The video explores the professional and personal life of Ndamukong Suh, a prominent NFL player. Known for his fierce defensive skills on the field, Suh has gained recognition beyond the gridiron as a real estate investor and business visionary. Through the narration, we learn about Suh's personal philosophy, which is centered on his desire to impact as many lives positively through his investments, just as he has done on the football field.

Suh's diverse interests extend well beyond football into areas such as technology and hospitality. Alongside his business ventures, Suh is a restaurateur and real estate developer with a mission to generate wealth and revitalize communities. The video highlights Suh's commitment to creating opportunities for underrepresented communities, focusing on social impact and financial literacy through his investment strategies.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. dominant [ˈdɒmɪnənt] - (adjective) - Having power and influence over others. - Synonyms: (preeminent, controlling, superior)

He's been, in my time, one of the most dominant three techniques in the game.

2. real estate [ˈrɪəl ɪˌsteɪt] - (noun) - Property consisting of land or buildings. - Synonyms: (property, land, holdings)

The primary focus for sue has been real estate.

3. revitalize [ˌriːˈvaɪtəˌlaɪz] - (verb) - To inject new energy or life into something. - Synonyms: (renew, rejuvenate, restore)

Investment in areas like Alberta, where Sue and his father bought a property, have helped revitalize neighborhoods.

4. gentrification [ˌdʒɛntrɪfɪˈkeɪʃən] - (noun) - The process of renovating a district so that it conforms to middle-class taste and displaces earlier, usually poorer residents. - Synonyms: (urban renewal, rehabilitation, transformation)

But it's also led to gentrification, driving up home prices and pushing people of color out.

5. altruistic [ˌæltrʊˈɪstɪk] - (adjective) - Showing selfless concern for the well-being of others. - Synonyms: (selfless, charitable, humanitarian)

We have a very altruistic view when it comes to our real estate endeavors.

6. disenfranchised [ˌdɪsɪnˈfræntʃaɪzd] - (adjective) - Deprived of power, rights, and privileges. - Synonyms: (marginalized, powerless, excluded)

People of color in Portland have been historically disenfranchised, especially when it comes to one of Sioux's biggest businesses, real estate and development.

7. philosophy [fəˈlɒsəfi] - (noun) - A theory or attitude held by a person that acts as a guiding principle for behavior. - Synonyms: (principle, belief, doctrine)

So tell me your business philosophy like in a nutshell?

8. colleague [ˈkɒliːɡ] - (noun) - A person with whom one works, especially in a profession or business. - Synonyms: (associate, coworker, partner)

And when you have the opportunity to help other people at the same time, it's a smart business decision.

9. calculated [ˈkælkjʊleɪtɪd] - (adjective) - Deliberate and carefully planned to achieve a specific outcome. - Synonyms: (deliberate, planned, strategic)

We've always been somewhat calculated and focused on what we wanna accomplish.

10. hospitable [hɒˈspɪtəbl] - (adjective) - Friendly and welcoming to guests or strangers. - Synonyms: (welcoming, friendly, gracious)

That's an idea passed down to Sue from his father.

After Football, Ndamukong Suh Is Tackling Real Estate

Ndama Konsue has been one of the most feared defenders in the NFL since the moment he came into the league. "When I'm on the football field, I'm in between those white lines. My job is to piss everybody off, and so if I don't do that, I'm not doing my job." At six foot four inches and more than 300 pounds, Ndamakan Su has done his job in the NFL for twelve years now. Sometimes maybe too well. "He got frozen feet and didn't realize he was stepping on my calf. He also stomped on one of my teammates at one point. He's been, in my time, one of the most dominant three techniques in the game." "I understand not everybody's gonna like me, and that's okay, but I guarantee the people that don't like me don't know who I am and haven't even taken the time to get to know me."

After spending a few days with indomicant here in the rainy city of Portland, I've gotten an insight into a soft spoken native portlandian family man, restaurateur, and real estate investor who's endeavoring to have more impact with his businesses than he's had against quarterbacks in the NFL. "It's a simple concept of like, I don't want to be at the top of the pyramid or be amongst the 1% and be there by myself. I want to bring other people with me that are like-minded and you want to work with them. And when you have the opportunity to help other people at the same time, it's a smart business decision. Why not create both?"

