Russell Shepard enjoyed a successful NFL tenure as a core special teamer and part-time receiver, accruing over $9 million in career earnings over a seven-year span with the Eagles, Buccaneers, Panthers and Giants. But the LSU alum knew that part of his life wouldn’t last forever.
Shepard had originally planned on becoming a sports agent in his post-playing career, but scrapped that plan after attending the NFL Combine in February, becoming increasingly disillusioned by the prospect of “babysitting” pro athletes. Inspired by Manhattan’s trash epidemic, the 30-year-old entrepreneur traded his football pads in for rubber gloves and a toilet brush.
The Houston native recently launched Shep Boys Waste Management, a start-up business that specializes in distributing portable toilets complete with ventilation fans and built-in hand sanitizer dispensers. The former Giant is apparently making money hand over fist. He even turned down a tryout with the Ravens over the summer so he could focus on his budding new enterprise.
“Everybody was like, ‘Why would you start a company in a pandemic?’ And I’m like why not?” Shepard told Kevin Armstrong of Sports Illustrated. “It is going to be a new norm going forward and we can be one of the first companies to create it.”
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Shep Boys. Shepard, who has further diversified his portfolio by investing in grocery stores, multiple Walgreens locations, a private airline, day care facilities and even a gun range, set his plan in motion earlier this year, acquiring a 2,000-gallon vacuum truck, 125 portable toilets, 50 hand wash stations and 20 holding tanks. He also bought out a two-acre plot near his home in Cypress, Texas to store all his new equipment. Because he had no debt, Shepard’s bank quickly signed off on his plan, greenlighting a credit line of nearly $1 million to help his fledgling business get off the ground.
Rather than leaving the grunge work to someone else, Shepard has taken on most of those responsibilities himself, putting in countless hours of manual labor with work days often beginning as early as 4 AM. Soon Shepard will have a second set of hands with his father planning to come aboard full-time when he retires from his trucking job later this year. Shepard has always been careful with his money but especially so after consulting one of his former teammates around the time the pandemic hit.
“I was telling him, man, I’m kind of tired of the game, not really enjoying it,” said Shepard, who was already plotting his NFL exit strategy. “He said, ‘Man, Shep, you can do that with your lifestyle.’ It will always stick with me, he said, ‘I can’t afford to stop playing. I’ve got too many bills right now.’ Again, he had over $70 million in career earnings.”
A former quarterback who transitioned to wide receiver in college, Shepard totaled 60 catches for 847 yards and six touchdowns over the course of his career. He also contributed 47 tackles on special teams.
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