion.

SEANA SMITH: And to that extent, I guess one of the other issues has been whether or not NFL players should get a stake in teams or be able to have a stake. When you take a look at Lionel Messi's contract, what that includes, is that something that you think could potentially be considered down the road?

EMMITT SMITH: It's possible, but I don't think that you can get a stake in a team while you're playing.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah.

EMMITT SMITH: I don't believe in that. I think that becomes conflict of interest. I think at the end of the day, to be able to get a stake in a team post career, that pathway and that avenue should be open. And especially for players that have advanced the game in such a way and have impacted the game in such a way to where their legacy will last a lot longer than anything that they've done on the football field because of what they've been able to accomplish. And to be a part of an organization in terms of ownership, I think they earn the right to get their.