Latest / The Layback Podcast / Briggs Rutter, The MAS Agency Director of Amateur Services (Ep. 108)

Transcript

Briggs Rutter, The MAS Agency Director of Amateur Services (Ep. 108) · The Layback Podcast

• 0:00
  What's up everyone, Welcome back to the Layback Podcast.
• 0:03
  Joining us today is MLB PA certified agent and member of
• 0:08
  the Moss family, Briggs Rudder. Now calling Briggs just an agent
• 0:12
  don't think shows enough respect to what he actually provides.
• 0:16
  He he currently serves in a very unique role with Moss.
• 0:20
  He is the director of their amateur department and he was
• 0:24
  quite the baseball player himself as a Blue Raider at
• 0:27
  Middle Tennessee State. So we're excited to talk to the
• 0:30
  Tennessee native today. And really with that Briggs that
• 0:35
  that's as much as I can do with the decent intro.
• 0:37
  So from there I'm going to kick it over you for the high level
• 0:39
  bio. Yeah.
• 0:41
  Oh man, it's it's a pleasure to be on here with you today.
• 0:43
  I'm really looking forward to the conversation.
• 0:45
  I appreciate the intro, man. It's, it's been really fun doing
• 0:49
  it, doing what I do and kind of getting the opportunity with the
• 0:51
  Moss Agency back last April. So I've been working as the
• 0:54
  director of amateur services here since last April.
• 0:56
  I finished up a four year baseball career before that at
• 0:59
  Middle Tennessee State University, like you said, where
• 1:01
  I was a catcher. So you know, you guys working
• 1:03
  with so many pitchers. That was my job, man, taking
• 1:06
  care of the staff, taking these guys to lunch, hanging out with
• 1:08
  them. Really built some great
• 1:10
  relationships with pitchers. Phenomenal experience in
• 1:12
  college. Wouldn't want to go anywhere
• 1:14
  else. Had a great experience under
• 1:15
  Coach Jim Tillman and Jerry Myers.
• 1:18
  Kind of set the table for me wanting to stay in baseball.
• 1:20
  And then Francis Marquez gives me a call and welcome me into
• 1:23
  the Moss family. And it's been, it's been awesome
• 1:26
  since then, man, Been a pleasure.
• 1:28
  So you have been in the business of relationship building for an
• 1:31
  extremely long time. And you?
• 1:33
  Served as a catcher. Anybody that says they're not in
• 1:35
  the business of relationship building, it's, it's not true,
• 1:38
  man. Everybody's in a relationship
• 1:40
  building business. This one specifically.
• 1:42
  Yeah, man, it's, it's just how I've been since I was young.
• 1:45
  Was taught to do that as a kid. My dad was a, was an
• 1:47
  entrepreneur, was a businessman growing up.
• 1:49
  So I watched him do it and got up, built me in that way.
• 1:52
  And it's been helpful in the baseball career on the field and
• 1:54
  as a communicator, as a catcher, you kind of got to be that
• 1:56
  general. And we kind of learned how to do
• 1:58
  that later. I wish I learned that a little
• 1:59
  bit earlier, but I learned how to do it late.
• 2:02
  But, you know, it really translated into into the
• 2:04
  business world. It goes for a lot of baseball
• 2:06
  players but translates into the career now.
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  Let's stick on the bio side for a minute before we really dive
• 2:12
  deep into the meat of our topic today.
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  For sure. You you talk about getting that
• 2:17
  call from Francis Marquez for Moss.
• 2:19
  What prep work went into that for you to even be recruited to
• 2:24
  go work for Francis? So I actually, I had known
• 2:28
  Francis for years, my trainer in high school, not my coach.
• 2:32
  He was my trainer here in, in Tennessee.
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  I'm from born and raised in Columbia, TN.
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  I used to train with the guy named Joe Rodriguez, who's
• 2:39
  actually an agent for us now with Moss as well.
• 2:42
  I'm training in Spring Hill, TN with him.
• 2:44
  So I had known him Francis for a long time, had had spoken to him
• 2:46
  a couple times, was a real, real awesome dude was was easy to
• 2:50
  communicate with and kind of taught me a little bit about
• 2:53
  what the professional side would look like, you know, going into
• 2:56
  a career. That's what I wanted to do when
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  I was 1617 years old, finished up baseball, went through my
• 3:02
  draft, didn't work out obviously.
• 3:04
  And then I was kind of fumbling around for what to do.
• 3:06
  I just knew I wanted to stay around sports, didn't
• 3:08
  necessarily want to do baseball. Is a little heartbroken for
• 3:11
  sure. From the draft.
• 3:11
  It was a little tough, but I kind of made a push.
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  I was like, OK, I want to do sports.
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  And I had an opportunity with the relationships I built in our
• 3:17
  athletic department here at Middle Tennessee.
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  And I started working as an intern for external affairs with
• 3:22
  our deputy athletic director, Lee Daily on the second in
• 3:25
  command up there. So I learned essentially how an
• 3:28
  athletic department runs. I did a lot of work as an intern
• 3:31
  too, wasn't necessarily just sitting around and and watching.
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  I actually got some hands on experience, Loved it.
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  I was falling in love with it. I was like, man, I want to be an
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  athletic director. That's that's what I want to do.
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  I want to stay in sports. I enjoyed the all-encompassing,
• 3:42
  you know, getting to work with different sports here and there.
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  I had a big role with the baseball team, especially in
• 3:47
  fundraising, just because I knew a lot of the alumni.
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  So I, I did a lot of fundraising for the baseball team.
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  When my internship finished up, I headed in to be a development
• 3:55
  assistant in the BR AA, which is a Blue Raider Athletic
• 3:58
  Association that is our fundraising department.
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  Then I began working with them until I graduated back in 25.
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  So it would have been May of 25, but I was actually on the way to
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  a bachelor trip for my best friend and I, I get a phone call
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  from Francis and I was like, OK, Francis, but I haven't talked to
• 4:12
  Francis in a while. And he essentially asked me what
• 4:14
  I've been doing and what I was up to, what my career goals
• 4:17
  were. And I was talking to him about
• 4:20
  wanting to be an AD, wanting to stay in college athletics.
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  And he said, do you want to come be a be a baseball agent?
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  Just kind of a shocking, really fun experience there if you ask
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  my parents. Actually, I used to tell him in
• 4:30
  high school baseball never worked out I wanted to be an
• 4:32
  agent. I had forgotten about it because
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  you get so much tunnel vision about wanting to be a pro ball
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  player. He said then, do you want to
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  also come run our amateur department so you can be an
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  agent and also be a director of a division here?
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  And I said. Let me think about it.
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  Let me get you an answer back. Think I called him back an hour
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  later after talking to my dad and I said, yeah, I'm in.
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  And when do I start? Where do I sign?
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  Just the relationship I built. I, I asked him, I said, what
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  kind of drew you to me? What, what was the, what was the
• 4:56
  pool for me? And he said, man, I just your
• 4:58
  personality, the, the ability that you have to communicate
• 5:00
  with people. I think you could be really good
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  in this industry. Forever grateful for that.
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  It's, it's kind of a tough industry to get into and it's,
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  it's not, not one that you necessarily apply for all the
• 5:09
  time. It's one that, you know,
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  somebody opens the door for you and you get an opportunity to
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  learn and develop as an, as an agent and as a in this industry
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  in general. And that happened for me, man.
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  I got, I got the door open. So got kind of blessed for that
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  kind of, you know, that got lucky, but you know, a little
• 5:24
  bit got lucky, man. It's it's kind of how it goes.
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  The luck never would have been there though if it wasn't for
• 5:29
  the work that you put in the relationships that you built.
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  Going back to the relationship building theme.
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  Absolutely. Also, we said it in the bio, the
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  MLBPA certified. So what does that mean to be a
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  Players Association certified agent?
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  So there's a test once a year in September and essentially you
• 5:49
  can get a temporary certification until then.
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  So I began working as a as a legal certified agent, almost
• 5:55
  like pre certified, I guess from April until September.
• 5:58
  And then you take that test, you pass it and then then you're
• 6:02
  certified. That certification process kind
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  of allows you to say, hey, MLBPA certified.
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  It kind of it kind of teaches you the rules and the
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  regulations about the business. Everybody does it.
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  That's a certified agent. So we're, we get recertified as
• 6:15
  an agency every year by the MLBPA.
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  So the agency has to be certified as well.
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  So that's that's stuff to look out for when you're looking for
• 6:22
  an agent, you know, is your guy certified?
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  Because anybody can represent anybody technically, but you
• 6:26
  want to have that certification by the MLBPA.
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  You take that test and and they recertify your agency each year
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  allows you to kind of have that I guess in your bio as well.
• 6:35
  It's it's a good thing to have on the on the resume.
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  And are any degrees specifically required to be an agent?
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  Not for baseball, you need a believe you need a college
• 6:44
  degree and that's what I've got just a bachelor's degree did not
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  need a master's. It's not like football where you
• 6:49
  have to have that master's degree.
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  And so I just got my bachelor's. I was actually in
• 6:53
  entrepreneurship. My, my official title was
• 6:57
  Business Innovation and entrepreneurship.
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  So kind of running your own business which essentially.
• 7:01
  Every day you're. You know, with your clientele
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  and with your client list and with all of our amateur players,
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  you know, you're, you're running your own business, you're
• 7:07
  building those relationships, you're, you're maintaining,
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  you're recruiting. I would say I use my degree
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  every single day in this industry and it's really, really
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  fun to kind of see that come to fruition.
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  I'm pretty jealous of that major.
• 7:19
  That track. I love the title of it.
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  They at least put good buzzwords in it.
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  We're now regretting that I didn't further pursue Middle
• 7:27
  Tennessee State. A couple.
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  Colleges, I know have it, but Middle Tennessee does a great
• 7:32
  job of the entrepreneurship program.
