I was on the phone with a longtime friend last week who’s in the business. In the course of the conversation, he asked me if I’d seen the new movie, ‘Entourage.’ I told him I’d seen the show once, and wasn’t really into it. I kinda left it at that, but he persisted, and mentioned that one of the central characters in the story had some scenes that dealt with the sports and entertainment business, and they were pretty authentic.

Well, I’m still not seeing it. Here’s why.

I know this series has always been marketed as a sort of ‘insiders look at the entertainment industry,’ and I know there have been lots of walk-ons and cameos by athletes. I think the movie that’s out right now has a lot of the same thing. And who knows? Maybe a lot of it captures the feel of what it’s like at the billion-dollar level where the real titans play.

However, the episode I saw — and this had to have been 8-10 years ago — only superficially dealt with the business. It was really a lot more about four guys chasing girls, smoking joints together, whatever. Just sorta cruising through life, with a couple guys coat-tailing off their famous friends. Now, maybe there’s a lot more to the show than that, and I’m sure plenty of my readers are screaming at their screens right now, calling me names. But having gotten a sense of the marketing of the show, it seems like a rather fair assessment.

Well, here’s the thing. I guess lots of people aspire to an ‘Entourage’ lifestyle, and hope they can run in that crowd by making the same choices the characters in that series/film make. All I can say is, I haven’t seen it. The people I see that make it to the highest levels in football aren’t anything like that.

Forgive me if I sound like a tired old man, but the people I know in this business who are really succeeding never lived like that. They spent the days when their friends were messing around, blowing their time on mindless pursuits, on building a plan and pursuing it. Chasing goals. Making sacrifices. Fearing they wouldn’t succeed and breaking their backs to make it happen.

I remember when Roger Goodell was first named NFL Commissioner, his story of working his way up through the NFL offices became widely known, and it came out that he had started out as an intern, probably working for little pay or no pay and no promises. Back then, some idiot in the cybersphere wrote that hey, there was a time that the Commissioner of the NFL was probably sitting around, smoking a bowl with a bunch of roommates and trying to look busy when his boss was around, and that guy made it to the top! Another lottery winner who goofed off all the way to the highest seat in football!

Well, no he didn’t. I’ve never met Goodell and know nothing about him, but I can guarantee you he was intense, focused and hard-working on his way up. That’s what got him there. Mediocrity rules in modern society, but it never defined him.

I get emails, Tweets and Facebook friend requests from young people all the time, wanting to show me their work or seeking advice on the way forward. I never get the sense that they’re just laying back, waiting on stuff to happen. If you’re hoping to succeed in football, I hope you’re just like them, and not like any of the characters living misleading lives on some stupid TV show.

People interested in the agent business often ask me if they need to be a lawyer. I always tell them it’s a big bonus, but more importantly, you need to be smart about business and opportunity. That’s gotta be your first priority. I just got off the phone with Dave Schuman of Inspired Athletes, and he illustrates my point exactly.

Dave is the subject of today’s edition of our newsletter for people slated to take the NFL agent exam this summer (it’s free — register here), and he has a great story. Briefly, he played at Connecticut in the 90s, and after graduating, started a company called National Underclassmen Combines, which was aimed at high school athletes that wanted to get recruited for scholarships. After building it into a business on par with the Nike and Under Armour camps, he decided to get certified as an NFLPA contract advisor. His reason was not unlike many people who get into the business — he had been approached by many young men who needed trustworthy counsel and he wanted to provide it.

He didn’t think for a minute that he was unqualified because he didn’t have a license to practice law. In fact, he sees some disadvantages to having a legal background.

“I’m not a lawyer so I was never used to getting cases and having them handed to (me),” he said. Today, many attorneys with large firms “don’t have to go out and get (cases), and as an entrepreneur for so long, I’ve been in so many situations where things didn’t work out and I just had to think, ‘how can I make them work out?’

“I look at it like, where is the opportunity? Where do we fit, and how do we provide the service we want to do? We don’t have to be Drew Rosenhaus or Tom Condon. We can be very successful doing what we’re doing and growing by doing what we do well. We’re trying really hard not to get concerned with what other people do, but what makes us different and what we do well, and (finding) clients that think that’s something they want. You’re going to lose more battles than you win. You’re gonna lose 90 percent (of your battles), and you have to be OK with that.”

