A Different Kind of Currency
I’m in year two of my pro career. Here's what I'm learning from the guys a few steps ahead of me.
Horizon is a mainstreet media series created in partnership with Lighthouse, where athletes share first-person stories about building what comes next.
By Noah Adnan
Edited by Allen Lee
How do I prepare for what’s next while I’m still fully committed to soccer?
That question has been sitting with me for a while now.
I’m 24. I’m in year two of my pro career. And I’m already thinking about what comes after it.
I know how that sounds.
I’m still all in on the game I love. That hasn’t changed. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t thought about what happens if it’s taken away from me.
Not when I’m ready. Not on my terms. Just gone…
When you’re a pro athlete, your life is pretty structured.
Training. Recovery. Games. Travel. Repeat.
Outside of that, everyone fills their time differently. Some guys play Fortnite. Some golf. Some just unplug and spend time with family.
I do all of that too. But part of me can’t fully switch off.
Because I keep coming back to the same thought:
What else could I be building right now?
I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn to athletes who don’t wait until the end. The ones who are already exploring something else while they’re still in it.
Some invest. Some advise. Some write. Some just start figuring it out in public.
At first, I found myself asking a lot of questions.
How did they get started? How did they get into those rooms? Why that particular path?
But the more I paid attention, the more it stopped feeling separate from what I was doing. Because my own path into pro soccer didn’t look that different.
I went from MLS Combine invitee, to being undrafted, to going on trial, to finally signing my first professional contract, to starting the first game of my first season.
There’s nothing linear about my career. I had to roll up my sleeves and figure it out as I went. So I’m doing the same thing off the pitch.
For a long time, I thought building something off the pitch meant writing checks.
Growing up, I watched guys like Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Andre Iguodala operating in the Valley, and I thought that was the model.
You make it, you earn, then you invest. That’s when you’re allowed in the room.
I believed that for a while. Most athletes my age still do.
Then I started paying closer attention to the athletes around me who are doing it without the spotlight. They aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest bank accounts. They’re the ones who figured out their unique edge and went to work with it.
The legend Mr. Johan Cruyff said it best: every disadvantage has its advantage.
I don’t have a ton of capital to deploy yet. What I do have is a front-row seat to locker room conversations and access to people building things around a global sport in real time.
That’s a different kind of currency.
Three guys, in particular, are shaping how I approach my work off the pitch.
Jeremy Ebobisse, who played at my boyhood club, Bethesda SC. He uses capital as a learning tool. Every investment is a rep. Win or lose, he walks away sharper. I might not be writing the same checks yet, but I can still get the reps. Every room I enter, every conversation I have is a rep.
Spencer Jones I knew from Stanford. Before he became a rockstar on LinkedIn, he’d been thinking out loud about investing and sharing lessons he’s learned from his work off the court. Watching him confidently yet humbly build in public has been a good reminder that I can turn my platform into a magnet for opportunities.
Casey Toohill takes a different approach. He writes opinionated blog posts about opportunities in sportstech and emerging market trends. What I’ve taken from him is that a sharp point of view can open doors. He made me realize that proximity alone isn’t enough. You also need a perspective.
Off the pitch, I’m building. I’m building relationships, building experience, building judgment.
I now sit on the board of Spekt, a protective performance sock brand built for athletes. I help validate demand with other pros, give product feedback, share future product ideas. I’m also supporting the business development team at Game1 AI as a brand ambassador and raised money for a non-profit supporting young students to learn STEM.
My early stage work isn’t the shiny or scalable kind that makes headlines. But it’s work that I deeply care about and invested in.
Most of it is me in rooms I wasn’t in a few years ago - asking questions, listening, trying to add value however I can.
Some days I wonder if I’m doing the right things. Whether a 24-year-old in year two has any business even writing a piece like this.
I don’t know yet.
What I do know is that Jeremy, Spencer, Casey, the guys a few steps ahead of me, probably didn’t know either when they started. But they didn’t wait to feel ready. They used what they had and figured out the rest along the way.
So I’m doing the same, understanding that many failures and breakthroughs lie ahead of me. But that is the point, to learn those lessons now and use it as a trampoline for later.
I’m still all in on soccer. That part hasn’t changed.
But I’m not waiting for the final whistle to start the next chapter.
When the time comes, I want to already know the rooms. And I want to have earned the right to be in them.
Noah
Noah Adnan is a professional soccer player currently playing for Loudoun United in the USL. To keep up with Noah, follow him on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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Learning from the guys a few steps ahead is the highest-ROI move there is, and almost nobody does it early enough. I spent 15 years building businesses and the biggest accelerant was always finding the person who’d already made the mistake I was about to make. The fact that you’re writing it down in year two means you’ll compound faster than the guys who wait until year ten to reflect. Good stuff.