I wanted to use today’s Note to share the full essay from issue 003 of 12:24, which dropped today. I’ve mentioned it before, but in case you forgot or are new to the Daily Notes, I recently started a twice-a-month newsletter for athletes called 12:24. While the essays are written for athletes, they really are applicable to everyone—especially today’s issue. I’m sure many of you have athletes in your family or know someone you care about, and I wanted you to see the quality and intention I’m putting behind 12:24.

One important thing to note. I’m writing 12:24 on Beehiiv because it gives me creative control over the newsletter's design and experience. The experience is much better there than here, but the message isn’t lost in today’s basic design.

If you know anyone who would benefit from reading more from me on 12:24, please feel free to send them over to subscribe.​

12:24

Skill peaks. Self compounds.

I was seven or eight years old, standing in a funeral home at a viewing for a family member, when my godfather handed me a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

I immediately started chanting to my dad: “CD! CD! CD!”

My godfather cut me off. He wanted me to spend the money, not save it. He thought I meant a Certificate of Deposit. I meant a CD player, which was brand new at the time. I can’t say for sure that moment shaped my relationship with money. But I know a script started running somewhere in there.

The story that shaped it most came much later.

In 2008, I was a financial advisor at VALIC, a company that offered retirement plans and financial advice to teachers. It was a great place to learn the business and grow. It was also where I learned one of the most important lessons of my life: I never want to rely on someone else to be responsible for my financial well-being.

VALIC was owned by AIG, and during the Great Financial Crisis, AIG was one of the firms the US government bailed out to keep the financial system from collapsing. It didn’t take long for the teachers I visited to let me hear about it. I was told they were paying my salary now, along with plenty of other comments that would qualify as trash talk.

Trash talk is supposed to get in your head. This time, it got me to have a different kind of talk with myself.

I didn’t want decisions made by executives in New York City to control my ability to build my business and my wealth. So I bet on my Self. I went all-in on me, because I knew I would never do anything to jeopardize what I was building.

Thankfully, the lesson came with very little pain. But it told me exactly what money means to me: freedom and control over my own future.

The first few issues of 12:24 are the foundation. Everything after builds on them.

Issue 001 started with the Authentic Self, because the first step in taking your game to the next level is knowing who you truly are. Issue 002 moved to the mind: mindset and mindfulness. Pair the peace that comes from living authentically with the ability to stay present, undistracted by what’s happening inside you or around you, and your game rises.

There’s one more piece of that foundation: the business of YOU. Whether you’re a high school role player or a pro starter, being an athlete gives you influence, and you can build on it. We’ll get there.

But first, we need to talk about money.

Not how to make more of it or build wealth. That will come. Before you can build wealth, you have to know what wealth means to you. And before that, you have to know what money means to you and what your relationship with it really is.

That’s why this issue is called “Money Talk.”

Everyone has a money story, whether they know it or not. Let’s find yours.

Thursday, November 12th 2026"Money Talk"12:24 / Issue 003

Issue 003 · The Scouting Report

Money means something before it buys anything. For most athletes it ends up as a scoreboard. It might also be safety, freedom, love, or proof. Until you know which it is for you, every money decision is really answering that question.

How you use it tells your truth. Your bank statement is game film. It shows what you actually value, whatever you say you value.

Your relationship with money started long before your first check. What you heard at the kitchen table, what nobody talked about, and what you watched the adults around you do all became your default settings.

You're running plays you didn't call. Money scripts are the unconscious beliefs behind your money behavior: avoidance, worship, status, and vigilance. You can't change a script you've never read.

Kevin Durant is one of the greatest scorers the game has ever seen. He might be just as good in the boardroom.

In 2016, he and his business partner Rich Kleiman started Thirty Five Ventures, which grew into Durant’s family office and home base for his investments, media, and philanthropy. They’ve invested in companies like Postmates, Acorns and Coinbase. They’ve built their own media company, Boardroom. And KD now owns pieces of pro teams, including the Philadelphia Union, Gotham FC and Paris Saint-Germain.