You might say, hey, Dave Schuman has access to lots of players I don’t have access to, and a lot of key relationships. That’s true, but here’s an interesting fact: none of the three active NFL clients he has in camps right now are NUC alumni. They all signed after Dave started relationships from scratch. That’s a really impressive year for a first-year contract advisor and his partner, Daniel Smith.

Actually, there are two lessons from Dave’s story. No. 1, you don’t have to be an attorney to be successful. You have to be entrepreneurial, and you must be able to recognize opportunities. No. 2, you have to be willing to fight and create a Plan B quickly if Plan A doesn’t work out.

To read more about Dave’s story, don’t forget to register for our free newsletter.

Today’s advice for young agents is actually a bit tweaked from how I budgeted things this week. Originally, I was going to caution young attorneys to have a budget, but I broadened things after I spoke to the subject of today’s newsletter for new agents, Buffalo, N.Y.-based Shane Costa.

Shane had an extraordinarily successful first year in the business. First off, though he’s a totally independent and has no affiliations with a big firm, he had a player drafted this year (49ers OT Ian Silberman, 6/190), which is a phenomenal achievement. What’s equally impressive, however, is that he has four active NFL clients in his first year in the business. There are only four first-year agents with that many clients in the league, and all of them are with established firms.

Anyway, during our conversation today (get the whole interview and our entire series here), he made a statement that goes perfectly with today’s topic, and I think it’s one reason he had such success this year.

“There’s lots of uncertainty and ups and downs but you have to build a plan for the player and execute the plan,” Shane said, “and the biggest thing is, if you have a plan and you stick to it and you work hard, no matter the uncertainty, it’s going to work out, and you’ll do the best for your client, no matter the situation.”

This is essentially what another agent, Huntington, W.Va.-based David Rich of Rich Sports Management, said in a blog post I did last fall. “You can’t tell a player he won’t be drafted,” he wrote then. “Ever. Even if you know he won’t be. You have to say that if he follows the plan and works his tail off, there’s no limit to what he can do.”

Of course, you can’t tell them to follow the plan unless you have a plan. So, do a lot of thinking about exactly how much money you can afford to spend on a player’s training. What kind of housing you are willing to provide. Will you rent him a car? Will you provide interview training? What if he kills his pro day? What if he’s terrible at his pro day? What if he gets a lowball UDFA offer after the draft, but it’s from the perfect team for him? What do you say to his parents if he’s not getting a lot of Internet love two weeks before the draft? What if NFL teams aren’t calling during that same time frame? Is the CFL/AFL an option if he goes undrafted and unsigned? I could come up with a hundred more questions. And as you climb the ladder, the questions don’t go away. They just change, and perhaps get a little harder.

If you don’t have a plan, you are far more likely to panic. Negative things impact you more when you see others experiencing positives. You have to know where the first-down marker is and how you are going to get there. You can’t worry about the agent who got there with a 10-yard bullet pass, so to speak, if you’re a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust kind of guy.

The business is one that requires  a lot of confidence, a lot of emotion and a lot of fire. But ultimately, it’s like all others in that you have to use your head and know where you’re going, and how to get there. Don’t make the mistake of ‘winging it.’

Today’s tip for new agents is to be open to anyone who might be able to help you. Listen and learn, always. Maybe a related lesson would be not to burn bridges. Here are a couple of war stories that illustrate these principles.

This time of year, I always cruise Twitter for folks slated to take the NFLPA exam later in the summer. Three years ago, I was looking around and came upon a young man who expressed excitement that he’d gotten his CBA from the NFLPA and was digging in, starting his studies. I sent him a cheery message congratulating him on his dive into the business, and asked if he’d be interested in receiving our free email newsletter that talks about the certification process, peoples’ experiences with the exam, etc. Many budding agents have found it a helpful tool for preparing for the test and all that surrounds it.

Now, many people ignore my Tweets, and some politely decline, but his response was something along the lines of, ‘What could you possibly tell me about the agent exam or the business?’

I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. Twitter is a platform tailor-made for people who want to express unsolicited vitriol from a safe distance. Looking back, it’s not his response that surprised me. I guess it was his attitude.

Look, I’m not famous and I know I don’t have all the answers. He probably looked at my Twitter following, which most likely was just over 1,000 back then, and thought I was some hack and shrugged me off. And hey, maybe I couldn’t have provided any insights or information that he could use. But I know this: He’s heading into Year 3 of his agent career, and he still hasn’t had anyone on an NFL contract. If he goes another year without one, he’s out, and he’ll have to start all over in the business.

