“My father did a very great job using scare tactics. Everything time an athlete would do something crazy, I would get in trouble for it,” Shaq said.
“A lot of athletes, when they’re done playing, they have no income, and they go broke. And I never wanted to be like that. So even when I was making a lot of money playing basketball, I would come home and see my father, and [he’d] be like, “Yeah, but what are you doing with your money?”
When asked what financial advice he would give to young athletes, O’Neal said, “I tell them this money is not going to last forever. You’ve got to save it, you’ve got to invest it, and you’ve got to be smart.”
O’Neal’s advice reflects well upon his track record of a number of profitable business and investment ventures. In the ‘90s, Shaq invested in Google, long before the company went public in 2004. Shaq also created The O’Neal Group, which has an impressive real estate portfolio, and he even owns a considerable percentage of Five Guys and Auntie Anne’s franchises across the nation, among numerous other business undertakings.
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