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  You build a lot of good connections.
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  You have to do the internship and my internship was with the
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  athletic department. There's really when I made the
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  switch. I started out as political
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  science. Actually, I was a international
• 7:43
  relations major for the first two years of college.
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  This is why I was in my fifth year of college.
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  And, and the, the political landscape these days, I, I just
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  couldn't do it. I couldn't do politics.
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  I, I, I thought I could. And I was like, man, you know,
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  no matter what side you're on, I was like, this is, this is
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  crazy. I got to do something.
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  And so I made the switch over. And it really when I, when I
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  found that specific major at middle kind of took a look at,
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  OK, there's no bounds on this, right?
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  There's no like this is going to teach me how to be a, a
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  businessman in general, how to understand business and not just
• 8:12
  understand it from an employee perspective to understand.
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  It's basically CEO training is what it does for you.
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  It's how do I start something, whether it's a small business
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  that turns. Into a massive corporation, like
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  all of the massive corporations started us.
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  And it kind of teaches you from top to bottom.
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  So you learn accounting, you learn marketing, you learn
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  relationships, you learn sales, you learn everything from top to
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  bottom. And it's a lot of, you know,
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  you've got to be disciplined enough to kind of be good at
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  everything. But that's what I wanted.
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  I didn't want to just. Major in accounting or major in
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  marketing? I wanted to.
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  Have a background and everything.
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  It sounds like you had a decent prep education wise, but I'm
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  sure there was still that shock factor when you started working
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  with MA. So what were those first ninety,
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  180 days like that that first half year?
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  I'm assuming it was a lot of flying by the seat of your pants
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  and just trying to figure things out.
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  Yeah, 100%. Luckily I had a a phenomenal
• 9:06
  mentor in Boss and Francis, man, he's been doing it for for 23
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  years now. He started out at 23 years old
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  and I'm 23 as well. So he he's been in my shoes
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  before. He did it by himself.
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  Back then SO kind of gave me a rundown on what.
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  It's supposed to look like, but yeah, you're right.
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  I came in in April and you got to think that's right before the
• 9:23
  summer circuit get started up. Francis, go.
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  You crash course real quick like, hey, this is what we're
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  doing this summer. Here's what I need you to do and
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  here's how you do it. That I think that's the most
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  important part. It's not hey, here's what I need
• 9:34
  you to do. It's hey, here's how to do it as
• 9:36
  well. It's not necessarily holding
• 9:37
  your hand, but it's a little bit of just showing you how it works
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  and then letting you kind of take it.
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  I think the, the thing I'm most thankful for Ed Moss and and
• 9:45
  with Francis is that he said this role is what what you make
• 9:47
  it, right? It's not, there's no balance on
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  this role. We just want to grow.
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  We want to be an agency that represents guys differently in
• 9:55
  the amateur level and he is kind of giving me the freedom and
• 9:58
  leeway to do that. So during that growth process,
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  it was a lot of experimenting. We had never had somebody that
• 10:02
  was directly over the amateur game.
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  It was Francis doing both the pro side in the amateur game.
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  So he wanted to kind of take a step back and kind of teach
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  somebody to do the same thing he does on the pro side, just on
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  the amateur side. And so, yeah, of course, none of
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  it's perfect. And I was not, you know, the man
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  from the jump. Obviously I didn't, I didn't
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  know everything that I was doing.
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  But I've developed kind of an ability to just listen and
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  learn. You're coachable as you were as
• 10:24
  a player. Just listen and learn.
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  Take what's being given to you. And then experience is probably
• 10:29
  the best thing that whatever happened to me.
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  Getting on the road, man, being at WWBA, talking to families,
• 10:34
  taking care of clients for recruiting new ones, scouting,
• 10:37
  learning how to scout. You know, we all played, right.
• 10:39
  But learning to evaluate talents a little different.
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  And I'm lucky to be around you former big leaguers in our
• 10:43
  agency that have been scouts. Our analytics director, Albert
• 10:47
  Dova, has worked analytics for the Diamondbacks, kind of
• 10:50
  teaching me to how to evaluate from the jump.
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  After that, I moved to South Florida and I lived in Miami for
• 10:55
  almost a year. That was kind of like training
• 10:57
  for me. It was kind of like you're down
• 10:59
  here around the big time stuff. South Florida, it's it's it's
• 11:03
  name proceeds itself in baseball.
• 11:04
  It's just a special place for talent.
• 11:07
  The big league game is very big down there.
• 11:09
  You know, Nashville don't have a big league team.
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  So down there in Miami has 5 minutes from Marlins Park.
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  Kind of getting to be around our big league agents, be around
• 11:16
  some spring training stuff, be around work the WBC.
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  You know, you kind of see what the industry is on the pro side
• 11:23
  and I think that helped me take some things into the amateur
• 11:26
  side. It's that's obviously very
• 11:27
  different. I'm and we'll definitely get
• 11:28
  into that today, but I think learning and training under the
• 11:31
  right guys and being under some really big names in this
• 11:33
  industry help me, help me learn early on what this is all about.
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  Before we further explore the amateur side of things, what
• 11:42
  maybe was a major learning moment or like slap in the face
• 11:46
  that you just didn't expect from this first step into the agency
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  world? I'm sure you've got one or two
• 11:53
  that really have stuck with you. Man, you to be honest, probably
• 11:57
  the the 17 hour days I I did there was one specific one.
• 12:01
  There was one specific one I I suggested an event to go to the
• 12:04
  Canadian Futures Games up in Toronto.
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  We we got a couple players from Canada and I was like, OK,
• 12:09
  let's. Let's try and target.
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  Canada a little bit. So I took a solo trip to Toronto
• 12:13
  for three days and I and I was at the Blue Jays stadium for 17
• 12:17
  hours, 3 days in a row, getting back to the Airbnb, trying to
• 12:21
  shower quick and get to bed, wake up, grab, you know, 3
• 12:24
  coffees. All right here.
• 12:25
  We're going to do it again at at 5:30 in the morning.
• 12:27
  So I think that was not a slap in the face, but it was like, if
• 12:30
  you want to be successful in this industry, but we all, we
• 12:32
  work from home at, at Moss. So this is the office right
• 12:36
  here. This is what I this is where I'm
• 12:37
  at most of the time. But if you really want to be
• 12:39
  successful and you want to do the right things, you got to get
• 12:42
  out, you got to get out, you got to shake hands, you got to meet
• 12:45
  people. The amount of hands I shook at
• 12:47
  that event, just trying to, hey, we're from the States, but we're
• 12:51
  up here. We love working with the
• 12:52
  Canadians and building relationships in Canada.
• 12:53
  It was a really big deal. I loved every aspect of it.
• 12:56
  But once you realize kind of what you have to do, like you
• 12:58
  got to get out of the house, you got to be at events, you got to
• 13:00
  go watch practices, you got it. You just got to be got to show
• 13:03
  your face if you want to, you want to build trust and
• 13:05
  relationships with people. So not a slap in the face, but
• 13:08
  that was my definitely like, welcome to the rest of your life
• 13:10
  moment like this is what it's going to be.
• 13:13
  So it sounds like for me, kind of an outsider in the agency
• 13:17
  world, a lot of what you do is kind of like the old school
• 13:20
  recruiting in a way. Like you actually do have to be
• 13:23
  in front of people's faces. It's not just mining through
• 13:26
  Twitter and trying to find video on synergy to determine if a guy
• 13:30
  is good or not. See and and that's a great
• 13:32
  point. I'm glad you brought it up
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  because I can kind of distinguish it now.
• 13:35
  There's a healthy mix of both, right?
• 13:37
  So the identification process, Prep Baseball Report does a
• 13:40
  phenomenal job of coverage, right?
• 13:42
  And we use the Prep Baseball Report website, Perfect game as
• 13:45
  well. Always has done a good job.
• 13:46
  Prep Baseball has really come up in the past. 5-10 years and done
• 13:49
  a phenomenal job as well so Twitter PBRPG using those to
• 13:54
  identify kids. The coverage for kids posting
• 13:57
  videos on Twitter is is more than it's ever been youth
• 14:00
  prospects does another good job too.
• 14:02
  So being able to just identify kids, but.
• 14:05
  The identification process only goes so far because then we have
• 14:08
  to reach out and we got a, we've got to build that relationship.
• 14:11
  And it's, and it's, it's difficult over the phone.
• 14:13
  And I, and I always mentioned I usually when you're talking,
• 14:15
  especially to how young we're recruiting nowadays, you're
• 14:18
  talking to parents a lot, right? And, and that your voice over
• 14:21
  the phone only means so much. You know, you can introduce
• 14:23
  yourself, you can build that relationship.
• 14:24
  But, and it may just be a personal thing, but I'd say that
• 14:27
  most people in the industry agree with it.
• 14:28
  I want to sit down with you, man.
• 14:30
  I want to take you to take you to dinner, take you to lunch and
• 14:32
  really get to know you. I think there's a healthy
• 14:34
  balance of, Hey, we'd love to represent your kid, but we also
• 14:38
  want to be a part of your family.
• 14:40
  And then that's one thing that we preach, man, Like you
• 14:42
  mentioned the Moss family, right?
• 14:44
  We want to become an extension of your family, an extension of,
• 14:47
  you know, your decision making process.
• 14:49
  Because at the end of the day, we're just giving you advice.
• 14:51
  We're not making decisions for you.
• 14:53
  We're giving you advice, trying to make sure that we are working
• 14:56
  in unison. Because if if there's two forces
• 14:58
  pull in different ways and nobody's on the same page, the
• 15:00
  the, the player is the one that that suffers from that.
• 15:03
  So we want to eliminate that. And when you're dealing with
• 15:05
  amateur players, they don't necessarily know how the
• 15:08
  business works. And I'm saying that from
• 15:09
  experience as an amateur player, We have no idea.