And one early bet just paid off in a big way. When Nvidia agreed to buy the AI company Hugging Face for a reported $12.9 billion, KD’s roughly $250,000 investment, made back when it was a little-known startup, was reportedly worth more than $60 million.

That’s the highlight reel. It’s what everyone sees.

But you know how this works. Nobody sees the thousand shots before the game-winner. And nobody sees the work that comes before the first investment: deciding what your money is for.

When KD started Thirty Five Ventures, it wasn’t just about getting richer. He wanted to be more than a basketball brand. That’s a decision about meaning before it’s a decision about money.

I want to see you get there. Not to become the next KD, but to build your own version of what he’s built, in a way that’s authentically you. And that starts here. That’s what this issue is about. Not the portfolio, but the reps that come before it: knowing what money means to you, how you actually use it, where your story started, and the scripts running in the background.

Get those right, and the business of YOU has something solid to build on. Skip them, and no amount of money will make up for it.

01 —What It's Worth.

There’s never been a better time to make money as an athlete.

Pro contracts are hitting astronomical levels. In college, NIL has opened up a long list of ways to get paid: brand deals and partnerships, NIL collectives, revenue sharing, camps, clinics, lessons, merch and memorabilia. Some college athletes now make more than pros, which has turned staying in school into one more business decision.

And it doesn’t stop at college. Starting this school year, Indiana high school athletes can get paid through what the IHSAA calls Personal Branding Activities.

And just this week, a new league was announced for the top 120 high school basketball players in the country: the Futures Basketball League, tipping off in April. Players get paid through NIL deals, and they get to choose how: cash, equity in the league, or both. One of the backers? Kevin Durant.

This is tremendous.

But I’ve been in financial services for nearly twenty-two years, and I can see the pitfalls ahead for a lot of athletes. Life-changing money becomes a problem when you don’t know how to manage it. It becomes an even bigger problem when you don’t know what money actually means to you.

That might sound like an odd thing to think about. What does money mean?

If you’re like most people, you’ve never asked yourself that question, and you might not know where to start.

There’s the obvious answer. Money is currency, the dollars and coins, physical and digital, that we use to get through life. That’s true. But it’s not the whole truth. Money has a deeper meaning, too—emotional, even spiritual.

Here’s the thing about that deeper meaning: if you don’t decide what money means to you, something else will decide for you.

For athletes, that something else is usually the scoreboard.

You’ve been keeping score your whole life. Points, minutes, rankings, stars, offers. So when the money shows up, it’s natural to turn it into one more stat. Who got paid. Who’s driving what. Who’s winning.

But money can mean a lot of different things. Here are a few of the most common:

A Tool. Money is for building something: a business, a family’s future, a life after the game.

Safety. Money means never going back to where you came from. Never worrying about the lights getting cut off again.

Freedom. Money means choices. Not having to answer to anyone, and not having anyone else’s decisions run your life.

Love. Money is how you take care of your people. Buying Mom the house. Making sure your little brother has what you didn’t.

Proof. Money shows the people who doubted you that they were wrong.

Identity. Money is who you are. The contract, the car and the chain become you. And when the checks slow down, it can feel like you are disappearing too.

A Scoreboard. Money is how you know you’re winning, and how everyone else knows it too.

Each of these meanings can have a positive or a negative impact on your life. Safety can give you peace, or it can keep you from ever feeling like you have enough. Love can take care of your family, or it can turn you into everyone’s bank. Identity can give you pride in what you’ve earned, or it can tie your sense of who you are to a number that won’t last forever.

None of these is wrong. Most of us carry a mix of a few. But each one leads to very different decisions. The athlete who sees money as safety saves everything and still never feels safe. The athlete who sees money as proof spends to be seen. The athlete who sees money as a tool asks what it can build.

And knowing what money means to you is only half of it. The other half is knowing why.

Think about a shooting slump. Knowing you’re missing left doesn’t fix anything. You can tell yourself to aim right all day long. The fix comes when you find the reason: your elbow’s flaring, your feet are off, you’re rushing because you’re tired. Once you know the why, you can change the shot.

