Jaylen Brown discusses breaking boxes and building brands at Sloan conference

He wants to share with fans why he chose Cal over NCAA powerhouses, such as Duke and Kentucky. He wants to explain why he chose to negotiate his first NBA deal without an agent. He wants to recount how he came to speak at Harvard and MIT by age 23.

At the 14th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, during a live taping of “The Boardroom” — an ESPN+ show produced by NBA superstar Kevin Durant and his agent, Rich Kleiman — Brown discussed the gradual process of sharing his story. Along with Kleiman, ESPN’s Jay Williams, and Twitter Sports’ TJ Adeshola, Brown mulled all that goes into building and promoting a personal brand.

“I’ve always had my own way and own style of doing things, just taking my time,” said Brown, now in his fourth season with the Celtics. “My mom will tell you I was two weeks late when I was born. I just took my time.”

Unlike some athletes, Brown isn’t interested in making generic marketing deals for money or exposure. In fact, he estimates he turned down almost a million dollars in such opportunities over the last two years, simply because he didn’t want to be put into a box. He wasn’t interested in accepting a position that a company could easily fill with somebody else.

Instead, Brown wants ownership. He wants to create a business that’s authentically his own. And as modern basketball fans have embraced athletes’ off-court interests — like technology, education, and fashion, in Brown’s case — he wants to make time for some side ventures.

In order to pursue them, Brown suggests athletes need CEOs.

“In the NBA especially, there’s so much opportunity,” added Kleiman, who co-founded ThirtyFive Ventures with Durant. “How you connect and get access is really important, and that’s just so hard to balance without that CEO-type role.”

Throughout the brand-building process, Brown stressed how important he feels it is to stay centered on basketball. His username on social media is ‘FCHWPO,’ which stands for ‘faith, consistency, [and] hard work pays off.’

“When [players] enter the league, the focus should be on what I call ‘your main girlfriend,’ and that should be basketball,” Brown said. “There’s an African proverb that says if you try to chase two hares at once, you’ll mess around and lose both.”

Keeping basketball at the forefront, Brown says he wants to be more active with his storytelling over the next two years. How he ultimately chooses to express himself — be it a documentary, video series, or memoir — is still to be determined, but don’t be surprised if it’s through an innovative method.

“There’s a million different ways to make money,” he says. “There’s a million different ways to be successful. Content has made that possible.”