Dunk Kinks is more of the observer and analyzes before he dives in and his car is full throttle right into it right away. They don't go anywhere without each other. A few times that they have, they're trying to figure out where the other one is. And I have twin sisters and I have twin cousins. Twins definitely run in the family. She has twins on her side, too. For someone who is so single minded on the field, seeing sue in his native habitat, it's a bit startling, and not just because he's a dad. From his home office, bouncing from zooms to calls to texts, he's methodically creating an empire. It includes investments in tech companies like quip and ember and hospitality investments, including restaurants in Portland and beyond. But the primary focus for sue has been real estate.

Over the past decade, much of his investments have been focused on multifamily and commercial projects. "So tell me your business philosophy like in a nutshell, like, how do you distill it down? Just understanding that investing and social impact can go, without question, hand in hand. And I think you can impact other people's lives and do good, but at the same time, make smart business decisions. Where I've always seen it as a true give and take relationship versus just someone always taking. And I think that's that capitalistic mindset that majority of America lives in the sky."

It's a short trip from where we're sitting to see where sue came from. His home in the off season is here in the Irvington district of Portland, and his house is only a few streets away from where he grew up. "This hoop's been here for ages. Oh, my gosh. And the family that owned this house, their son actually played in the NBA. There used to be at the far end, we called it our little hoop, where we'd have our main duck contest." "What was Portland like when you were growing up? I mean, now it's seen as this, like, boom town, right, but was it like that 20 years ago? No. Portland was very, very small. Everybody knew everybody pretty much."

Growing up in Portland, sue was surrounded by sports. Nike's headquarters was just 20 minutes away, and he still works out there when he's home. His older sister, Ngoom sue, also became an elite athlete. She'd end up going to the 2004 Olympics as a soccer player, playing for their father's home country of Cameroon. "Oftentimes in a family, especially when you have multiple superstars, it's clear that, like, this family's in the business of growing superstar athletes, my parents could care less about. They wanted us to be in athletics and have that fulfillment of being in sports. But hands down, education was the number one. And my sister's super smart. She got a degree in kinesiology and biological sciences."

Sue's parents divorced when he was two, but stayed close. His mom was an elementary school teacher, and his dad owned an h vac company. "As a young kid, I enjoyed going to work with him. I got to spend a lot of time with my dad on job sites, and it's really what got me into the business. As I got a little bit older towards middle school, it would be me going to the job site and being able to say, all right, you can earn $510 towards your bike. He just wanted to see if I'd be willing to get up at 06:00 in the morning."

"This is my dad's house that we grew up in. We bought the building, lived on one side, and rented the other side, and that's where we really started to learn about real estate, or how I started to learn about real estate." From those early days, Sue's fascination with an ambition in real estate only grew, especially as a pro football career gave him the means to eye bigger and bigger projects.

He's been buying and building property in his hometown of Portland, as well as across the United States, including luxury residential, office and hospitality space, and affordable housing, all with a mission to help build generational wealth through real estate. "And real estate is one of the most tried and true places to store and grow wealth. Buying and owning property, commercial or residential, when done right, can be a source of income as well as accrue value over time. That's if you choose projects wisely and have patience."

Over the past few years, the pandemic both increased demand and lowered the supply of housing, leading to skyrocketing values. At the same time, low interest rates made acquiring the capital needed to purchase properties even easier. More recently, though, rising mortgage rates and new supply have begun to change that picture, and rents have been increasing at historic levels. "Owning real estate has the additional benefit of influencing, maybe even transforming the neighborhood and the community around you. That's an idea passed down to sue from his father."

"Hey, he assembled a handful of different lots and projects, and this is one of them that has been, I won't say a unicorn, but it's been very, very profitable. If you look at the building, we have the exterior. So we gutted everything inside and kept the exterior facade and then built on top of that. It was originally a chop shop when we first took over. "People at night when I was growing up in the nineties and early two thousands would not walk up and down these streets by any means. And you see it's live. You got great restaurants up and down, coffee shops further down, you got, everybody probably knows of salt and straw. They're right up the street. There's no way they would be here back in the nineties. So my dad had a great vision and focus for seeing where the city was moving."

Athletes investing in real estate properties in order to renovate them isn't that remarkable at its face? What separates sue is his fluency in the details of the business. He learned that on the job with his dad, as well as in the classroom. "Account for him, plan for him, recognize him as perhaps the most disruptive defensive player in college football, the most dominant player that I've seen this season." A heavily recruited athlete, he opted for the University of Nebraska, which has not only a great football team, but a highly regarded construction engineering program.