Money works the same way. Knowing your behavior isn’t enough. You can know you overspend, or that you can’t bring yourself to spend at all, and nothing changes. The change starts when you understand the reason behind it. That’s when you can begin to reshape your relationship with money, if it needs reshaping.

That’s what the rest of this issue is for.

For me, money means freedom and control. You already read how I got there. Today, that meaning shows up in almost every decision I make.

I build my business intentionally, so it grows for the right reasons, not just to grow. More money is welcome, but only if it lets me help more people and invest in other people’s dreams.

I use money to buy freedom. Freedom to be the present husband and father I want to be, so I can be at the games, home for dinner, there in the mornings. Freedom to create so I can write, to build things like this newsletter, to follow ideas wherever they go. And eventually, freedom to do the work I most want to do, when the time is right.

That’s what money means to me. Not a number to hit. Room to live the way I want to.

Now go back to the Futures League. A 16-year-old gets offered NIL money and has to choose: cash, equity in the league, or both.

That’s not a math question. It’s a question about what money means to you.

If money means safety, you probably take the cash. If it means freedom or building something, the equity might pull at you. If it means love, maybe the cash goes straight home. Same offer, different answers, and every one of them comes from the meaning, not the number.

Which brings us to the next level: wealth.

Most people use money and wealth like they’re the same thing. They’re not.

Money is what you have. Wealth is what your money makes possible.

Wealth is time to do what matters to you. It’s your health. It’s your relationships. It’s purpose, and work you’d do even if you didn’t have to. It’s a life that looks like the one you actually want, not the one you were told to want.

You can be rich and not wealthy. Plenty of people are. But the opposite is true too.

I work with clients who, on paper, wouldn’t be called rich. You’d never see their names on a list. But they’re some of the wealthiest people I know.

They’re living the life they want to live. They spend their time with family and friends. They don’t want for anything. And most importantly, they’re happy.

It’s not the number that makes them happy. It’s the life they’ve built by using their money in line with who they really are, their Authentic Lives.

And this is where it all connects back to issue 001. Wealth is money aligned with your Authentic Self. You can’t define wealth for yourself until you know who you are, and you can’t use money to build it until you know what money means to you.

We’ll go deeper on building wealth in a future issue. For now, start with the question underneath it all:

What does money mean to you?

Not what it should mean. Not what it means to the guy next to you in the locker room. What it actually means to you.

And here’s the hard part: what you say money means and what your actions show it means aren’t always the same thing.

Which is where we go next.

02 —Tendencies.

Every good scouting report has a section on tendencies.

Goes left when he’s pressured. Settles for the pull-up when he’s tired. Loses focus after a bad call. Scouts don’t care what a player says he does. They watch the film and write down what he actually does.

Your money has tendencies, too. And just like on the court, what you say and what you do aren’t always the same thing.

In section 01, you thought about what money means to you. Now it’s time to watch the film.

Back to your values

If you read issue 001, you already did some of this work. You wrote down five values and sorted them into core and dynamic. Core values are the ones you won’t compromise, no matter the season, and dynamic values shift with the chapter of life you’re in.

Pull that list back out. You’re going to need it.

Back in 001, I wrote that being your Authentic Self shows up in how you dress, the work you do, the people you surround your Self with, and how you spend your time and money. Money might be the most honest of all of those. Anyone can say they value family, health, faith, or growth. Your spending shows whether you actually do.

Your bank statement is game film. It doesn’t care about your intentions. It just shows what happened.

What alignment looks like

When your spending lines up with your values, it shows.

Your core values show up consistently, not just when there’s extra money lying around. If family is a core value, money goes toward family every month, whether that’s helping at home, saving for your future family, or taking your little brother to the game.

Your dynamic values show up in seasons. If you’re coming off an injury and recovery is the priority right now, spending a lot on a trainer, physical therapy, or better food isn’t a problem. It’s alignment. Next year, that might look different, and that’s okay.

