KANSAS CITY, Mo. – When Ndamukong Suh played defensive tackle in the NFL, he was all business.
Suh earned Defensive Rookie of the Year honors with the Detroit Lions, five Pro Bowls and later a Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during his 13-year career. But Suh also meant business off the field, too, and he shared those experiences with members of the auction industry during the World Remarketing Convention here earlier this year.
From ventures in real estate to hospitality, Suh is also managing partner, of House of Spears, which is an investment portfolio, he is a partner in the real estate company HMS Developments and founder in Generals Restaurant Group. He also has a podcast called “No Free Lunch:” where he speaks with experts on the most successful people in sports manage their money and grow their wealth,
Auction owner Chad Biley sat with Suh for a Q&A in a revealing interview showing that Suh has spent as much time closing deals as he did sacking quarterbacks. His success in football and business started University of Nebraska, where he received a degree in construction management engineering and nearly every accolade a defensive player could receive. Suh said his drive for success began at home, where his mother – a Jamaican – was an elementary school teacher and his father – aa Cameroonian – was a mechanical engineer. “I really followed in his footsteps,” Suh said. “I was on job sites as a young kid back in Portland, Ore., watching him work tirelessly building his own company. I just took a love and liking to it, getting my own hands dirty.”
His parents were both entrepreneurs as they together owned real estate and apartments, where Suh would spent time cutting the grass. “I never understood,” Suh said. “I was like, ‘Why don’t you just have someone else do this? And they said, ‘No, you’re going to be part of this family. You want to play soccer and AAU basketball you’re going to help ern dollars to get you to these places.’ “I had everything I needed, but not everything I wanted.”
Suh said he was fortunate to go to Nebraska and play football, but his ultimate goal was to always come home and build a division under his dad’s company. He eventually did partner with his dad on various real estate developments.
Bailey asked Suh about what made a successful culture in the NFL, where he eventually played for five teams, competed in three Super Bowls. “Every year was different,” he said. “One thing that I noted that was a correlation among all those teams was the type of effort and energy each individual person put into their particular role and they embraced that. “Also, having a coach…who is saying ‘I want to empower you.’”
Suh said former Lions head coach Jim Caldwell was his best coach across all his football career. But he added that his Super Bowl winning year with the Bucs was special because it was a player-led team, with quarterback Tom Brady and wide receiver Mike Evans leading on the offensive side of the ball and Suh, linebacker Lavonte David and lineman Vita Vea on the defensive side.
Head coach Bruce Arians set the rules but let the players be the enforcers. “When you empower people, give them guidance and focus and set these boundaries and these guardrails – and allow then to live within that – you usually find success in that,” Suh said.
He admitted he’s gone over guardrails plenty of times – through suspensions and multiple fines – but “I found my back to the correct path.” Suh said a big part of his growth involved learning how to be uncomfortable, such as when he came in as a #2 overall draft pick and having lofty expectations. He was fortunate to play with other former Nebraska guys in Detroit – guys like Dominic Raiola and Kyle Vanden Bosch, players he wanted to learn from and men he asked to challenge him. “Dominic, on the opposite side (of me on the line) was center for Detroit for 10+ years and he beat me up every single day in practice,” he said.
Raiola “knew all these different tricks and was very savvy,” Suh said. Vanden Bosch, who sat next to Suh in meetings, would punch him, tell him to wake up, encourage him to study and learn everything. “I took things from their pots of successes and made them my own,” Suh said.
On the business side, Suh experienced discomfort early on, shortly after graduating from Nebraska, when he got the chance to sit down with legendary investor Warren Buffett. Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne, a legend in his own right, had introduced Suh to Buffett his senior year as an honorary captain. But shortly after graduation, Suh asked if Osborne if he could set up a meeting with Buffett. “It was very nerve-racking,” Suh said. “I got there two hours before the meeting, just sitting in his office waiting.” He admitted he brough a long list of questions for the investor but decided to throw it out and just have a conversation with him. “It was talking to my dad,” Suh said. “It was super easy; he was super welcoming.”
Even today, Suh can pick up the phone and ask him questions. “I learned from my mom, a school teacher, that there was no dumb question ever,” he said. “You have to be OK with asking for help. People get stuck in a box, but you only grow when you get out of that box, Suh said.
“Stagnation is failure. It’s simple as that.”
