Nicole Lynn: The Path to Becoming a Top Flight Sports Agent - a podcast by Brian Clapp - Work in Sports

Sports agent Nicole Lynn goes through her daily adventure of representing NFL players on this weeks episode of the Work in Sports podcast. From recruiting and signing athletes, to setting up their future and being discounted as a woman in a predominantly male field, she shares it all.  Hi everybody, I’m Brian Clapp Director of Content for WorkinSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast.Today’s guest graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s in business management. They then went on to earn their Doctor of Law with honors. They then went on to work on Wall Street as a Financial Analyst and obtained both their Series 7 and Series 63 certifications through FINRA.Sounds like a boss, right? Literally and figuratively, like this person could be your boss…and they are a boss.  But there is something that happens to most people between their brain and their eyes. There is often a disconnect.  You brain observes this person based on qualifications. Data. Details. It tells you this person is smart, motivated, qualified…But sadly, most, if not all people, make decisions with their eyes. They judge what they see -- based on external appearances, based on pre-conceived notions, based on superfluous data points.This happens to everyone, not just today’s guest. People judge you, every one of you, day in and day out, without knowing a thing about you. They assume, they guess, they predict.You’re too young.You’re a woman.You have blond hair.You wear braces.You’re short.You’re dressed different.You have darker skin.You have different eyes.You have different beliefs.We are all guilty of judgement. I can’t change that today, there is no way I can impact that on a scale that will make any difference, there is no way any of us can. It is our sad reality.Don’t blame it on social media, don’t blame it on video games, or helicopter parents or millennials – because this has been around forever.When I was a kid I remember there was a girl that came to our school, I’d guess it was around 6th or 7th grade and she was always dirty coming to school. Her clothes were a mess, her hair was in knots, she had an odor about her.We all assumed she was gross.What we didn’t know, was all of things she was going through on a daily basis in her life that would have rocked our safe, little suburban bubbles. She was smart, athletic and scared to death every day… yet all we saw was a dirty girl and we judged her. We made her days even worse.This is the sad reality of our world and it doesn’t stop in middle school, or after high school, or after college. There are cliques, there are groups, there are bands of people who will find comfort in their community of judgement. And at some point, it will likely be aimed at you.So what do you do?I wish I knew… I wish I had some great advice, some bumpersticker, meme, shareable quote logic. But I don’t really think that way. I draw inspiration and perspective from the people I talk to each week on this podcast. I learn about myself through every conversation, and I’m self-aware enough to realize I’m still a work in progress too.Today’s guest, the one with the incredible resume, is Nicole Lynn a young black woman, who faces this judgement every day as an up and coming sports agent…in, let’s speak frankly,  a white man’s world.68 % of the athletes in the NFL are African American and that number jumps to 75% in the NBA and yet, of the top 50 sports agents in the world for 2018 published by Forbes, there were only 5 African-Americans….and zero women.When Nicole Lynn walks into a workout, or a pro day or a negotiation, the other people in the room figure she’s one of the players girlfriends. This bad ass negotiator, who has earned every bit of knowledge and...

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