I had a similar experience with another agent who was also unimpressed with me initially. He reacted to my first inquiry dismissively, but gave me another chance after we met at the 2014 Senior Bowl. This agent was open-minded enough to give me another shot, and I think he would say he’s benefited from it. Today, he’s one of my better friends among my clients, and we talk pretty regularly when the season is ‘hot.’ Unlike the other agent, my friend, Louis, has his first guy in an NFL camp this year. I’d like to think I played some tiny role in that. It’s a great feeling.

Here’s the point. You may have no regard for what ITL is or what I do, and if you don’t, that’s totally fair. But be careful not to go your own way in this business. It’s just too hard. Though these are definitely shark-filled waters, and it’s natural to have your guard up, but there are definitely people who can provide counsel, moral support, or even ears to listen when times are tough. I try not to ever burn bridges. I hope you don’t, either. This business is just so small, and it could come back to haunt you. Keep your eyes, ears and mind open to learning opportunities. You won’t be sorry.

Today, we continue our discussion on how to achieve success as a first-year agent by considering the value of recruiting.

About a week ago, on May 25, we discussed the fact that about half of all agents certified last summer didn’t have a client in the 2015 draft. I don’t mean they didn’t have a player drafted, and I don’t mean they didn’t have a player signed to a UDFA deal. They didn’t even sign a player eligible for the 2015 NFL draft. Think about that. I doubt that was there goal when they spent about $5,000 to pass a test and get certified. There are three reasons this happens to agents.

1. They don’t know how to reach players. Many come into the business thinking the NFLPA, or colleges, or someone is going to provide them with this XL spreadsheet of cell phones, emails and the like for draftable players local to them. Nope.

2. They’re intimidated by the process. If they reach out to their local college and try to make nice, normally the school makes them promise not to talk to any of the players until they walk off the field for the last time. That’s a no-doubt recipe for failure. If they do get hold of players, what do they say? “Hi. How’s it going? Um, I don’t have any NFL clients, and I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’d like you to place your dreams of playing in the NFL in my hands.” That can be scary.

3. It’s so much easier to sign players that call you. Once a contract advisor gets certified, his phone and email are listed on the NFLPA site. Then, come December, every player who’s not getting recruited starts down the NFLPA list. Many of them have compelling stories about why they aren’t showing up as top-ten prospects on the various draft sites, and it’s easy to get seduced by this. However, if you’re not careful, you’ve spent $10,000 training and preparing a player you never should have signed. These players are the ‘junk mail’ of the business. If a player’s recruiting you, how badly do you think you’re going to have to ‘recruit’ the NFL to sign him?

If you’re considering getting into this business, understand that you can’t stand on the wall and hope the pretty girl asks you to dance. You also have to understand that rejection is going to be part of the business; after all, when you get right down to it, this job is commission sales. Identify a player you feel has a shot, figure out a way to contact him, and get after it. You have to. You don’t want to waste Year 1 of your budding agent career.

Tomorrow, we’ll have a story illustrating this, and we’ll continue our discussion.

As we close in on the end of the first year of Succeed in Football (thanks for reading), we’re about two months from the NFLPA exam for the people hoping to join the ranks of NFL contract advisors this year. With that in mind, we’re turning from talk of the scouting business to the representation business this week.

We’ll try to lend a hand to all those folks heading to Washington, D.C., this summer in a couple of places. One of those is this blog, where this week we’ll pass along a tip a day on how to break in and truly be successful in a tough profession. The other is in the email arena, where today we launched our annual newsletter for prospective 2015 NFLPA contract advisors. It’s free, of course, and if you’re interested in getting it, click here.

Our blog, you already know about, of course. Our email series, however, will go in a slightly different direction. We’ll focus solely on the agent business. We’ll interview several ITL clients who experienced success this year with their first draftee (I think we had six clients, all independent agents with no affiliation to big firms, who had players drafted, and that’s something worth saluting). We’ll also talk to several agents who had players signed as undrafted free agents, and if you think that’s easy, well, you’re wrong. Getting a player on a UDFA deal is important every year because, as young agents know, you only get three years to get a player on a contract with an NFL team. If you don’t, the NFLPA dumps you and you have to go back through the whole expensive process again, including paying the initiation fees and passing the test again.

So that’s it. I just wanted to introduce the week. Class starts tomorrow (LOL). I hope you’ll stick around. We’ll have plenty of good stuff, lessons, insights, etc., if making deals and signing players is something you hope to do someday.