A Quote by Russell Okung

I had people who were around me, people that I put a lot of trust in that sort of messed me over. So after that I said, only I can look back over my life and say I was responsible for whom I hired. I was responsible for how I managed my money. So I decided I wanted to do it myself. I understood the business of football. And because I can understand the business of football, I decided it's the best decision for me to be an agent. It made the most sense and I think a lot of players are opening their eyes to it as well.
I feel like a new person. I learned how to deal with people when I wasn't a football player. I always wondered how they'd react to me, if they'd respect me. I found out I have other attributes that I like-and that others like. The injury made me a lot more mature. I have a better grasp of reality in life. I'm more patient and giving. I'm a lot closer to my family and more team oriented. I'm so much stronger emotionally. I have proven to myself that I can overcome the most dreaded injury in football. It's almost like dying and realizing life has been given back to me. I can't wait to play.
I had to make a decision about whether it would impact how I felt about trusting people, and I decided I wasn't going top allow it to impact my outlook on trust, because I believe trust is a choice. And I've always given people the benefit of the doubt until they prove me otherwise. So, it just made me stronger in my conviction about that, but it also taught me never to put anything past anyone.
When I got there, there were two sides: business and football. Business I understand. It was pretty obvious to me what we had to do. But the football side was like the Holy Grail.
I decided during my teens that I wasn't going to have the life of a concert pianist, much to the chagrin of a lot of people who had put a lot of money into me!
I had been playing a lot of chess and I wasn't really enjoying it, so I decided to go to college to see what else is out there for me. But after about six or seven months away from the game, I just decided that the whole college life wasn't for me and that's why I decided to come back.
I am not responsible for what other people think. I am responsible only for what I myself think, and I know what that is. No idea I've ever come up with has ever struck me as a divine revelation. Nothing I have ever observed leads me to think there is a God watching over me.
As a teenager, I put a lot of pressure on myself, and a lot of that, for me, was about finding a moral high ground. As I've grown up, I've decided to abandon that because it made me judgmental and also stressed me out.
My first experience with football was not very good because I didn't plan on playing football. I was just playing hookie one day and I was a sophomore and decided not to go to class. And the principal - normally he does his rounds and I thought I had him down pretty good where he was going to be - he sort of walked up behind me and scared me. He noticed I could run real fast. So that's how I got introduced to football.
I didn't pick wrestling over football. My coaches picked that for me. I never wanted to wrestle in college. I always wanted to play football. They thought I was too small, but I had a lot of heart.
Finally, I decided that the proper strategy was to stare back. Boys do not have a monopoly on the Staring Business, after all. So I looked him over and soon it was a staring contest. After a while the boy smiled, and then finally his blue eyes glanced away. When he looked back at me, I flicked my eyebrows up to say, I win. He shrugged
The most important decision I've made in business? The choices of people I have around me. When I first started I brought everybody with me, my homies from the neighborhood, criminals. I just said, 'Come on everybody, we made it.' Then I had to realize we didn't make it. I made it.
That's the hard thing about this sport. You don't have a guy over you telling you what you have to do. 'You have to do this, you have to do that.' So at the end of the day, I'm responsible for myself. So what I do is I put people in place around me to help keep me accountable.
This game has taken a lot of guys over the years who would have had to work in factories and gas stations and made them prominent people. I only had a high school education, and believe me, I had to cheat to get that. There isn't a college in the world that would have me and yet in this business you can walk into a room with millionaires, doctors, professional people and get more attention than they get. I don't know any other business where you can do that.
A lot of people want to start a business, and they're like, 'I wanna start a business, give me some money to invest.' Where is your business plan? Are you investing money yourself into your own business? How is this going to work? People think that they can just come to you with an idea and have money.
Opening a small business is a reasonable thing for you to do but should tax payer, should an ordinary worker have to pay more money in taxes because someone across the street from them opened up a business which might well go under? For a lot of people opening a business is a bad choice for them. Most small businesses fail. I understand people wanting to give it a try and everything but we're not necessarily doing them a favor to say, take all your life savings, borrow to the hilt, and then struggle for three years and end up with nothing. We're not necessarily doing them a favor.
I think a lot of times people look at me and say, 'Well, we can't possibly hand a show over to her to run.' It seemed like executives would be worried about me controlling a room and having power, and I'd say, 'Oh, I can control a room. I can give an order like nobody's business.'
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