Hello and welcome back to Redirect and my name is Andrew East and this is a show where we sit down with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, really anybody who has experienced a pivot or change in life.

I call these changes Redirections and at some point or another we all go through them and so I want to sit down with people who have made it through this change as well in order to clean wisdom but also hear some pretty good stories along the way.

Today is an episode that I geeked out over. I love the YouTube talk, the YouTube community and so I sit down with Reed Dukcher who is really doing some innovative and unique things in the space of content creation and really the creator space if you will of digital media.

Reed's story is this, he was playing college football, got hurt but he had this parallel passion of the YouTube creator space and so he started kind of pursuing that and got exposure to people like dude perfect and now he's the manager of some top YouTube talent you may have heard of Mr. Beast

Reed works with him and he also has this investment fund and so anyway they're doing a bunch of really cool innovative things in the space and so you'll hear me geek out over some of that as well.

If you want to find out more about Reed and his company night media I'll link information on both down below but I'm appreciative of Reed for taking the time and if you haven't subscribed the show or given in a rating please do so on whatever platform you're listening on really helps us out but let's go and jump into one with Reed Dukcher.

Reed it's a pleasure to meet you man hey listen I know we both have similar backgrounds in football and I was looking at your stats back at North Dakota State I know your wider see where I came across an article saying former bison walk on works his way into playing time first of all I love that you're that kind of guy second of all it did mention that you ran a 4.840 yard dash which have we gotten that time down have we have we

faster now.

Man I haven't ran a 40 and seven years so I hope so that was I can't even remember when that article came out I was probably my freshman year I think the reason it came out was because we were playing the university of Kansas and I was a

red shirt freshman and I was starting the game and it was like the first time a red shirt freshman had started at NDSU on like that level like playing in front of that crowd and I think that's why the article came out we ended up winning that game 6 to 3 of

the year and then we turned around I think two years later and beat Iowa State when they were ranked number 13 so we had a we had a crazy run for a while.

So what what what ended your your football was it the finger.

I got pretty banged up I think you know I loved football it's something that that I played all through high school and played in college I kind of got to a point where I was thinking about my future and it was very unclear what I was going to do with the rest of my life and I started talking to my parents about it and I was honestly pretty scared that I was going to end up graduating with the degree and exercise science playing five years of football and really having nothing to do after that and then and you see this with most athletes now and there's actually a company where I was going to be able to do it.

I'm actually a great athlete now and there's actually a company I work with here in town that like prepares them for life after sports and it's not just football it's everything right and so I got really afraid of what life would be like after I was done playing football because I knew I wasn't going to play at the next level at the NFL and I just started to prepare for that next phase of my life and football was no longer the number one thing that I was focused on and that's when I knew I had to just make a pivot.

Do you know Joe Jelon? Why does that sound familiar? And shoot Brett who was an old Baylor quarterback?

Oh shoot. Oh man now you're hitting me with Texas football knowledge you're going to give me a trouble.

You're not you're living in Dallas so I'm thinking anyway they are doing a similar thing we're preparing athletes for careers afterwards.

Dude I was fortunate to have the experience of being picked up in the NFL and then I view it as fortunate that I didn't really make it and my first seven go around signing with teams because the further you get into a sport the harder it is or really the further you get into any career the harder it is to pivot out of it right and so I think you know clearly you you've established yourself well in the space that you're currently in.

I do have to say so I know your story fits the theme of the show really well with being redirected out of football into sports agency and representation which I'd love to talk about that into your current digital representation.

But there are some episodes that I do in some interviews that I set up that are strictly for selfish reasons and so background on how I came across read is.

It been like so it's Shawn and I have been doing YouTube for like five years and the first three years of doing that dude I was a geek about all the back and stuff and learning about just like the space in general.

And then the most recent two years like the 2019 to 2020 I just kind of lost that we just got caught up in our routine but I came across your podcast creator economics and bro it sparked that passion in me again just because the way you guys approach.

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