On July 1st, it'll ask you can cross it off name, image, and lightning.

All right, welcome back, everyone, to the NILSU Real Deal podcast.

My name is Taylor Jacobs, and I am super excited to be here today with former LSU baseball

legend, Anthony Renato.

Legend, yes.

I dropped the L word on me.

Legend in my book, for sure.

Super excited.

We have so much coming up with NIL and NILSU, including our Build Your Board event, which

will be in just a few weeks.

And I'm super excited to have Anthony with us today to share a little bit about his experience with Builder Board last year. But first, before we get into all of that, Anthony, give us a little intro, the legend. I don't know about that, but I appreciate it. That was nice. It was a really nice intro. But yeah, Anthony Renato, I grew up in New Jersey. I came down to

LSU and played baseball here for three years, 2008, 2009, 2010, so I was fortunate enough to be a part

of the 2009 national championship team here. Got drafted by the Boston Red Sox, and I played

professionally for seven or eight years with Boston, Chicago, Texas, and I played over in Korea for a year.

And then when I retired from baseball, I came back down to Baton Rouge. I graduated, finished my

degree, made some investments into some businesses, and then also started a few businesses.

So I got a couple of those going. So I guess you could say I'm an entrepreneur now,

but former athlete, that kind of stuff. But born and raised, New Jersey, but Louisiana resident now, loving it here in the south. Yeah. And we, I in particular, love having you here. So for those of you who don't know when NIL first came around, I guess we really got to know each other in the last like year and a half. Anthony and I just started talking a ton

because he has a podcast and I went on his podcast to talk about NIL and then him being a business

owner in the community, he was getting involved in NIL deals with some of our student athletes.

And so last year when we held our first Builder Board event, I thought, wow, Anthony would be

the perfect person to come represent not only a former student athlete perspective, but also a business perspective. So as one of our keynote speakers from last year at Build Your Board, tell us how that, what impacts that had on you, just being able to provide that mentorship to our student athletes at that event. Yeah, absolutely. First and foremost, I do want to thank you. I know this is a little public, I guess, forum here, but you've done an incredible job of giving me as a business owner and a former athlete opportunity to be involved in the athletic program here at LSU, which obviously to me and my eyes, second to none, you know, in this space. what you guys are doing in the NIL space, I think you've done a tremendous job. So from just educating people and making things available and giving opportunities to business owners, but also, you know, providing the insight to athletes and things like that, I think you've done a great job. And I know that's your background with being an athlete as well. So thank you for that. But yeah, I think build your board Board is an awesome event. I think all the events that you guys have done, you know, whether it was networking opportunities, you know, before that, I can't remember what that event was called. Go time. Yeah, go time. That was really cool, too. But even the thing that you allowed me to do with Garth Brooks and speaking to athletes and things like that, we've done some really cool things. But I really liked to build your board because it gave me an opportunity to sit on stage, you know, with a couple other people and give my experience, but then, you know, as an athlete and as a business owner. So I was able to share with the athletes a little bit of, you know, perspective of maybe things that they could be doing best practices, building your brand. You know, I hate that word,

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