One of the reasons I want to keep growing my business and my income is to help more people. But I’m not waiting for the extra money to show up first. Recently, I’ve started giving in amounts that make me uncomfortable, enough to make me think twice before I do it. I’ve helped pay someone’s medical bills, helped a friend start a business, given to a college buddy’s fundraising campaign, and kept supporting other people’s ventures.

Helping people is one of my values. If I only gave when it was easy, my money wouldn’t really be saying that.

I also spend a lot on my health: a coach, a trainer, yoga, healthy food, and supplements. Could I find cheaper options? Probably. But everything I’m paying for gives me more value than it costs. Saving a few dollars isn’t worth losing that impact.

That’s alignment. My money is going where my values are.

What misalignment looks like

Misalignment usually doesn’t look like one big mistake. It looks like a lot of small decisions that slowly pull you away from who you are.

You say you value freedom, then sign up for a car payment that makes you need every check. You say you value family, but almost nothing goes their way except when someone asks. You say you value growth, but there’s nothing on the statement that’s building anything.

In 001, I wrote that inauthenticity shows up when you compromise your values, and with it comes discontentment, frustration, and eventually burnout. Money works the same way. You can have plenty of it and still feel off. A lot of times, this is why.

I’ve had my own misaligned spending, too.

Early in my career, I spent a lot of time and money going to industry conferences. And for a while, it was worth it. I saw what other advisors were doing; I built a strong network; and as people in the profession started to know who I was, I gained confidence.

Then something changed. I can’t point to the exact moment, but at some point I realized I wasn’t going to those conferences for growth anymore. I was going because I was holding on to a past version of my Self. I’d evolved, and the conferences hadn’t evolved with me. I kept going anyway.

Looking back, that’s about two years of travel and spending that didn’t match who I’d become. It didn’t hurt me. But it wasn’t the best use of my time or my money.

That’s what misalignment usually looks like. Not a disaster. Just resources quietly going to someone you used to be.

Tendencies under pressure

Athletes know that tendencies show up most under pressure. Money is no different.

Watch what you do with money after a big win. After a loss. After an injury. When the season ends and the structure goes away. When the guys in the locker room are all buying the same thing.

Watch what you do when people ask. Family who need help. Friends who expect you to pick up the check. The cousin with the business idea. How you respond is a tendency, too, and it often comes straight from what money means to you. If money means love, it’s hard to say no. If money means proof, it’s hard not to show it.

None of these moments are wrong on their own. But if you never look at them, they run you.

Watch your film

Here’s the exercise.

Pull up the last 30 to 90 days of spending. Bank account, cards, apps, all of it. For each meaningful purchase, ask one question: does this line up with one of my values, core or dynamic, or neither?

Then ask two more:

Where is my money going that my values aren’t?

Where are my values that my money isn’t?

If a lot of your spending lines up with “proof” or “scoreboard” from section 01, that’s worth noticing, too.

You’re not trying to grade yourself. You’re scouting. The goal is to see your tendencies clearly, the same way you’d study an opponent before a big game.

The real question

Once you watch the film, you’ll probably find a few places where your spending and your values don’t match.

That’s normal. Almost everyone has them.

The question is why. Why do you spend when you’re stressed? Why is it so hard to say no? Why does money feel tight even when there’s enough?

Remember the shooting slump. Knowing you’re missing left isn’t enough. You have to find the reason.

For most of us, the reason started a long time ago, before the first check ever showed up.

03 —Before The First Check.

Remember the CD chant?

I was seven or eight, holding a crisp twenty, and I already had an opinion about what to do with it. Nobody sat me down and taught me that. I picked it up somewhere.

That’s how it works for all of us. Your relationship with money started long before your first check. Before NIL, before a contract, before your first summer job. It started at home.

You learned about money at the kitchen table. In the car on the way to practice. In the conversations you overheard, and in the ones nobody ever had.

Think about what you heard growing up. Every family has a money soundtrack:

“Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

“We can’t afford that.”