• 15:11
  I didn't know anything about agents or the draft, but it's
• 15:14
  our job to help clear that up so that they're only focusing on
• 15:18
  playing ball in the field. And if they're only focusing on
• 15:20
  playing ball in the field and they're we're doing the right
• 15:21
  thing, we're doing a good job. So yeah, the identification
• 15:24
  comes from, yeah, you would go to events, of course, events,
• 15:27
  you know, like the futures games, like WWBA, all those are
• 15:31
  phenomenal. So you go out and scout talent.
• 15:33
  But during the offseason, especially during this winter,
• 15:35
  you're online, you're looking, you're making calls and then
• 15:37
  kind of setting up times where you can go meet these people.
• 15:40
  I want to set a couple things straight.
• 15:43
  So you mentioned as young as we're recruiting guys now, what
• 15:46
  age are you starting to? Go after guys it is it is
• 15:50
  changed. No college went the opposite
• 15:51
  direction right with the with the new cut off to to juniors
• 15:55
  only or their their first day of junior year.
• 15:56
  But agencies man it it started with the the big.
• 16:00
  Firm started getting 20s and 20 nines and that's talking from
• 16:03
  right now, right? So is that 1415 year old kids,
• 16:06
  the industry's trending in that way.
• 16:09
  And I'll and I'll speak on, on a little thing that we do, a lot
• 16:13
  of what we do is development, right?
• 16:15
  So partnering with with you guys, right, that's a
• 16:17
  development tool. Partnering with mobility
• 16:20
  experts, strength trainers, yeah, we do so much work at the
• 16:22
  big league level that we we have the opportunity.
• 16:25
  To provide the best. Trainers in the world to our
• 16:27
  amateur players and and that's something as a player I'd find
• 16:30
  very special and I think our guys really really really really
• 16:32
  like that. So yeah, when you recruit them
• 16:34
  young, the the pitch isn't hey, we're we're looking to get you
• 16:37
  right now and put you on a list because the drafts coming up in
• 16:40
  five years or whatever it is, right?
• 16:42
  It's not about that. It's hey, you know, we want to
• 16:45
  represent you, but we also have a vision for you.
• 16:47
  We have a vision that I think you would share.
• 16:49
  And we can get that hands on development from an early age.
• 16:51
  We can get you with the right type of development from age 14
• 16:54
  or 15 and turn you into the player.
• 16:57
  You probably even more than the player you thought you could be
• 16:59
  just by getting you in front of the right people and using our
• 17:01
  connections and making them your connections.
• 17:03
  It's not pulling the the connection card, right, It's
• 17:06
  just saying, let's, let's get you connected with these right
• 17:08
  people as well. So I, I guess you're 1415 year
• 17:12
  old man and, and, and it's tough.
• 17:13
  You know, I remember being 1415. I I wasn't thinking about
• 17:15
  anything like that. So that caught those
• 17:17
  conversations are very hard. You, you text the parent, you,
• 17:20
  you build that relationship with a parent.
• 17:22
  You let them know that you're not somebody that's just wanting
• 17:23
  to, to get your kid for money. You're somebody that cares about
• 17:26
  your kids development and that's you, you want to kind of be a
• 17:29
  part of his journey as well. And, and most of us played
• 17:31
  right. So we all kind of help and
• 17:34
  development we can give, you know, I, I work with our
• 17:36
  catchers a lot, our amateur catchers and we make sure that
• 17:39
  they're getting the right feedback.
• 17:41
  Who we played in college, whether we played pro, we've
• 17:43
  been in the shoes. They, they're, they're wanting
• 17:45
  to go in. It's kind of nice to be able to
• 17:47
  give some feedback on like, hey, man, what, what's it going to be
• 17:49
  like my first date on campus? And I can tell them, right,
• 17:51
  because my first, my first week on campus was a whirlwind,
• 17:54
  right? It's my first, my first year was
• 17:55
  a whirlwind. And so kind of getting to, to
• 17:58
  explain to these kids from a young age and, and these, these
• 18:01
  guys are dudes, but other ball players are talented, talented
• 18:04
  players. And it's just trying to refine
• 18:05
  that and give them the expert expertise from the, from the
• 18:08
  high level and help them understand that at an earlier
• 18:11
  age. It can.
• 18:12
  It can only do good for for the development process.
• 18:15
  And what is the official definition of the amateur
• 18:18
  market? It would be college and high
• 18:21
  school and including there's some international involved
• 18:24
  there. We we do some work in Australia.
• 18:26
  We've got one of our agents, Andrew Ola has a, has a couple
• 18:28
  players from Australia that have come over to the and they're
• 18:30
  usually coming over high school. They're going to the to the
• 18:32
  college circuit, to Juco's or to or to high level power force.
• 18:36
  But yeah, it's high school and high school and college was the
• 18:40
  extent of my playing career. So it did.
• 18:42
  It did match as well. Well, let's, let's use this now
• 18:47
  that we've covered some of the background to explain maybe the
• 18:52
  ever evolving amateur side of the agency world.
• 18:56
  Because back when back when I played, I'm 32 years old, a
• 19:01
  couple guys had advisors. And even if they had advisors, a
• 19:05
  lot of us would be like, why? Like what's?
• 19:09
  The point exactly. You either get drafted or you
• 19:12
  don't. Absolutely.
• 19:13
  You have this fake agent working in the background for you.
• 19:16
  You just tell people you have an agent, or at least that's what
• 19:19
  it seemed like. Then it evolved a little bit and
• 19:22
  you, you might have a quote UN quote advisor that you had to be
• 19:27
  hush hush about who was an agent, but you couldn't really
• 19:30
  talk about it. You had to really keep it under
• 19:32
  wraps and make sure that nobody ever said the word agent or you
• 19:37
  were screwed. You were black.
• 19:40
  And now, as you said before we started recording today, there's
• 19:44
  14 year olds with what agency they are with posted in their
• 19:48
  bio on social media. They're they're screaming it
• 19:51
  from the rooftops. I want to know how we got from
• 19:55
  my world of like, dude, you don't seriously have an agent or
• 19:59
  an advisor back in college ball to now kids be like, Oh yeah,
• 20:03
  that's my guy. Like being part of the posse.
• 20:06
  Man, and I think I fall right in between there, right, because I
• 20:09
  was in the generation that was, you know, Hey, man, you can't
• 20:11
  call him your agent. You know, that's your advisor.
• 20:13
  Hey, stop, stop your butt. Like you said, blackballed from
• 20:15
  the game if you say agent. So a lot.
• 20:18
  I mean, if you've been if you've been watching college sports for
• 20:20
  the past three years or you're keeping up with the news of
• 20:22
  what's going on in the NIL circuit, I mean, it's almost
• 20:25
  hard to call college sports amateur anymore, right?
• 20:27
  You know, you've got football players making millions of
• 20:29
  dollars, baseball players making hundreds of thousands of
• 20:32
  dollars. Those rules loosened everything
• 20:34
  up, especially with the with the house house person settlement
• 20:37
  back in July or June. We followed that to ATI, printed
• 20:41
  off the entire the entire legal breakdown of it and had to read
• 20:46
  through it with with my boss and just make sure we weren't
• 20:48
  missing anything. Understand all the rules and all
• 20:50
  the things going into it I'm. Surprised that's not posted
• 20:53
  behind you that I needed to interrupt and say that like I I
• 20:55
  see your jersey, you might need to replace your jersey with
• 20:58
  that. With the house settlement, well,
• 21:02
  with, with the, I mean with the level of, of intricacy and, and
• 21:06
  there's definitely going to be some litigation coming back from
• 21:08
  it. There's going to be some
• 21:09
  changes. So a role in college isn't
• 21:12
  really defined yet. You've got some agencies and
• 21:14
  it's not, not a bad thing they're charging now a, a fee
• 21:17
  for service in the college game. We don't do that.
• 21:20
  We, we still work for free until the draft.
• 21:22
  Yeah. You got guys that are going
• 21:23
  about a different ways. If you're negotiating an IL
• 21:26
  contracts, which a lot of these agencies are, and then we
• 21:28
  obviously advise and help on that as well.
• 21:30
  Some of them chosen to charge. We're we're still waiting to see
• 21:33
  kind of what this does, what, what the actual final call is
• 21:37
  because you've got people trying to regulate an IL now and
• 21:39
  there's, there has started to be some litigation.
• 21:41
  So I mean, college sports in general is just in a whirlwind
• 21:45
  with the money floating around, the, the ability to be paid.
• 21:47
  And for high school kids, it's all something they're thinking
• 21:49
  about, right? It's it's something that we have
• 21:52
  to kind of get them ready for, get them prepared for, keep them
• 21:55
  their mind on it. Like, yes, it is important to to
• 21:57
  get paid what you're worth, but also you don't remember that the
• 22:01
  goal isn't just playing college baseball.
• 22:02
  The goals played and played in the major leagues and being a,
• 22:05
  being a tenured major leaguer. Like that's the goals.
• 22:08
  I think a lot of what our job is, is to help keep the kids
• 22:11
  focused on the on the original dream, right?
• 22:13
  It's it's amazing to play baseball in the SEC or the ACC
• 22:15
  Big 12, you know, any of these amazing schools and great
• 22:19
  programs. And sure, some of that, and I'm
• 22:20
  sure you can attest the best, you know, some of the best
• 22:22
  memories of our lives was those four years at school.
• 22:25
  But I would say that keeping their mind focused on, hey, man,
• 22:28
  yeah, let's go there, let's go perform, let's go have a great
• 22:31
  time, let's ball out and let's enjoy college.
• 22:34
  But we're not trying to stop playing and in college, we're
• 22:36
  trying to keep, keep going. That's the dream.
• 22:38
  That's that's why we, we, we get these kids, man.
