Cooper Manning dives deep into why athletes are starting to think like business owners

If anyone knows about building a brand, it’s the Manning family.

Soon to be a three-generation NFL family, Peyton and Eli Manning could be found on every television screen, and their nephew, Texas star quarterback Arch Manning, is currently the highest-valued college athlete in terms of NIL money.

“I think more so than ever, athletes are really interested in business, and business guys like hanging with athletes, and they use each other to kind of feed off it,” Cooper Manning, Arch’s father and Peyton and Eli’s older brother, said in a recent interview with FOX Business.

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That’s why Cooper has partnered with Capital One and its Venture X Business card to coach entrepreneurs on how to win on and off the field, translating the championship mindset of sports into practical guidance for building and growing a business.

“I’m wearing a couple hats these days. I’m a business owner, I’m a dad, I go to a lot of sporting events, and the Capital One Business Venture X Card has been phenomenal for me,” he said. “We travel to a bunch of great college towns throughout the fall, and last-minute logistics — getting hotels, rental cars, flights — and so I’m not great with logistics, and they kind of handle all the dirty work. So it was fun to be able to call the Capital One Business travel and say instead of two of us, it’s four of us, you know, bringing buddies and other children and just a lot of things that I’m not very good at. They kind of bail me out. And so it’s been a great partnership with Capital One.”

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“Capital One gets it,” he added. “They’re kind of the foundation of support. They have all these premium tools and benefits and meaningful access that help entrepreneurs and athletes get to where they want to be without having to get caught up in all the red tape.”

Much of that red tape is social media, which can portray a false vision of the realities of entrepreneurship. That’s why Cooper stresses to young minds trying to get into business to simply trust their process.

“Social media is great, but some could be a distraction. And you’ve got to keep your head down and focus on what you’re doing. You can start thinking about things that you’re not supposed to, and then you take your eye off the ball and you’ve got problems. So keep your head down, keep working, and I think it’ll work out,” he said.