“Always have something saved.”

“Rich people only care about money.”

“Don’t tell anyone how much we make.”

Some of those lines probably still run through your head when you make a decision. Most of us never stop to ask where they came from or whether we actually believe them.

Then think about what you didn’t hear. In a lot of homes, money just isn’t talked about. Nobody explains it, nobody asks questions, and it’s understood that you don’t bring it up. That silence teaches something, too: that money is stressful, private or something to be ashamed of.

And think about what you saw. Kids watch a lot more than they listen. Who handled the money in your house? Did it bring tension or ease? Were there arguments when bills came, or celebrations when things were good? Did it feel like there was never enough, or always enough, no matter what the actual number was?

That feeling, scarcity or abundance, often shapes you more than the amount ever did.

In my house, money was talked about.

My dad told me how much he made. He talked about saving for the future and why it mattered to live within our means. When I was young, he took me to the bank to open my own savings account, and the money I got for birthdays and holidays was mine to save or spend.

I was hands-on with money early.

I also don’t remember my parents ever fighting about money. There was no visible stress around it. We weren’t rich, but we didn’t want for much either. Looking back, that was a gift. Money felt like something you could understand and manage, not something to fear.

But investing didn’t come until college, in a finance class I didn’t even like. Funny, then, that I’ve spent the last twenty years helping other people invest. The kid who learned the basics at the kitchen table stumbled into a career built on them.

For many athletes, there’s another layer.

Sports were probably one of the biggest money stories in your house. Travel ball fees. AAU tournaments. Camps. New shoes every season. Gas, hotels, and tournament food every weekend. Maybe you knew your parents were stretching to make it work. Maybe you saw them give things up so you could keep playing.

That kind of love is real. But it can also plant something. Maybe you feel like you owe them. Maybe you feel like you have to make it worth it. Maybe the first thing you want to do with real money is pay it all back.

Those feelings come from a good place. But if you never look at them, they can quietly make a lot of decisions for you.

This matters more now than ever. With NIL, with Personal Branding Activities here in Indiana, and with leagues like the Futures League, the first check is coming earlier and earlier. For some of you, it might come at 16 or 17.

That means your money story is still being written. And that’s the good news. You get to look at it before it hardens.

One more thing, and it’s important: this isn’t about blaming anyone.

Your parents, grandparents, coaches, and the adults around you were doing the best they could with what they knew. They had their own money stories, handed down to them from the people who raised them. Most of them never got the chance to look at theirs.

You do.

So take a few minutes and write out your money story. Start here:

• What’s your earliest memory of money?
• What did you hear about money growing up?
• What did you see the adults around you do with it?
• How did money feel in your house?

Don’t overthink it. Just write what comes up. You might be surprised.

When you look at your answers, you’ll probably start to see connections: between what you heard as a kid and how you spend now, between how money felt at home and how it feels to you today. Those connections aren’t random. The beliefs you formed before you ever earned a dollar are still running in the background.

They have a name. They’re called money scripts.

04 —Reading The Script.

Every team runs plays. Most players never see the whole playbook. They just know their part.

Your money works the same way. The beliefs you formed growing up, from what you heard, what you didn’t hear and what you saw, became a script. And that script has been calling plays for you ever since, whether you knew it or not.

Financial psychologist Dr. Brad Klontz has spent years studying these beliefs. He calls them money scripts, and his research found four that show up most often:

Money avoidance. Money is bad, or you don’t deserve it. You avoid looking at it, give it away too easily, or feel guilty when you have it.

Money worship. More money will fix everything. There’s never enough, and the next contract or deal will finally make you happy.

Money status. Your self-worth equals your net worth. The car, the chain, the look. If you’re not showing it, it doesn’t count.

Money vigilance. Be careful. Save. Don’t talk about it. It can keep you safe, but it can also turn into anxiety, or keep you from ever enjoying what you’ve earned.

I’d add a fifth, one worth working toward:

Money abundance. There’s enough, and there can be more. Money flows to you and through you. It’s something to build, enjoy, and share, not something to fear, chase, or hide.

