New York Giants quarterback Jameis Winston has finally figured out how to win, but it took losing $400,000 a month to get there.

“I believe collaboration leads to success,” Winston told Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi (see the video above).

The former Heisman Trophy winner likened financial success to teamwork, where a player must have the willpower to solicit perspectives from “different venues.”

“Be where your feet are,” Winston said, referencing advice a coach had given him. “No matter what stage you are in the process, you have to be always present and willing to adapt.”

The 32-year-old veteran NFL quarterback has dealt with a significant share of financial challenges. Speaking on the “No Free Lunch” podcast, Winston explained that early on in his career, he “enabled” family and friends to burn through nearly $400,000 a month of his money on clothing and eBay flips.

Now, Winston says he has a different way of approaching money-driven decisions. He noted that he invests in what he loves, whether it be sports, tech, or youth.

Getting burned leads to cooking with caution: “When you have all these different opportunities that are available to you, yes, they are available, but not everything is beneficial,” Winston said.

He focused on answering what he wants to achieve in a year, and how to measure his success and process. This disciplined strategy led him to invest in athletic and tech funds and relationships with pros like Jim Neesen.

Neesen, managing partner at Connor Group, notes that the IPO “gym” has gotten crowded, pointing to the roughly 1,600 global unicorns. In the US alone, about 800 have spent the last three years “bulking up” their revenues.

The firm has helped take 265 companies public — including giants like Tesla (TSLA) and Uber (UBER) — firms that are right in Winston’s “neighborhood.”

With 345 IPOs last year and a projection of up to 400 in 2026, the wave is returning after a few lean years, as Neeson called it. While the exit event is the showstopper, for the average investor, the entrance to “actually fund companies” is the hard part.

Neeson’s advice for new retail investors is to begin “voting with your feet and your dollars … to get more comfortable with the markets.” Instead of chasing the day-one hype of a SpaceX (SPAX.PVT), OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), or Stripe (STRI.PVT), he suggests getting to know these companies long before they ring the bell.

“You don’t always have to jump in day one,” Neeson said. “It’s not a quick buy and flip. It’s actually, ‘I want to invest in the neighborhoods that I believe in.'”