• 22:41
  They, they, you need an agent if you're going to the draft now.
• 22:43
  I guess that's where I'll kind of pivot this conversation too.
• 22:46
  I think it all began especially, and maybe not all began, but it
• 22:50
  started to trend a little more that way in 2020 when COVID hit
• 22:53
  in the draft shortened to to five, well, five rounds that
• 22:56
  year, but now down to 20. I mean, that is a lot of picks
• 22:59
  off the board, man, and then the cuts in the minor leagues that
• 23:02
  have, you know, taken down rosters and the miners just a
• 23:06
  lot less players in professional baseball than there used to be.
• 23:08
  I wouldn't say that it was easier to get drafted back then,
• 23:10
  but there were more spots available, right?
• 23:12
  You know, if you performed well, you you might have formal to
• 23:16
  good school. You had a little bit of a
• 23:17
  resume. You might have gotten an
• 23:18
  opportunity, even a free agent opportunity.
• 23:20
  They were just jobs available. Now the minor leaguers get paid
• 23:23
  better, they get taken care of better, the MOBPA takes care of
• 23:26
  them. So there's less spots going
• 23:27
  around, there's less spots floating around.
• 23:29
  So to really play, and I don't want to call it political, but
• 23:32
  there is, there's analytical data now involved in the draft.
• 23:35
  It's not necessarily just about evaluating you as a player.
• 23:38
  It is about what is your data project to be.
• 23:40
  You know, you got guys in offices now that are just
• 23:44
  combing through college data and high school data and seeing all
• 23:48
  of the things that kind of translate to the major leagues
• 23:50
  in the way that they see it. And that's how they build
• 23:52
  projectability too. And obviously there's a there's
• 23:54
  a component, obviously the scouts still doing their job and
• 23:57
  and having their two cents about it, but it's a combination of
• 24:00
  both now and to be able to get that information in front of the
• 24:04
  right teams. We always say something and and
• 24:06
  you'll like this when this was a quote to me and Francis Hughes,
• 24:09
  we always say you can be the best baseball player in the
• 24:12
  world in the country, wherever you can be a stud.
• 24:14
  Phenomenal. But if you're not seen by the
• 24:17
  right people, it is an uphill battle at the draft, right?
• 24:20
  You can be such, such a good ball player, but those right
• 24:23
  eyes, the cross checkers have to see you.
• 24:25
  The right eyes have to see you. And that's where we come in,
• 24:28
  right? We, we have built those
• 24:29
  relationships. Francis always mentions we've
• 24:32
  known a lot of these guys since they got their first jobs in
• 24:34
  baseball. And so we just had those
• 24:36
  relationships. And then that relationship is
• 24:38
  built by doing good work and being reputable and, and not
• 24:41
  being, you know, sleazy or, or try to be shady, right?
• 24:46
  You just do good work, you do good quality work, You build
• 24:48
  those relationships. And so we can get that
• 24:50
  information in front of these guys so that we can get your
• 24:52
  data, We can get your video and then send it to the right guys
• 24:56
  and get those guys out to see you, get those guys out to
• 24:58
  evaluate you and keep pumping that data to them as you keep
• 25:01
  performing. And then also throwing in the
• 25:03
  development tool we're developing you on the side and
• 25:05
  also getting the right people out to see you.
• 25:07
  And that that's just a benefit to kids now, man, especially
• 25:10
  with that shortened draft. I would say that is the and, and
• 25:13
  if I've conveyed myself correctly there, I'd say that is
• 25:16
  the, the big reason why it's gotten so young now, right?
• 25:20
  It's trying you got you got to get on radars.
• 25:22
  You got to play politics a little bit.
• 25:23
  So I guess the international relations major kind of came in
• 25:25
  play a little bit, but you got to play a little bit of
• 25:29
  politics. You got to you got to have the
• 25:31
  right eyes in front of these guys.
• 25:32
  And to do that, it really needs to be from age 14 to 15.
• 25:35
  These, these guys need to know who you are from a young age
• 25:37
  because I mean, I can tell you from experience coming from
• 25:39
  Columbia, TN, it was before the Californian influx in Middle
• 25:43
  Tennessee. Middle Tennessee was a pretty
• 25:45
  good baseball area, but it wasn't what it is today.
• 25:47
  Middle Tennessee's really shot up as a, as a good area for, for
• 25:51
  baseball talent because of the, a lot of kids came from San
• 25:53
  Diego. We got a lot of Southern
• 25:54
  California kids now that came and kind of just up the
• 25:56
  competition level. But you know, we didn't, we
• 25:59
  didn't have eyes on us here. You know, I was pretty good ball
• 26:01
  player in college, had the opportunity to to go to get a
• 26:04
  couple couple offers and then end up going to Middle
• 26:06
  Tennessee. But you know, it would have been
• 26:08
  a lot of help to have, you know, the right people telling me,
• 26:10
  hey, this is how you kind of play the long game with this
• 26:13
  thing, right? You got to play the long game.
• 26:14
  And I think that's where we come in to help guys.
• 26:17
  It's so hard not to just Sprint down the nil path, so I am
• 26:22
  trying to. I am trying to hold.
• 26:24
  Myself back, right, right, a little bit.
• 26:26
  But I can't, I can't not do it. You did bring it up.
• 26:30
  I feel like you hinted at the floodgates over here and I just
• 26:34
  want to bust right through them. So we'll we'll begin to explore
• 26:38
  it. You mentioned that you are
• 26:40
  helping guys with NIL. What is that whole Reno look
• 26:45
  like? Treat us all like we know
• 26:47
  nothing, because quite frankly, none of us really know anything
• 26:50
  about NIL. We know the letters.
• 26:52
  We know name image likeness, but besides that, we don't know a
• 26:55
  whole heck of a lot as an industry.
• 26:57
  So please take this moment to to stand up on on your pedestal at
• 27:02
  the podium and just preach about what NIL is, what it's looked
• 27:06
  like for you guys and kind of how it's impacted the game.
• 27:11
  I got my, I got goosebumps. Now it's, it's, it's Showtime
• 27:14
  for the NIL show, right, man? So the, so the NIL circuit, man,
• 27:19
  I, I actually learned the most about it when I was working in
• 27:21
  the athletic department. It was really starting to take
• 27:24
  hold. We, we had a football coach,
• 27:26
  Derek Mason, former Vanderbilt head coach, assistant at Auburn
• 27:30
  and Oklahoma State as well. A big name in college football
• 27:33
  is the head coach in Middle Tennessee now.
• 27:34
  So I was working, you know, kind of around those guys.
• 27:37
  I saw what the work that was going on and I really learned
• 27:40
  what the NIL space looks like, which I think gave me an unknown
• 27:43
  prep for this job, right? You know, I understand it a
• 27:45
  little bit more than I probably would if I was just a baseball
• 27:48
  guy. There is a significant
• 27:50
  difference and I want to educate, you know, whoever's
• 27:52
  listening on it between revenue share and NIL, right?
• 27:54
  NIL is brand deals, brands reaching out to you wanting to
• 27:59
  sign a contract with you to, you know, wear their stuff at like
• 28:02
  for baseball, that could be Franklin batting gloves.
• 28:04
  They do a lot of work. Bruce Bolt would bat training
• 28:06
  gear in college. They don't swing wood, but you
• 28:08
  know they do it in high school sometimes the VA and everything.
• 28:11
  So the NIL can be all the way down to high school.
• 28:14
  You've gotten deals for a couple guys in high school with
• 28:17
  Franklin batting gloves and some All Star catcher's gear and
• 28:19
  stuff like that. So that is NIL, right?
• 28:21
  More so in the mid major circuit.
• 28:23
  There's less money floating around.
• 28:24
  You don't have to be shy to it. There's not the same money
• 28:26
  floating around at LSU that there is a Middle Tennessee
• 28:28
  state. So that could be a local bagel
• 28:31
  shop. You know, hey, we're going to
• 28:32
  give you free bagels. And I know this because it's a
• 28:35
  real thing here. They're going to give you free
• 28:37
  bagels and you get a free meal every week.
• 28:38
  There's a restaurant here in Murfreesboro that does that for
• 28:41
  a lot of the baseball guys, and that's an IO.
• 28:43
  There can be an exchange of a business or there can just be
• 28:48
  just paid money, right? Revenue share is the school
• 28:50
  actually paying you to play? So that is the pay to play.
• 28:55
  I hate using the term pay to play because it just, it has a
• 28:57
  negative connotation to it. But the school can actually pay
• 29:00
  you to play baseball, football, basketball, soccer or whatever
• 29:04
  it is at, at your, at your school revenue share.
• 29:08
  I, I believe the cap is, is 21.3 or 5 million.
• 29:12
  And don't do not write that in, in pen for me.
• 29:15
  There's a cap on revenue share and what you can do.
• 29:17
  And that's got to be divided out between all the sports, right?
• 29:21
  So the revenue share essentially these, these, this money can be
• 29:23
  collected through donations and that's mostly what it is or just
• 29:28
  the, the school generating revenue and, and sharing that
• 29:30
  out. You've also got, and this is
• 29:32
  where it gets a little shady and everything I'm saying it could
• 29:35
  change tomorrow, right? And it has changed since
• 29:37
  yesterday. It it was an IO collective,
• 29:40
  which I'm sure you've heard a lot of and I'll collective used
• 29:43
  to, you know, sign players on via contracts and clearing
• 29:46
  houses and, and they would pay these players to play kind of
• 29:50
  get guys on football rushes. And you really see it a lot in
• 29:52
  football. It's it's starting to trickle
• 29:53
  down into baseball a little bit, but not not the exact same
• 29:57
  money. It's just football makes a ton
• 29:59
  more than college baseball, which arguably I would, I would
• 30:02
  argue that college baseball is, is a blast to watch, one of some
• 30:06
  of my favorite baseball to ever watch and playing in it too.