"I knew leaving high school, I wanted to get an engineering degree because my ultimate goal was to come back here to Portland and build another division to my dad's company. Granted, that didn't necessarily happen because other things transpired. Like going pro. Yeah, like going pro. Yeah. I think I get it from both my parents, but primarily my dad. We've always been somewhat calculated and focused on what we wanna accomplish in building and connecting with the right people, and then also just learning from others."

"Lincoln, Nebraska, may not be the first place you'd think to meet some of the world's most influential business people. The Portland metro area alone has more people living in it than the entire state of Nebraska. But his play on the field allowed him to meet and maintain relationships with future mentors in his business career, including the oracle of Omaha himself, Warren Buffet. I loved the Wall Street Journal story last year that called you a secret finance nerd. Let's talk a little bit about that, because this guy's smart. Believe it. Ever since then, we've been close friends, confidant, and really a true mentor. Being able to bounce a bunch of different ideas off and then also understand how he envisions the world."

"Although he's not fully into real estate, and he's changed a little bit because he now has Berkshire Hathaway homes and whatnot. That long term vision and that being able to buy and hold is one of the greatest things ever that I learned from him. Su also met with one of the most interesting people who has split time between the locker room and the boardroom, Joe Moglia. Moglia's career began in the coaching world, but he would rise through the ranks to lead TD Ameritrade as CEO from 2001 to 2008 and chairman from 2008 to 2020, navigating the company through the global financial crisis and its aftermath, as well as its eventual combination with Schwab."

"He was around my entire senior year, and one day I just asked him, like, you always leave every Friday before our games and come back Saturdays ready to go. Like, where do you go? And it's always like a black car going out. It's like, I go to New York, go take care of business with TD Ameritrade. I'm the chairman there. And then I come back and obviously have my role here with you guys. And I was like, that's pretty interesting. Like, I'd love to learn more. And so he said, well, make sure you follow up with me after the season. All right? So I asked him this exact same question. Check out what Joe had to say so our first step. Our first step is going to be, I want you to come down to my office."

"The season was over, and I want to see the budget that you would put together. So he comes down about a month later, and I got to tell you, I was impressed. He comes into my office with a suit on, tie on. He looked great. And we sat down, he showed me his budget. The budget was about $60,000. Now, we've talked about that a little bit. In two or three months, he was going to get a pretty significant contract, and he was going to make a shitload of money and $60,000 budget with regards to all the different things that the people he's going to be interacting with is probably not going to quite, quite work out. Yeah, that's exactly right. He's like, man, you're going to be spending anywhere from 20, $30,000 a month."

"And I was like, there's no way. I'm in college right now. My rent's like 1500. Yeah, I didn't imagine ever getting there. Lo and behold, I'm there. So there was, of course, one other pivotal person he'd meet and cultivate a relationship with during his college days, his future wife, Katja. I have only been a champion with this beautiful lady in my life. We met all the way back in 2009. I was a women's basketball player and he was a football player. And the best way that I like to explain it is he ran after me a lot and would always try to kind of say, he's gonna break my ankles or, what, are we gonna play one on one? And I was like, hi, who are you? And so after some time, I finally gave him a little chance and I got to know him, and truly, he became my best friend."

The two have had a whirlwind past few years. They moved in together in 2018, were engaged in 2019, and had their then traditional zoom wedding back in 2020. In February of 2021, Indomican would win his first Super bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and just a few months later, the two would welcome their twin sons, Kari and Kingston. When the two aren't changing diapers or doing the latest TikTok trend, they're business partners working together out of the same home office for much of the off season.

"We really both listen to each other's calls. We kind of have what's going on in the mornings, after workouts, and when the boys are doing breakfast, we'll be like, okay, what's your plan for today? How many calls do you have? When are your calls are the ones that I can listen in on. Are there ones that he's like, you know what? I want to be a part of that. I want to participate or just listen in. The two also work together on the Sue Family foundation, the charitable arm of Sue's business ventures that focuses on empowering people with resources for long term success. One issue they're working to address is financial literacy." "Right now, there is no financial literacy requirement at all, at any level. And to me, that's mind blowing. Finances are in our life from the minute we are born to the minute we are no longer here. And so to not have a requirement of how things run, how to properly use your finances, is, to me, quite insane. We have specific programs that we work with that students that are coming from all different types of backgrounds are able to come together and really learn how that's structured. Right now, we're focused on our own backyard, which would be Portland, Oregon. The ultimate goal would be to be in every state."

