Your Teen Has a Brand Before They Have an Identity

Most of us spent high school trying to figure out who we were. A growing number of high school athletes are now being asked a different question: what are you worth?

In a new Wall Street Journal video report, See What It Takes to Turn a High-School Athlete Into a Business, Belle Cushing and Harriet Ryan look at how name, image and likeness deals are moving from college campuses into high schools. NIL has already pumped billions of dollars into college sports. Now teenagers, some of them sophomores, are signing endorsement deals of their own.

Cushing and Ryan present both sides fairly. For some parents and coaches, NIL money is a welcome way to offset the rising cost of elite youth sports. Others, especially in the six states that still restrict NIL before college, believe letting teenagers cash in on their personal brands pushes the professionalization of amateur sports too far.

Both views deserve a hearing. But I think the debate is missing a question that matters more than the money.

The bet families are making

The money is already shaping childhood long before high school. In an earlier Journal story, Advanced Stats and $500 Bats: Why Baseball for 6-Year-Olds Is Breaking the Bank, Harriet Ryan describes 6-year-olds on travel teams whose families commonly spend $10,000 a year. Youth sports is now a $40 billion-a-year industry, much of its growth driven by private equity, and NIL is turning the talent of ever-younger athletes into a business opportunity.

Many parents say a college career is the reason they spend. The odds, as Ryan reports, are long: fewer than 3% of high school baseball players will play Division I, and only about 5% of college players at any level are drafted. One father who raised two sons in the sport and now counsels other families called it "a horrible investment."

That's the setting NIL arrives in. When a family has invested this much, it becomes very hard for anyone, parent or child, to ask whether the kid at the center of it is still choosing the path.

A brand built before the person

Name, image and likeness are three things you can put on a contract. Notice what isn't on the list: identity.

Who a young person is becoming, what they value and what they would never trade can't be signed over. And at 15 or 16, most kids haven't fully discovered it yet.

That's the risk I see. When a teenager's personal brand arrives before their identity, the brand starts doing the defining, and a young athlete can quietly learn to become whatever keeps the deal going.

I've written about how teens first learn to edit themselves in school, when they learn to perform what the system measures and set aside what makes them unmistakably themselves. NIL can raise the stakes of that edit. Now the performance has a price.

What a real personal brand is

After years of working with leaders on their personal brands, I can tell you a lasting brand isn't built from attention. It's built from self-knowledge. I ask executives four questions. What is the enduring idea you stand for? What differentiates you? What experience do people have of you? And what do you solve for right now? Those questions work just as well for a 16-year-old point guard. The athletes who answer them before they sign anything will make better deals, because they'll know which ones fit who they are and which ones don't.

Every athlete's playing career ends, usually sooner than anyone expects. If the brand was only ever about the sport, the young person is left asking who they are without it. If it was built on identity, it travels with them into whatever comes next.

What parents can do now

Start with who, not how much. Before any deal, sit down with your teen and work through those four questions together. Let them answer in their own words. If they can't yet, that's where to begin.

Separate their worth from their stats. Make sure your child hears, often, that you value them for who they are, not for what a sponsor will pay. Kids notice what we celebrate.

Be their parent, not their agent. Your teen has plenty of people who will measure their value. They need at least one adult who doesn't.

Ask whether the deal fits. Does it reflect something your child actually believes in? A good deal should feel like an extension of who they are, not a costume.

The opportunity inside the debate

I don't think the answer is to keep teenagers away from NIL. For many families the money is real, and learning to represent yourself and negotiate can be a powerful education.

The answer is to get the order right. Identity first, brand second. When a young athlete knows who they are, a deal becomes something they choose rather than something that chooses them.

Near the end of Ryan's baseball story, one mother describes the question she and her husband ask their sons from time to time: "Is this still fun for you?" It may be the most important question in youth sports, and it belongs before every deal, every tournament and every dollar.

Our kids are growing up in a world that will try to define them earlier than ever. Our job is to make sure they get there first.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.