• 30:08
  You know, you kind of have that pride for it.
• 30:10
  But the revenue share deal, that's what came around in June.
• 30:14
  So now schools can actually pay. And once again, don't quote me
• 30:17
  on the on the cap there. I would have to look that up,
• 30:18
  but it's somewhere in that neighborhood.
• 30:20
  That's where the scholarships went up for baseball.
• 30:22
  So it was at 11.75, which is not the not the case anymore.
• 30:26
  You've got way more scholarships in baseball.
• 30:28
  You can actually put dudes on full rides if you've got the
• 30:30
  funds to do it. So you got the programs that
• 30:33
  build those build out there, their donorship program.
• 30:35
  They have the money, you know they can do it.
• 30:37
  So in Conference USA, there's there's like sometimes a gap in
• 30:40
  money with, you know, Louisiana Tech is a is a huge baseball
• 30:43
  program, right? Have been for for years.
• 30:45
  They have AI don't know if you've ever been there, but
• 30:48
  we're down to rust in a phenomenal facility,
• 30:49
  unbelievable, like an SEC level facility.
• 30:52
  So they can probably afford to dish out all of their
• 30:56
  scholarships on full rides, right?
• 30:57
  Some of those, some of their schools can't.
• 30:59
  There's a little bit of a power imbalance.
• 31:00
  This is a rabbit hole for now until there's some regulation on
• 31:04
  it, until there's some sort of thing.
• 31:06
  And I saw where the president's trying to kind of get together
• 31:10
  an NIL committee or a college sports committee with Nick Saban
• 31:13
  on there too. So there's going to be some some
• 31:15
  people that are that are in charge of kind of figuring out
• 31:18
  where this is supposed to go. But for now, the floodgates are
• 31:20
  wide open and it is just all hitting at the same time.
• 31:24
  The only thing I can ask is I hope there is a college baseball
• 31:27
  video game coming back to Xbox. I missed that one from O7, NCA,
• 31:31
  College World Series action. But no, there's AI.
• 31:34
  Just wanted to make the point of there's a difference between NIL
• 31:36
  and revenue share and revenue shares.
• 31:38
  The school paying it and then NIL is some external sources can
• 31:41
  still be done through NIL collectives.
• 31:43
  They can help with that still. So that's kind of transition
• 31:46
  their role. They used to kind of fund the
• 31:48
  scholarships for each or they used to fund the payment for
• 31:50
  each each team. Now they kind of work at hand in
• 31:53
  hand with revenue share. Guys can get more money.
• 31:55
  So they can actually probably exceed that that cap on the
• 31:58
  revenue share by utilizing nil money as well and kind of giving
• 32:01
  guys the ability to come in and make more than just the cap.
• 32:04
  So it's that that's where it gets hairy.
• 32:06
  That's where guys are starting to raise red flags and then the
• 32:09
  power and balance, of course, you know, but you know, if you
• 32:11
  can, it's the conversation we have all the time about the, you
• 32:14
  know, the major leagues and and the Dodgers and, and teams like
• 32:17
  that, you know, they can pay more.
• 32:18
  And it's, it's an open debate. I'm not going to give any sort
• 32:21
  of opinion on it. It's an open debate.
• 32:23
  That's, that's for the for the fans to, to, to go back and
• 32:26
  forth about and you know, it's. It's, it's fun.
• 32:28
  It's, it's, it's the business of sports, man.
• 32:30
  And that's really what college sports has become.
• 32:33
  Let's re anchor here and kind of bring it back to what you
• 32:37
  provide or agent provide in general.
• 32:40
  And I mean, that was incredible information.
• 32:42
  It's. It's not like I'm just trying.
• 32:43
  To brush that. And leave it no that.
• 32:46
  That was amazing. I, I just have to remind myself
• 32:49
  that we are not an NIL podcast and we to serve player
• 32:53
  development and rehabilitation side of things as well.
• 32:56
  So now what I, what I want to bring this back to is the way
• 33:00
  that you serve your players directly, whether this is you
• 33:03
  specifically, whether it's Moss or just agents in general,
• 33:07
  especially on the amateur side. You mentioned now you're working
• 33:10
  with a lot of high school guys. What are you trying to do in
• 33:14
  your role as you're assisting these high school athletes
• 33:18
  looking for an opportunity in college?
• 33:20
  Because of of course, they I, I'm assuming the big names are
• 33:23
  still the big names. They want to wear the pretty
• 33:26
  colors and go win championships in the SEC or ACC or all the
• 33:29
  other amazing conferences. They just most of them seem to
• 33:32
  come from the SEC or ACC. Absolutely.
• 33:36
  How do you guys fit into kind of like that third party recruiting
• 33:42
  role or the support or school identification of where a fit
• 33:45
  might be? Well, it all starts with having
• 33:49
  relationships with the schools and then with the top programs
• 33:52
  and being known, like I said this, this industry sometimes
• 33:56
  has a negative connotation or I'm sure that, you know, you've
• 33:59
  heard it from your end too. I mean, there is a negative
• 34:01
  connotation sometimes if you do, you know, kind of shady work and
• 34:05
  then you are in it for just the money, it's it's going to build
• 34:08
  a negative connotation. And there have been instances
• 34:10
  where guys have been mistreated and that kind of echoes
• 34:13
  throughout. So people get a little
• 34:14
  uncomfortable about it. There's obviously the the
• 34:17
  situations where we are working for the player, we're not
• 34:20
  working for the team. So we are trying to do what is
• 34:23
  in the players best interest. So you have to have these
• 34:25
  conversations sometimes of hey man, is this really where you
• 34:28
  need to be right now? And then that's where it gets
• 34:30
  sticky, right? You got to suggest or advise a
• 34:33
  kid that hey man, we we probably need to go somewhere else just
• 34:35
  for looking at your career and, and where you need to be.
• 34:38
  And that's tough that that I can sometimes hurt relationships
• 34:41
  with, with coaches, coaching Staffs and people that you know,
• 34:44
  in the industry. Unfortunately, that's the
• 34:46
  business side of it, right? But maintaining that good
• 34:49
  relationship, college coaching Staffs are out there trying to
• 34:52
  trying to go to Omaha. That's their job, right?
• 34:54
  They're trying to build a team that can compete, win conference
• 34:56
  championships and, and be in a regional every single year and
• 34:59
  have that opportunity to keep playing and 100% respect every
• 35:02
  aspect of that. We, we are just working for the,
• 35:05
  for our player to achieve his baseball dreams and to be be
• 35:08
  able to be a big league ball player and, and sometimes, you
• 35:11
  know, we have to advise him in different directions.
• 35:13
  So I, I would say maintaining that relationship, How do people
• 35:16
  trust you, right? And, and Daryl, Daryl actually
• 35:20
  texted me yesterday and sent me a great quote.
• 35:22
  He said players trust you because you earn it every day.
• 35:25
  Just ran them out of nowhere. And I absolutely loved, loved
• 35:27
  that quote and he's right And I wanted to use it today if the
• 35:30
  opportunity arose and, and here is the opportunity.
• 35:32
  So players trust you if you earn it every day, right?
• 35:34
  It's not, you know, they trust you because you have this
• 35:37
  awesome agency, this awesome firm that does, you know, great
• 35:40
  work. So they just trust you because
• 35:42
  of that. No, you, they trust you because
• 35:43
  the work you put in with them every single day.
• 35:45
  And if you care about the kid, and I think if you come from a
• 35:49
  player's background, you have the ability to do that a little
• 35:51
  bit easier than than most people.
• 35:53
  So it really comes down to the work that we do for these guys
• 35:57
  going into college and in high school.
• 35:58
  Is that the development tool, getting them with guys like you,
• 36:01
  getting them with like the strength and conditioning and
• 36:03
  that the training that they otherwise would not have with
• 36:07
  with connections as a high school kid, right?
• 36:09
  We use our connections in the big leagues to help get that
• 36:11
  down to them. And then it's really just seeing
• 36:14
  what they what they want to be. We build them as a as a brand
• 36:17
  and as a as a kind of their own marketing, right?
• 36:20
  We kind of market them in their own way.
• 36:21
  So it's brand identification. Who are you?
• 36:24
  What do you like to do? What makes you you, What kind of
• 36:27
  ballplayer you? What kind of communicator are
• 36:28
  you off the field too? And then we kind of help them,
• 36:31
  even if they don't know what that is, we help them identify
• 36:34
  what that is. And I kind of give them cues to
• 36:36
  see, OK, I like this, I like this.
• 36:38
  And that doesn't just go to the nil space or to the brand
• 36:40
  marketing deal. It goes to, you know, where do
• 36:42
  you want to play ball at? Because each program is
• 36:43
  different, right programs. And now it's become a little bit
• 36:46
  more of a carousel with the wide open transfer portal, which is a
• 36:49
  whole another rather hole to go down, but finding where the
• 36:52
  player will fit the best and be able to be the best player that
• 36:55
  he can be. To be able to have somebody
• 36:57
  listen to you and trust you with that you have you do have to go
• 36:59
  out there and earn it. You do have to go out there and
• 37:03
  build that trust. And Briggs, Briggs does have my
• 37:05
  best interest at heart right here.
• 37:06
  He's not just thinking about, you know, his, his Commission or
• 37:10
  his his money. He's thinking about me as a ball
• 37:11
  player, right. And there's a business and and
• 37:14
  relationship balance. It's it still is my career.
• 37:16
  It still is my job. There's also some heart in there
• 37:19
  and, and, and if we got into, you know, the ending of my
• 37:22
  career and and kind of how my career ended, you kind of see
• 37:24
  why there's a heart, a heartfelt thing in there.
• 37:26
  And a lot of guys went through that.