And while many athletes get back to their community, the Sioux extend that notion to all of their business enterprises as well, looking not only at how they can impact the bottom line, but impact their communities. And one of those spaces has been restaurants. One of Sue's restaurant investments is here in downtown Portland, a fast casual restaurant called Bay's Fried Chicken. He started with a previously successful Portland based restaurateur named Micah Camden. To understand it, I ordered a chicken sandwich for myself. For journalism. Tell me about where we are. We are in downtown Portland.

"This building was built in 1882. So that's an old building. You don't get much older than that in Portland. We got the fried chicken sandwich, we got the chicken strips. It's easy, it's approachable. It's super great quality. When we opened this up, we went straight organic on all the chicken, which was awesome. It was very, very juicy. So be careful. But good food and a good location aren't guarantees of success in the restaurant world. Restaurants are tricky businesses for athletes, seemingly easy to understand, but complex to conceive, operate, and market. Actually, they're hard businesses for anyone, even food pros."

While Micah himself has had successful ventures with restaurants like Boxer Ramen, Little Big Burger, and blue star Donuts, in 2016, he had to shut down a previous attempt at a fried chicken restaurant. Restaurants are high risk. "What's appealing to you about being in this particular restaurant business? This is one. This is a foodie town. I got amazing chefs, people that enjoy quality, high quality food, and kind of giving back to my community something that was missing and then also you come out and see during a pandemic, a lot of people are supporting people in their endeavors and seeing the success that they're doing and want to support people when they're sometimes in the rough spots or even when they're at their heights."

The last few years have been far from the salad days for the restaurant industry. The pandemic altered dining, living and working habits, and everything from lockdowns to labor shortages have plagued the food business. Bays opened this location only a few months before the global pandemic shut down much of the country. And George Floyds murder led to a reckoning around racial inequality. As protests and counter protests swept the country, Portland became a focal point.

"Images of property destruction by protesters, who themselves were often the victims of violent attacks by extreme right wing groups, as well as Portland police, ricocheted across social media, giving rise to a flood of disinformation by opponents of police reform. This was ground zero right out our front doors. Ground zero for the nightly protest that went on for three or four months. Thankfully enough, this community knew that this location was owned by Sioux and we didn't get stuff thrown to our windows, you know, stuff like that. But the attention that was brought to Portland via those protests, it hit its cause, it hit its nerve, and it started the conversation that is still going on today."

Portland has in recent years been an almost cartoonish example of a liberal stronghold. And while coffee shops and breweries are a thing here, the real Portland is a complicated place in a state of near existential crisis. Facing issues around affordability, the unhoused and crime. People of color in Portland have been historically disenfranchised, especially when it comes to one of Sioux's biggest businesses, real estate and development. Like in many cities across the US nearly a century ago, redlining practices allowed white neighborhoods easier access to capital and excluded black and immigrant communities, including Sue's home in the northeast of Portland, where Irvington was still designed desirable just a few blocks north, Alberta was considered hazardous. And while redlining was made illegal in the sixties, its effects are still being felt. Investment in areas like Alberta, where Sue and his father bought a property, have helped revitalize neighborhoods. But it's also led to gentrification, driving up home prices and pushing people of color out.

Through his development company, HMS sue is hoping to change the traditional narrative. "We are down on Alberta, further down from where we were at before, but this is 30th where we are creating Alberta Alley, which is going to be a nice collection of bipoc type of restaurants." Beyond creating a space for black, indigenous, and people of color owners of restaurants. Sue has also brought in more black investors, including another pro football player with Portland roots named Brennan Scarlett. We went to take a look, but as you might expect, we had to go inside. "Let's go inside."

"I know we got our Portland bad weather and get out of this Portland rain right now. Alberta Alley is still very much a work in progress, but the intention is to create a space for multiple restaurants and eateries in a communal well alley type experience. Currently, they're working to bring a latino owned expansion of poppies, chulos, and another bays fried chicken location to the space. You guys are native sons, you know, sort of putting a different mark on this city."