Most of us carry a mix. And like the meanings in section 01, none of these is all good or all bad. Vigilance can build security or steal your peace. Status can motivate you or empty your account. The script isn’t the problem. Not knowing you’re running it is.

I mentioned “Pay your Self first.” That script has served me well. It’s why I invested early and built a foundation that gives me the freedom to pursue my goals the way I want to.

But there’s been another script running too, and this one has worked against me.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up the belief that wanting to make more money is greedy. I’m honestly not sure where it came from. But it shaped how I’ve approached my business.

I’ve never set an income goal or a growth goal. I’ve always believed that if I take care of my clients and do what’s right for them, the money will take care of itself. And it has. I have no complaints.

But underneath that was a fear: if I made money a focus, things would start to unwind. And that fear has limited how much I can help people. The truth is, the only way to help more people the way I want to is to make more money.

So I’m rewriting that script.

Wanting more money isn’t greedy if the reason is to do good with it: to help others, invest in their dreams, and take stress off the people I care about. If that’s the why, then I should be trying to make as much as I can, so I can do more good.

Remember the shooting slump. Knowing you’re missing left isn’t enough. You have to find the why.

Your script is the why.

Once you’ve read it, you get to decide what to do with it. Keep the parts that fit who you are. Edit the parts that don’t. And where you need to, write something new, something that fits your Authentic Self instead of a story you inherited.

That’s the real “Money Talk.” Not the one where someone tells you how to invest, but the one you have with your Self about what money means, how you use it, where your beliefs came from, and what you want them to be.

Seneca wrote that it isn’t the man with too little who is poor, but the one who craves more. Reading your script is how you figure out what “enough” means for you. And once you know that, you can start building toward it.

That’s where we’re headed soon: the business of YOU.

🔌 The Plug…

I know. I’m recommending another newsletter in the longest 12:24 yet.

But if you’re serious about your sport, you have to study it outside the game too.

My friend Justin Ochoa just started a weekly Substack called Three Points. It’s written for hoopers, but sports overlap enough that every athlete will find something to take away.

I’ve known Justin for years. He trained my oldest son, Roman, and I consider Roman lucky to have worked with him as long as he did, before Justin got called up to work with the Atlanta Hawks. I’ve also recorded a number of podcasts with him, and his knowledge, creativity, and vision for the game have always impressed me. When it comes to basketball geniuses, I put him right up there with Chris Brickley.

I’m bummed he moved to Atlanta. But I couldn’t be happier for him.

And yes, I’m plugging my friend. But I’m doing it because the first few issues have been really good, and I know they’ll keep getting better.

​Check out Three Points on Substack​

📓 From My Notebook…

I’m really enjoying writing these essays, and I want to take a moment to thank you for reading them.

I hope you’re starting to see the vision: helping you become a better athlete, perform at a higher level, and live a happier, more fulfilled life. Everything I write about will help you in your sport, and in life.

As an early subscriber, I want to share a little of where 12:24 is headed.

Soon, each essay will have a companion video that breaks it down. It won’t replace the essay. It’ll add context, and hopefully bring more people from YouTube to the writing. I’ve also mapped out a few different “shows” for the 12:24 YouTube channel. More on those once they’re recording on a regular schedule.

As the audience grows, I see a podcast becoming part of 12:24. A past version of me would have launched it already. But I’ve learned that growing multiple audiences at once is hard unless you’re a full-time creator, and I’m not. So the essays come first. When the podcast comes, I hope many of you will listen.

Eventually, I see a community for athletes who want to put these principles into action but aren’t at the point of working with me one-on-one. Same lesson here: launching it too early would mean starting weaker than I want. When more of you are asking for a place to come together, I’ll build it.

That’s the plan, and that’s why I’m being patient with these long-form essays.

I’ll see you in twelve days for issue 004.

That's it for 12:24 #003.

If something here speaks to you, just reply. I read and respond to every one.

See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,

JC