• 37:28
  A lot of guys that are working in this, whether it was a career
• 37:31
  ending injury, whether it was just bad luck at the draft or
• 37:34
  just didn't work out, we've all kind of got our, you know, sob
• 37:38
  story for the lack of a better term.
• 37:40
  But you know, something that drives us to help these kids out
• 37:42
  and we want to see them go further than we ever did.
• 37:45
  And as long as you keep that and you assist them in the right
• 37:48
  way, getting them to the right fit, to the right school, if
• 37:50
  something's going wrong, helping them make a change, that's,
• 37:53
  that's mostly the service that we do.
• 37:56
  It's it on the amateur level. It's not necessarily as much on
• 37:59
  the big league levels like negotiating arbitration
• 38:01
  contracts or negotiating salary, all that.
• 38:04
  It is way more about getting to know this player on, on a very,
• 38:07
  very deep level, helping them get to their dreams.
• 38:10
  And, and what you'll see is a lot of those big league guys
• 38:12
  that we have, we've been doing that with them since they were
• 38:15
  in high school. And that's something that we,
• 38:17
  why we call it the Moss family man.
• 38:18
  We, we've had with these players since they were 15-16 years old,
• 38:23
  have built that trust and relationship.
• 38:25
  So at the bigger level, it's easy, right?
• 38:27
  They, they trust you, you trust them.
• 38:29
  It isn't perfect. We almost know what they're
• 38:31
  thinking before they think and they know what we're thinking
• 38:33
  before we think it, right? But that is built in the amateur
• 38:36
  game. The amateur game is the biz, the
• 38:38
  foundation for what your relationships going to look like
• 38:40
  going forward. And that's, that's kind of how
• 38:43
  you have to go about it's, it's much more of a not, not hand
• 38:46
  holding, but guiding them in the right, the right direction,
• 38:50
  seeing what direction they see themselves going in, and then
• 38:53
  just doing everything in our power to help them keep playing
• 38:55
  and keep achieving the dreams that they have.
• 38:58
  I'm glad you brought up the guiding piece right at the end
• 39:01
  because I was going to struggle to ask any question off of that.
• 39:05
  That was that was like the perfect mic drop.
• 39:07
  Response. There we go.
• 39:08
  Awesome. I didn't want to just end the
• 39:11
  podcast because you had this incredible speech.
• 39:14
  Like you said, the lights came on, you got your goosebumps and
• 39:17
  you had to get and that was a pretty good stretch right there.
• 39:21
  But the reason I'm so happy you brought up the guiding piece is
• 39:24
  you actually gave me fuel to go somewhere else and not just have
• 39:28
  some shitty segue to go love another.
• 39:30
  Like less important. Question, but you have mentioned
• 39:33
  now a couple times about our relationship between Moss and
• 39:37
  Flex Pro Grip and what you provide for your athletes.
• 39:39
  It's not like I'm trying to get you just just specifically talk
• 39:42
  about Flexpro Grip here, but talk about everything you guys
• 39:45
  do from a development perspective.
• 39:48
  And I know you aren't the only agency that focuses on
• 39:51
  development for their players, but that that is a super
• 39:55
  valuable tool. You you mentioned it from the
• 39:57
  connection standpoint and what you provide.
• 39:59
  I guess it's also worth noting you're not looking for finished
• 40:02
  products in high school. You're.
• 40:04
  You're also working for. Guys who can project or might
• 40:08
  just need this level of tinkering or this certain thing,
• 40:12
  how do you determine where to go in your development network for
• 40:18
  a specific athlete? Because you're not just going to
• 40:21
  dump every single athlete on the exact same facility in the same
• 40:25
  part of the country and just say, Yep, this is our
• 40:28
  development arm, go there because you can't cookie cut
• 40:33
  baseball. Development.
• 40:35
  I'm so glad you said that. I'm so glad you said that.
• 40:38
  Man, that is perfect because I think about this a lot.
• 40:42
  And I explained this to parents and to kids as well.
• 40:44
  One of the most important things I say to people is what you get
• 40:47
  out of working with MASA is, is whatever you want, right?
• 40:50
  It is. It is you driving communication,
• 40:52
  not saying that we're just sitting back waiting on you, but
• 40:55
  we need to figure out what you need, what you see as holes in
• 40:59
  your game, right? We can we can identify those
• 41:00
  holes in your game as much as we want, but you're the one like I
• 41:03
  always tell guys when I train them, I'm not getting in the box
• 41:06
  with you. I can tell you everything that
• 41:08
  you want, everything that you need to hear.
• 41:10
  But until you can put that into, you know, your own feel and what
• 41:13
  you're doing on the baseball field and it's not going to go
• 41:16
  anywhere. My biggest thing is somebody
• 41:18
  needs to communicate to me what you're feeling like, Hey, man, I
• 41:21
  want to get a little tick up and below.
• 41:23
  Let's get you set up with with the VLO program, right, then do
• 41:26
  it the healthy way. Let's do it the right way.
• 41:27
  Let's not just go Chuck plyos into a wall and hope we throw
• 41:31
  harder, right. You know, let's let's get you
• 41:32
  with the the top guys and like like a tread like a driveline
• 41:35
  and we've got relationships there, so we can send pictures
• 41:38
  there. We can have them spend summers
• 41:39
  there and there's other ones as well.
• 41:41
  For example, one of the worst, worst things to ever hear just
• 41:44
  for from our players. We said, hey, man, I tore my
• 41:45
  UCL. All right, I've got a solution
• 41:48
  for you, right. Let's let's get with flex pro
• 41:51
  grip and let's get you, we trust you guys.
• 41:53
  I've done so much, so much work with John at this point that you
• 41:57
  know, John, we, we do pitching programs as well.
• 42:00
  We actually have an in the house pitching director, Willie
• 42:03
  Cliazo. He was a pitching coach at FIU,
• 42:05
  was a big leaguer pitching the big leagues for the New York
• 42:07
  Mets and then was a pitching director for the Blue Jays in
• 42:10
  the minor leagues and then also pitching director at FIU.
• 42:13
  And now he's with us full time. Now we have an analytics
• 42:15
  department. So those are two in the house
• 42:17
  development services that we have for pitchers and then
• 42:19
  obviously for hitters on the analytics side.
• 42:22
  So it's cool. We can, we can write plans for
• 42:24
  you. Willie can do V low programs,
• 42:26
  Willie can do pitching programs for you throwing plans.
• 42:29
  But when I when we had a player that that had an elbow injury
• 42:33
  and I was working with John and John said, hey, we can do the
• 42:36
  the the rehabilitation throwing program, the ramp up all of
• 42:39
  that. And, and I trust you guys has
• 42:41
  worked so much. I said, yeah, take it away.
• 42:44
  He he sent it. He said he sent it to me.
• 42:46
  I took one brief look and I was like, go to work all you.
• 42:49
  And that's something that we can do too, because we can do that
• 42:52
  in house. But we have such a good
• 42:54
  relationship with you guys and so much trust in what you guys
• 42:56
  do that that was an easy, OK, hey, whatever Flex Pro tells you
• 43:00
  to do, do it. And that's, that's one example
• 43:03
  of like a development tool and not just for guys that are post
• 43:06
  injury. And you guys preach this all the
• 43:07
  time. It's for development purposes
• 43:09
  too. Can you increase spin rate,
• 43:10
  right. And you can utilizing the tool
• 43:13
  and all that. And that started at winter
• 43:14
  meetings when we met with you guys.
• 43:16
  So that's one of them. But it is all going to come down
• 43:19
  to the player in general, right? We work with pitchers, we work
• 43:23
  with catchers, we work with everybody, right?
• 43:25
  Every position. So every position doesn't need
• 43:27
  the same stuff. Catch catchers, we might
• 43:29
  recommend some more mobility. If they're an Uber mobile
• 43:31
  catcher, we we might recommend something else, right?
• 43:34
  There's some guys that are stiff in the hips, there's some guys
• 43:36
  that have bad ankle mobility. Then there's some guys that are
• 43:38
  just fluid athletes, right? So it really comes down to us
• 43:41
  evaluating them, suggesting something to them, and then then
• 43:45
  coming back and saying, OK, I like this, hey, I don't like
• 43:47
  this, hey, I think I need this. And then they start to learn how
• 43:50
  they work. And that's the beautiful part.
• 43:52
  These guys start understanding who they are as athletes, who
• 43:55
  they are as high level athletes. And then the work becomes easy.
• 43:58
  And I'm, and I, I alluded to it before, the big leaguers already
• 44:02
  know what we're going to do before we even do it right.
• 44:04
  We already know what they need before they even need it.
• 44:06
  That's where this starts, when the player starts to learn who
• 44:10
  he is as an athlete, we just help guide them into that.
• 44:12
  We just help you find out what that is.
• 44:15
  We can evaluate you from a perspective because we evaluate
• 44:17
  talent every single day and we work with some of the most high
• 44:20
  class big leaguers in the game. Us helping you do that in an age
• 44:23
  where that is not readily available to you so much is
• 44:26
  important. Now we can do that all we want
• 44:29
  and I can sit here and tell you that and everybody listening to
• 44:31
  be like, hey man, that sounds awesome and Moss is killing it.
• 44:33
  But if we don't, we don't actually put in the effort to do
• 44:36
  it, it's not going to happen. And that is why we are a mid
• 44:40
  sized firm. We don't represent 300 clients.
• 44:43
  We, we, we keep it in the mid size range.
• 44:45
  We have 91 big leaguers, 61 of those 91 pro guys, 61 of those
• 44:50
  guys are big leaguers. It's the best ratio of big
• 44:52
  leaguers professional in the game.
• 44:54
  But then we have our amateur client list getting us
• 44:57
  somewhere, you know, in the 1:30 to 140 range total.
• 45:01
  We keep it that way so that we can put better care into each
• 45:04
  guy. We don't go out like we could.