"Tell me about, you know, your process of being an owner and not just a participant, not just a customer. To some extent, Portland's an interesting place and has a long history of racism, of marginalizing certain groups like the house that I grew up in. On the deed, it says that a black person couldn't own that house, right? But my dad, you know, purchased that house back, you know, in the nineties. Right now, you think about, like, purchasing commercial properties like this, right, under black ownership. And then also, you know, the cycle of having tenants here and being intentional about having tenants here that are represented that may have historically not been able to have the opportunity to be represented. When I grew up here, it was predominantly a black neighborhood, and a lot of different people just kind of starting out their businesses here, really in the BIPOC space."

"And so a lot of gentrification moved those things out and brought up new developments and not really looking for a way to bring those people back in. And so this is an interesting way to fold them back into having that opportunity of kind of getting kicked out and now coming back and hopefully being successful and finding ways to help them be successful, we have a very altruistic view when it comes to our real estate endeavors and have multifamily units and be able to create them in mixed use developments. I think one of the most things I'm going to be proud of as we're ahead getting this journey and started is our ally project attainable living initiative, where we really want to have the ability to afford attainable living for everybody. And we're starting here in Portland."

"There's never been a greater need for housing, and yet it's almost impossible to get housing done and developed. Sue's partner at HMS is Joel Anderson, a third generation contractor and developer based in Portland. And while the two have developed a portfolio of everything from high rise residential to industrial. One of the common threads is their vision of the social impact real estate can have. Both sue and I have been very fortunate and worked very hard, some lucky bounces that went our way. And there's a whole bunch of people that we interact with in our communities that just didn't have the same opportunities and have never had access to invest in commercial real estate."

"While real estate investments have been a great place to store wealth, the recent housing market has left many unable to participate, especially when it comes to BIPoC communities. I think one of the ways that we can do that with, with Altcap, as we call it, is giving them the opportunity to not only pay rent and understand those different pieces and keep it afloat, but also give them an opportunity to be a part of it. And one thing you know about people, when they have ownership into a building, they take care of it that much more."

"Better affordable housing, which about half of americans say their community lacks, is a hot button issue long freighted with racism. Some say they oppose it over perceived increases in crime, erosion in the tax base, and increased traffic. Sue and Joel believe they can ultimately flip the script by better knitting residents into the community economically by affording everyone a stake. altruistic capital, Alt Cap, its very intention is to bring people in that have been excluded."

"If we take an accredited investor, somebody, and say, okay, you're going to invest $100,000 in this project, they go, yes, we go, but you're only credit for 95% of that. And $5,000 or 5% of your investment is going to go to a nonprofit alt cap community reinvestment fund. And we say to them now, okay, you can participate from $500 to $5,000. And for every dollar you invest, we will match you through the alt Cap reinvestment fund, dollar for dollar. And so if you have somebody who invests $500, they now have $1,000 investment into this project. They've effectively doubled their return."

It may seem complicated, but Joel and Sue believe that programs like all cap can give people who've long been excluded from real estate an attainable investment option. While some investors might balk at giving up some of their economics, proponents of this shared ownership believe it's long overdue. "If we can get real estate transactions to include everybody, you're talking about trillion dollar industry that has the ability to engage everybody in a micro fashion, earned at a disproportionate rate, you can transition the wealth of our country in short order, of course, undoing centuries of economic disparity and systemic financial bias. That's a long game for sue. It's his life's work, and he'll be able to devote even more time to it once he leaves the game of football."

"When you leave the league, how do you think about the idea of transition, especially given everything that you've already done in business? Yeah, the transition's a difficult one for me. I look at it consistent and have over the last couple years. From a standpoint, especially since the boys came into my life, I want to spend as much time with them and not miss out on things. How do you balance, like the economics versus the emotions? I mean, this is a deep analysis. This is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make."

"I think the analysis is very straightforward. It comes down to numbers in a lot of ways, but then also just do I believe I have more to offer? Without question. And do I aspire to be in the hall of Fame? No question. Do I want to do that at the cost of not spending time with my kids, not being around my family? Timing is always going to be key to that. We've got a good process with me and the wife. I lean on her a lot, and I think she has a good telltale to give me some different things to think about. And she always says, it's ultimately your decision, but I truthfully know it's both of our decisions."

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Inspiration, Ndamukong Suh, Community Development, Social Impact, Bloomberg Originals