 I was always somebody who kind of zoned out and put myself in a game situation and would like go crazy if there was a move that I was working on. I would picture myself in a game situation doing that move and succeeding like thousands of times like that's what a practice session for me would look like. It's funny out the the digital era helped me kind of like stay occupied with other things while I was injured you know like before I remember being injured with Ann one back in the day I missed one of the tours I think it was like 2006 I played four games and I missed the entire year after that and I remember just being bored and really not like the ball wasn't in my court as far as business because we saw traditional endorsement deals and then I had like an agent and they kind of did everything from there but now when I get injured it's like there's so much more to be done like there's like content that you have put away that you could reuse there's different like campaigns and different things you can be involved in there's appearance opportunities and stuff like that so I've always been able to stay busy during the downtime instead of just being laid up feeling like everything's halted and honestly I love the term influencer I think like an athlete might feel some type of way about that because you want to be defined as an athlete but for me I feel honored that you know the digital era has brought new opportunity and sort of like rebirth me because I remember there was a time a lot of people don't know like when and one ended 2009 I personally went broke I'm sure a bunch of my teammates did too they've never really spoken about it publicly I don't know for sure but it was a hard time and I remember even going to like pack out high school games and college games and usually like now if I go to a basketball event I need security you know what I mean right but I remember at that point I went I remember going to a couple crowded like basketball centered events and only like maybe one person would recognize me or not even anybody and it was because like what I learned was like people forget really really fast you know when something's off the radar and for me I'm thinking like I would have to transition into doing something else you know I mean like me as a basketball player was over so the fact that the the whole digital era could provide opportunity for me to be rebirth onto the not quite mainstream but maybe mainstream basketball that was humbling you know I mean so I love the term influencer social media influence or whatever you know that was my hope and then even from then on trying to be more transparent across the board I think was best if I look at like guys who I look at his inspiration on YouTube aren't necessarily even athletes it's like top vloggers that do it at the highest level and they have ultimate vulnerability you know everything about their life you know their family where they live their environment their space and so I wanted to do a better job of that I do know that my audience it was hard to get them to tune in to things away from the basketball court so that's always been the drawback from that not necessarily not wanting to be vulnerable I just know that when I did those away from the court videos there was less interaction there but I also think that there needs to be a higher production level better edit better shoot better everything if you're if I'm going to do lifestyle stuff because basketball is pretty standard right you can't shoot basketball a whole there's a few ways you can shoot basketball there's not tons right with lifestyle there's there's a billion ways you can shoot that so yeah so I am focused on doing more like lifestyle content and being more vulnerable moving forward yeah when I when I look at YouTube uh I do watch a few people in the YouTube Hooper community which is a trip to me now that it's a community because I oh oh nine I just started uploading videos being a YouTube the first YouTube Hooper in efforts to just get bookings you know what I mean like because I was playing a lot internationally because and one was still hot away from the States so um I do look at a few people in the community um they do numbers but I'm also looking at like like I said like top vloggers you know what I mean like I look at um you know David Dobrik Logan Paul Casey Neistat uh guys who all have very different styles but they're incredible what they do and they they wouldn't have got to where they're at if they didn't love production that's one thing I always tell about social media influencers like people want to do this but you kind of have to like production like if you don't like production it's going to be really hard to be consistent and really to go after it um but anyway those guys production is on a whole other level than mine is so I'm trying to up it constantly um and those are guys I look to in the space 2005 I started to see people in the street or pass me and be like oh I love your work you know and the conversation was like oh thanks for checking out the show and they were like no I actually saw your stuff on YouTube and so I didn't know what that was YouTube started 04 so I started looking into it and I was like wow this is pretty crazy checking out videos and I think 06 they made the videos viewable phone the mobile they didn't have the app but they had the browser and you could actually watch it even though it was a little bit blurred yep but it was still in like several countries so I remember going to Europe and Australia around 2006 early 06 and they were like oh we've seen you stuff on YouTube boom boom boom so I started really thinking like wow this is global and what's to stop uh no I asked myself what's the difference between this and a TV channel because at the end of the day a TV channel is only just because you're so used to going to TV you turn it on it's telecast probably in different countries and why I was like this is the same thing except it's to the choice of the viewer to go to the computer but everybody was saying that the computer and the internet was coming more the way so I didn't know it would become like it is today but I did think that it was become more popular and so I actually had a friend of mine make a channel on YouTube and it was it actually was on his channel but I had to make me a few videos he's actually an editor for Microsoft now I went to high school with him cool editor so he made me a few mixes and they did like a million views in a week and so I was like let's just flood YouTube because at that point it was like young YouTube wasn't very saturated like if you had a dope basketball video like anybody who checked out YouTube might have seen you if they like sports yeah it was really young and so we went hard there and then Google AdSense came into play like 2008 and so I was like oh crap like this is on his channel yeah so he was cool though he let me upload and I started my own channel 2009 and I got with a kid out in San Diego this kid Alberto is a big channel Alberto Entertainment and he actually made my first three videos and he showed me how to use Final Cut Pro and I was really on it because I was like man these videos are getting a lot of views quick and I was like this has to be something and I even got a movie role I had a I got a movie role in a Chris Brown movie that actually didn't get released because of a YouTube video so this was telling me a lot like I was getting all these signals so I finally started my own channel 2009 and went really hard with it and it did it got me some like overseas bookings people were taking notice yeah and then finally got some viral content about 2013 and that's it literally came a business in one week put it like this nobody could ever be great at anything much less being great basketball player without an insane amount of time and repetition put into the craft so for me um I actually wasn't a drill guy like obviously growing up I had tons of trainers clinics camps aau practices did billions of drills in those time but when I went to the court by myself I was always somebody who kind of zoned out and put myself in a game situation and would I go crazy if there was a move that I was working on I would picture myself in a game situation doing that move and succeeding like thousands of time like that's what a practice session for me would look like and for some people it is drills it doesn't I don't even know if that matters right because I know like Jamal Crawford doesn't do drills either right like he's a guy who's zoned out put himself in there but I think the one commonality with that is like an insane amount of repetition so yeah I guess I can't say I didn't I did drills like shooting right I would get up a certain amount of jumpers that would be in drill form but yeah I mean repetitions everything I could I couldn't calculate how many times I've practiced across or something to that degree you know what I mean I think I think perspective has a lot to do with dealing with that number one I learned early on that whenever you have a mass following you're going to have uh you're going to threaten people in that space and you're going to have people that just don't like that you have a big platform I think I think a lot of people don't know that's just human nature right like if you break on to the mainstream let's say you have a hit single in music bunch of people aren't gonna like you which is like it's so it's kind of like disgusting right it's like why is that a thing and people don't have it really got to the point where they understand that that's just what it is so knowing that going in the second thing is what I've learned with my career is like that's how it's supposed to be I was like if everybody just said he's good he's great it is what it is I'm cool with it whatever there wouldn't even be challengers right like like I feel like God set it up to where for me it's like you have those haters those are my best videos right so am I talking trash we get into the game the tension's high and let's see what happens you know what I mean so I feel like in a way it's set up and it's supposed to be like that because then when you succeed it like it's sort of a shocking or a surprise element to it and it can keep going it's funny like I always thought like at a certain point if I got five to ten million subs maybe people would start to understand if I go to a random park you're not going to get off on me but I mean I go up the park I go to my local neighborhood park which we shoot videos at some time here and there'll be high schoolers up there they talk trash they really think if we suit up they're gonna like beat me you know what I mean like they're they're confident of that I think it's just supposed to be like that not that I don't get a tremendous amount of love that's that's the majority