• 45:06
  And Francis always mentions we could go out and represent 300
• 45:09
  clients tomorrow, but we don't want to do that because the
• 45:11
  level of care and the level of communication is, is way easier
• 45:15
  for us to be who we are. And we market ourselves as the
• 45:18
  most family. This is a family.
• 45:19
  You are not, you know, a part of some client list.
• 45:22
  You are an actual person and a, and a player in this industry.
• 45:25
  And we can help develop you on a, on a much higher level and
• 45:27
  actually put in that work. So that's the, that's the me
• 45:30
  backing up what I'm saying. That's me saying, hey, I talk
• 45:33
  about it. Obviously everybody can sit
• 45:34
  there and talk about it. But here's how we actually put
• 45:36
  that into motion and actually help you figure out who you are
• 45:40
  and care enough to help you do that.
• 45:41
  That's the. That's the most important
• 45:43
  component of all this. Along the lines of this kind of
• 45:47
  learning process with the athlete, you're taking a horse
• 45:51
  to water and just hoping they drink right?
• 45:54
  You can't push them. To drink, absolutely encouraging
• 45:56
  them to drink. Right, encouraging them,
• 45:58
  creating the best environment possible that they actually want
• 46:02
  to drink this water. Now here, here's the real kicker
• 46:06
  of the question. How difficult is it to get stuck
• 46:10
  sitting shotgun like your driver's head teacher, just
• 46:13
  hoping your athlete makes the right decisions?
• 46:17
  That's a great. Question that's a that is a
• 46:19
  great question. I think it's and you're going to
• 46:22
  start hating me eventually it it all goes back to that
• 46:25
  relationship that you have with the kid and it may be first six
• 46:28
  months of working together, maybe not a whole lot of trust.
• 46:30
  It may be just a little bit of like just feeling each other
• 46:33
  out, right. And I encourage guys they're
• 46:36
  they're with advisors and and looking to get with agents and
• 46:39
  and don't, don't freak out if in the first two months
• 46:42
  everything's not all of a sudden you're a big league prospect,
• 46:44
  right? You have to build that
• 46:45
  relationship. Like you have to make the effort
• 46:47
  as well to get to know your guy and he has to he has to feel
• 46:51
  like your guy, whether that's the recruiter or whether it's
• 46:54
  the boss or whether it's, you know, your secondary agent.
• 46:58
  The the relationship has to be kind of a two way St.
• 47:01
  You got to trust what we're saying.
• 47:03
  If we advise in in certain ways and we continuously advise
• 47:07
  something, you know, we we we know what we're talking about.
• 47:09
  You know, we're not advising in a poor man, are we?
• 47:11
  We're making that decision based off of knowing you as a ball
• 47:14
  player and as a human kind of be coachable, I guess, right, If
• 47:18
  you have that relationship, this conversation, you know, doesn't
• 47:20
  happen. If you have that relationship
• 47:21
  and trust and and like I said, you got to earn it every day.
• 47:23
  You got to build that. You got to be in touch with you
• 47:25
  guys, you got to take care of them.
• 47:26
  You got you got to talk to him about what the future is going
• 47:29
  to look like and how excited you are for it as well.
• 47:31
  Because I mean, I can't wait till my high school guys get to
• 47:33
  college and I'm flying around to Texas Tech, Cincinnati,
• 47:36
  Kentucky, going to watch my guys ball out.
• 47:38
  That's going to be really fun. And so I talked to those guys
• 47:41
  about that. I'm like, hey man, you got to
• 47:42
  find our spot in Lexington. You got to find our spot in
• 47:44
  Cincinnati where we going to go eat every time like where are we
• 47:47
  going? And if there is no getting stuck
• 47:49
  in the shotgun, if that relationships good.
• 47:51
  And obviously sometimes it doesn't work out and sometimes
• 47:55
  you guys don't work well together.
• 47:56
  And at that point it's, it's OK, we don't sign anybody to a
• 47:59
  contract. They are, they are free to say,
• 48:00
  hey, man, it's just not working. This isn't, this isn't for us.
• 48:04
  And they'll, they'll change. And there's a lot of turnover in
• 48:06
  this industry. And we, we work our butt off to
• 48:08
  make sure that it doesn't. You get to that point at least
• 48:10
  where we didn't do anything to, to run you off or do something
• 48:13
  poor in manner or anything. But you guys, guys leave
• 48:17
  advisors, guys leave agents and come back and leave and go
• 48:20
  around. I mean, at some point you just
• 48:23
  got to make sure that what you're doing is right.
• 48:26
  Make sure that your process is good.
• 48:28
  And this is with anything, make sure that your process is good,
• 48:30
  that you're doing the right things.
• 48:31
  You're, you're ethically good. Your, your, your moral, you care
• 48:34
  about the guys and then hope that they feel that
• 48:37
  reciprocation. The worst feeling would be is if
• 48:41
  a guy left and I knew it was my fault that and I knew I
• 48:45
  actually, I screwed up and I did something that hurt him or
• 48:48
  pissed him off and that that would just hurt me as a player.
• 48:52
  So yeah, I mean, if you, if you maintain that relationship and,
• 48:55
  and you really, you really care about the guys, I I will always
• 48:58
  go back and I can answer probably any question with that.
• 49:01
  If you care enough about the player, this job is very, very
• 49:04
  easy. As far as a strain like stress
• 49:08
  and all that, you're still bouncing around the country and
• 49:11
  you know, but. I, I asked somebody the other
• 49:13
  day. I said I was.
• 49:14
  Sitting there watching a game in Biloxi, Ms., It was screaming
• 49:17
  hot out. You know, the storm was rolling
• 49:19
  and it was humid. I was out of Miami.
• 49:21
  I was down in southern Mississippi on the Bayou.
• 49:24
  And I was like sitting there. I was like, man, it's hot.
• 49:26
  And I was sitting here. But, but this is my office.
• 49:28
  I'm sitting here watching, watching a high school baseball
• 49:31
  game. I grew up doing this, man.
• 49:32
  I grew up at the ball field. If you remember that and you
• 49:34
  take that into every day of work in this thing, then there's
• 49:38
  there's no other job in the world I'd want to have, man, to
• 49:40
  be honest. There's no other job.
• 49:42
  I think we can use this time as we start to close out, to maybe
• 49:48
  go into some of the fun things that you get to dive into, which
• 49:52
  you don't think about as much as an agent.
• 49:55
  But you said part of the grit and grind is traveling all over
• 50:00
  the country and visiting us in different places and ending up
• 50:03
  at ballparks around the world. So I want to know some of your
• 50:07
  hidden gems from around the country either either great
• 50:12
  spots to to grab a burger, grab a sandwich, little little local
• 50:16
  gems that you've been able to identify.
• 50:18
  So. While I start in Toronto,
• 50:20
  because Toronto was probably the most exotic trip I got to take
• 50:23
  over the border. It was pretty cool.
• 50:25
  I really, really enjoyed Toronto.
• 50:27
  What a what a great city. We stayed, I stayed downtown so
• 50:30
  I was right there by Rogers Center and and down there by
• 50:32
  Scotiabank Arena. There was a place called the
• 50:35
  Loose Moose and it was the best. It was the only place open when
• 50:39
  I got out of the, I got out of the the game.
• 50:43
  I got out like one in the morning.
• 50:44
  They had some, something happened.
• 50:46
  I got 4 Canadian teams planned, so they're having to juggle it
• 50:49
  or five teams I believe. And I I got out of there like
• 50:51
  1:30 in the morning. I'm like, man, I just, I got to
• 50:53
  eat, man. I, I love ballpark food, but
• 50:56
  like to an extent, I want to sit down somewhere.
• 50:58
  I think there was there's some sporting about on the TVI wanted
• 51:00
  to watch Let me go down here to the Loose Moose and I got a
• 51:04
  great burger, some great fries, hung out and then I went and
• 51:06
  crashed at the apartment. But yeah, shout out to the Loose
• 51:09
  Moose in Toronto, Canada. Unbelievable, man.
• 51:12
  There was, I don't remember the name of it, but but we all took
• 51:14
  our clients. It was like a big, a big, big
• 51:17
  dinner in Jupiter, right outside of the Roger Dean complex, there
• 51:21
  was a great burger joint. If you can't tell, I'm a burger
• 51:24
  guy. I'm a go to.
• 51:25
  I mean, that's just what I'm going to do.
• 51:27
  I'm going to have a burger and some fries.
• 51:28
  Atlanta man got some great spots.
• 51:30
  Of course, the I guess the only one that's sticking out to me as
• 51:34
  a gem is that is the loose moves.
• 51:35
  Unbelievable, unbelievable experience.
• 51:37
  Unbelievable experience there. But yeah, more to come.
• 51:41
  There's there's more to come. Going to be traveling a lot more
• 51:44
  coming up this this summer getting around.
• 51:46
  I'll go back to Toronto. So there'll be some guys coming
• 51:49
  with me to Toronto. So we'll make we'll we'll make a
• 51:51
  stop at the loose moves and and show them.
• 51:52
  So hopefully they're listening to this and maybe get a free
• 51:55
  burger. I don't know future.
• 51:57
  Deals you. Got a few deals.
• 51:59
  Yourself as well. I know, I know.
• 52:01
  So yeah, I know. But but the travel, like I said,
• 52:04
  you know, getting to meet you guys at winter meetings, that
• 52:06
  was awesome. Winter meetings was special
• 52:08
  working the WBC, which was right down the street from me and you
• 52:11
  know, with Wandy Peralta and our and our guys on the Dominican
• 52:13
  and that was cool. You know, still I, I'm the
• 52:15
  amateur director, so I stay most in the amateur game, you know,
• 52:17
  standing, not going to fanboy too hard, but you know, Vladimir
• 52:20
  Guerrero, Junior Tatis and Machado stand about 5 feet from
• 52:23
  me. I'm still a 23 year old kid that
• 52:25
  gets a little excited about that.
