Joe McLean – How to be a Pro’s Pro

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:04)
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:24)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:49)
My guest this week is Joe McLean, founder of Intersect Capital, which provides financial advisory services to a variety of clients, including a number of NBA players and other professional athletes.
What I loved about this conversation was the weaving of sport, coaching and finance into a cohesive whole. There's so much to take from this discussion, from the importance of service and low self-orientation to the impact of strict standards for who you work with, to common mistakes we all tend to make with money. Please enjoy my conversation with Joe McLean.
So Joe, usually I don't do a whole lot of background or backstory at the beginning of these, but I just find yours especially interesting, so I think we'll do it this episode. Could you begin by telling us how you got to where you are today? You're in a fairly unique position, we'll talk a lot about the ins and outs of your business now, but your backstory as an athlete and someone in finance sort of makes you uniquely situated for this. So you can begin wherever you'd like, I definitely want to tell that story about your time in Ireland hustling and trying to make a go of it as a professional player. Tell us about your backstory.

**Joe McLean** (1:47)
Well, from the time I was eight years old, that's about what I can remember, that all I wanted to do was a play in the NBA. I grew up as a Celtic fan, but had Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and everybody on the walls and that's what I aspired to be and made a pretty good run at it. I had a good high school career and then went on to play for Lou Olson at University of Arizona, who's still today a great mentor of mine, but I didn't get drafted by the NBA. From there, it became a bit of a grind and I chased that dream for as long as I could. I played for about three and a half years and I would basically get cut by an NBA team in the preseason and then you had the choice of either playing in a minor league in the United States or go overseas.
Overseas, there's only two Americans per team for the majority of that and that's still true today and there's no binding contracts there. If you lose a couple of games, they rip up your contract and send you home. For me, I never went home, you call your agent or your friend and find the next gig.
In that three and a half years, I lived in about 11 countries.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:43)
What was the story behind trying to circumvent that two-player rule with your time in Ireland?

**Joe McLean** (2:48)
So if you had dual citizenship, you could play in Spain and not count as an American. It didn't matter what country. So my great grandparents were from Ireland.
And so I moved to Ireland for a year and played in their basketball league in a small town called Bala Ná, which is in the county Mayo. There's about 8,000 people in that town. I think there's 84 pubs in that town.
And I basically tried to meet every politician I could. I bought a farm over there and really tried to ingratiate myself into the community. And long story short, I never got the passport, but I had the time of my life. I think I made about 300 bucks a week and we were sponsored by a pub.
These are people that I have friends for life over there forever.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (3:29)
What was the transition like away from, so after that several years, continuing to try to play professionally into the world of finance?

**Joe McLean** (3:36)
For me, it seemed impossible because my first step was I think this 1999 And the majority of my friends were all working at tech companies because I lived in the Bay Area, still do.
And all of them, and they were good friends, but some of them I remember took seven years to graduate college and they were on paper worth millions and millions of dollars working at all these different tech firms.