• 52:26
  But it was, it's pretty cool to see all those guys being, being
• 52:29
  in the lobby, seeing the Dominican team, see the
• 52:32
  Venezuelan team who ended up to be champions last night.
• 52:35
  It was a really cool experience. That was my first WBC was really
• 52:39
  some of my first big league work I've done.
• 52:41
  Just kind of take it, seeing what a day in the life is of
• 52:43
  taking care of a big leaguer, especially in an event like that
• 52:47
  here, in the stadium here and how loud it was in Miami.
• 52:50
  Just a passion, the passion of of the of the Latin countries
• 52:53
  when they play is something that is special and kind of get an
• 52:57
  experience that from our side, we represent a lot of Latino
• 52:59
  players from Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama
• 53:02
  and all those countries, Puerto Rico.
• 53:04
  It's special to see just the different cultures combine and
• 53:07
  kind of come together for the love of baseball.
• 53:09
  For me to see how the WBC was really special and the amateur
• 53:11
  events got to get some guys in Omaha, man, get a trip out
• 53:14
  there, go see Omaha, see our guys play.
• 53:16
  But I just love watching these guys compete everyday.
• 53:19
  That's probably the favorite part of my job and calling them
• 53:21
  on the phone at night and it's awesome and talking about the
• 53:24
  day, talking about what they've been doing.
• 53:25
  But going going out there and seeing them do what we know they
• 53:28
  can do is probably the the thing that warms me up the most.
• 53:30
  So it's that's, that's what the travel is getting to go watch
• 53:33
  that and get to go see it in person.
• 53:36
  I got to ask a quick little 2 parter here because in trust me,
• 53:41
  neither of these two questions are related, but you got to stay
• 53:43
  on topic and then address the answer that you just gave. 1.
• 53:48
  How could you have not dropped some local spot in Miami?
• 53:51
  You've got some of the best food in the country in my Yeah,
• 53:55
  that's a second to that. Maybe loosely related is how
• 54:00
  good has your Spanish gotten? When I heard you say Panama and
• 54:03
  Venezuela, the way you start to accent these countries, like,
• 54:06
  oh, this dude's got flair now we're working in this world, I
• 54:10
  got to know how good your Spanish has gotten, and you have
• 54:13
  to give us some sort of Miami plug.
• 54:16
  So I wouldn't say fluent, but I speak Spanish.
• 54:20
  I actually spoke it since high school.
• 54:22
  And you can, you can even ask, you can reach back to people I
• 54:24
  knew from back then. It was always just weird, this
• 54:26
  kid from Columbia, TN speaking Spanish.
• 54:28
  I trained, I mentioned my trainer Joe Rodriguez in Spring
• 54:31
  Hill, TN, He's one of our agents now, was Puerto Rican, and he
• 54:34
  used to bring Panamanian players and players from Puerto Rico and
• 54:37
  all that to Spring Hill. And so my whole summers were
• 54:40
  spent training with only Puerto Rican and Panamanian kids.
• 54:43
  So I just learned Spanish. I'd listen, I was listening to
• 54:47
  Bad Bunny in the car, you know, just trying to learn Spanish.
• 54:50
  That's that's hard. But now Alpha, yeah, that's
• 54:53
  strictly alpha. I'm, I'm all of it.
• 54:55
  You know, it's just, but I, I learned Spanish.
• 54:58
  And I would say now I see why back then I was like, you know,
• 55:02
  why do I have the kind of itch to learn it?
• 55:04
  And now I see why, you know, I use it and, and work.
• 55:07
  And, you know, Francis is from Puerto Rico, my boss.
• 55:09
  A lot of our agents are from Puerto Rico.
• 55:11
  Last night I was on the phone with our Puerto Rican, our
• 55:14
  Puerto Rican regional guy. We speak in Spanish.
• 55:16
  So it's, it's cool. Once again, it helps you build
• 55:19
  relationships. You know, when you see just, you
• 55:22
  know, I have no flair to me. I'm, I'm just a white guy from
• 55:24
  middle of Tennessee. When they, when they, when guys
• 55:27
  see that, they see the effort put in to like kind of learn
• 55:29
  their language, especially players, you know, I enjoy that.
• 55:32
  It helps me build that connection really well, trying
• 55:35
  to trying to improve my Quebecois French because we got
• 55:37
  a couple of players from Quebec. So I have a player from Quebec
• 55:39
  and trying to work on that as well, hear from them a little
• 55:42
  bit. But on the second part of that,
• 55:44
  Miami was great for learning Spanish.
• 55:45
  Miami, you know, you go to Dunkin' Donuts, you need to
• 55:48
  order in Spanish. Pretty much in the area I lived
• 55:49
  in, I lived just outside of Coral Gables in West Miami.
• 55:52
  Easy. And, and you're right, I that is
• 55:54
  completely on me. The Rusty Pelican is my favorite
• 55:57
  restaurant in Miami and is right across the Biscayne Bay.
• 56:00
  If you are sitting there on the outdoor seating and looking
• 56:03
  over, you see the skyline of Miami over the Bay.
• 56:05
  It is pretty special. And and this is AI guess this is
• 56:09
  a close second, but it's a it's also in other cities.
• 56:11
  So I, I can't really shout it too much as Smith and Wilinski's
• 56:15
  best steak I've ever had in my life right there on the my the
• 56:17
  port of Miami. So you're sitting here having
• 56:19
  steak, unbelievable, unbelievable dinner and you and
• 56:22
  you see all the cruise ships going right outside, right
• 56:25
  beside you. So those two places I like stuff
• 56:28
  on the water. I grew up landlocked.
• 56:30
  I grew up where Gatlinburg in the mountains was the was the
• 56:33
  nearest thing to me that was kind of like, whoa, this is
• 56:35
  cool. I didn't spend a lot of time at
• 56:36
  the beach. I think I got a little bit more
• 56:38
  tan living down there for a year.
• 56:39
  But those two places, shout out to Smith and Wolinski's and to
• 56:43
  the Rusty Pelican if you're in Miami, Rusty Pelican right
• 56:46
  across Biscayne Bay. I'll write those down.
• 56:48
  I'm a connoisseur of local food joints.
• 56:52
  Yeah, I'm very excited for that. But with that, Briggs, maybe the
• 56:56
  toughest question of the day is, did we miss anything?
• 56:59
  Is there anything else you feel we didn't cover that you need to
• 57:02
  get off your chest right now? Oh man, no.
• 57:05
  I, I think we did the best we could that, that's how I'll
• 57:07
  describe this. We did the best we could.
• 57:09
  This I, I always tell people there are no, in this role as
• 57:13
  the amateur director there, there, there are no limits on,
• 57:16
  on like what we do. There's no limits on like what
• 57:19
  my job description is. It's kind of everything, right?
• 57:21
  It's, it's taken care of every amateur client we got, not just
• 57:24
  the ones that are my guys. So we did the best we could with
• 57:28
  that, with those restraints, with those, with those
• 57:30
  guidelines, man, unbelievable conversation.
• 57:32
  I appreciate the, the platform. I hope you hear my passion in
• 57:35
  it, man. The, the passion for what, for
• 57:37
  what I do, the pride in our work that we get to do with you guys.
• 57:40
  You guys have helped us a ton already.
• 57:42
  And it's only going to keep getting better.
• 57:44
  It's something that I think is, is going to be very, very
• 57:46
  special going forward. And hopefully these amateur guys
• 57:49
  that that that are coming over to you are going to be big
• 57:51
  leaguers here in a few years. And we'll get to sit back and
• 57:53
  and talk about that at the Rusty Pelican when you come down and
• 57:56
  see me in Miami. That's right.
• 57:58
  Unbelievable conversation, man. I really do appreciate it.
• 58:01
  And we're gonna have to do it again soon, man.
• 58:04
  We'll do it. Part 2 for all that we can talk
• 58:06
  about. That's right.
• 58:08
  Yeah, yeah, we'll figure it out. I know there's there's gonna be
• 58:11
  a time that I come calling and need you back on here.
• 58:13
  It is one of the rules of the Lay Back podcast.
• 58:16
  Once you come on, once you're, you're 100% legally obligated to
• 58:21
  come on. Whenever I love that, that's
• 58:23
  hard. Where do I sign?
• 58:25
  It's in the fine. Print when I when I sent you
• 58:27
  that text to come on, I promise you it was there.
• 58:30
  It was the vanishing text that Apple.
• 58:32
  Yeah, OK. You just.
• 58:33
  Missed it. I don't know how you missed it,
• 58:35
  but you just. Missed it looking.
• 58:37
  That's right, not fast enough. But Briggs, thanks again so
• 58:40
  much. This is great if if anyone wants
• 58:43
  to to reach out to learn more either from you or about Moss
• 58:46
  and what you guys do. How can they do that?
• 58:49
  So you know, Instagram is fun. I've got Instagram at Briggs
• 58:52
  Rudder. It's no, no symbols, no numbers,
• 58:55
  just Briggs Rudder and then reach out to me via there or on
• 58:58
  Twitter. It's Briggs Rudder as well.
• 58:59
  So if you want to find me on there, we can connect and I'll
• 59:02
  toss my number to you there and then we can have a conversation.
• 59:05
  I love talking about it. I love talking about kind of my
• 59:07
  experience getting into it. So if I can help anybody,
• 59:10
  anybody wants to be an agent, you know, I, I can help you kind
• 59:13
  of go about the, the process into or if anybody is looking to
• 59:16
  learn a little bit more about what we do, be happy to talk
• 59:19
  about it. Actually, man, well, this was a
• 59:21
  blast. And of course, to everyone out
• 59:23
  there, thanks for laying back with us.