How to grow from underdog to basketball and social media icon | The Professor | TEDxDenHelder

You don't like that, yeah, look, honey. Oh yes, good afternoon. My name is Grayson Boucher, better known as the Professor. I have been fortunate enough to play

basketball

for 15 years professionally and still have the opportunity to host events in over 40 countries around the world, although I am technically an athlete, my job title is

social

influencer for those of you who They don't know what a

social

influencer is, it's someone who uses social

media

full time to make a living. My main part of my business is my Live Teacher YouTube channel. I have 3 million subscribers, over 400 million views, and is home to the number one web series on all of YouTube called Spider-Man Basketball.

Despite all this, when I went on stage. A few seconds ago I guess none of you would have assumed that I was a professional

basketball

player, a short white guy. I don't have outstanding athletic characteristics, not all of them are great, so when people hear that I am a professional player. player, they tend to ask two things: the first thing they ask is how did you become a professional player based on your size and height. The second thing they ask is why aren't you in the NBA, because when people think about a long time. -during your basketball career you tend to think about the NBA, that's why I'm here today.

I want to take you through my journey and answer those couple of questions. It all started for me, a small suburban town of Keizer, Oregon, I started playing basketball twice. years, my dad put the ball in my hands, he had a passion for the game and it passed to me almost instantly. I started playing basketball every day, I started on a Larry Bird nervy hoop and then this is the driveway he practiced on every day. The goal was to obtain an MBA in approximately the third degree. I started working with a skills coach. This skills coach taught me some fundamental ball handling drills that were needed long term in 6th grade.

He had mastered some moves for you players. I dominated the in and out in and out crossover and then my favorite moved to the Allen Iverson crossover Allen Iverson was my favorite NBA player at the time now my entire childhood I was very, very small I was always a late bloomer all my teammates always They were a lot bigger than me so I was on the court, I always played a bigger competition and when I made crosses and moves like that against the defense, the crowd went crazy. The first year of high school was for 11 eighty-five pounds, as you can see, the number ten is much smaller. that my teammates started on the freshman team, things were going well 15 years ago, I got the n1 mixtapes, these tapes had Street Ball gritty and it was a flashy style of play with hip hop music over the top like on the VHS tapes released by the One company and one was a sneaker and clothing company that used this to promote their brand so these things inspired me to the next level, the guys that played with it or my idols and made me want to take my creativity in handling the ball to the next. junior level year in high school I was cut from the varsity team this was a big bummer for me my whole identity was in basketball so not being able to play with my teammates at the varsity level and having to play junior varsity as a junior was a bit embarrassing, I hated it and at that point a style of play had started to influence my game.

I remember one time my coach took me aside and said, uh, Grayson, everything's okay and I was like, yeah, what's up? He said, oh well, are you drooling for show or haggling to make money? And I remember saying, but the truth is that my game started to look like the sizzling reel you saw before, it's a little flashy when I transferred to a small school last year. Salem Academy Christian, there's only like 300 kids in the whole school. I wanted to have more opportunities and plan for a college team. I got second team all-state. I was one vote away from being the League MVP and I averaged 22 points and 7 assists, so things went pretty well after my senior year.

I was thinking I would get some college offers, but it turned out I didn't get any college offers. I tried out at three different universities. I was excluded from the three every time the coach said the same thing to my dad. thing and say, hey, you know, this kid has some offensive skills, but he's a little small, you know, we don't think he can guard anyone at this level, as you can see here, I was about 5,720 pounds, so my dad it is small. -The owner of the business, he owned a jewelry store that still has it today and they specialize in wedding ensembles and it just so happened that the only college he hadn't tried out for was the local community college and the head coach bought his wedding ring. from my dad and during this transaction my dad convinced him to give me a chance.

He said: Hello, I have a son. He loves the game. He's quite skilled. He just doesn't have the chance. Then his coach was kind enough to let me go out and try it out. the team ended up making the team, he's the last man, so I had very little playing time. I played about three minutes a game, if the game was close I wouldn't even get in, so at that point during my first year in college I was me. He was basically a benchwarmer, a scrubber at the lowest level of college basketball. My dream of doing things like that in the NBA was somewhere far away, so I could have given up, but you know, basketball is my passion, so I decided to dedicate myself to that. much more and I started doing three days.

I woke up at five in the morning before class. I tried to make a thousand jump shots. Then I went to class. We had an open gym where we played five on five. Then I was going to do weights and then after weights I'm going to go back to the gym and work on my game a little bit more at night, so I worked really hard and from March of my freshman year in college in 2003 to June I had improved. around 300% and when we do our open. gyms I was one of the best players in the gym, if not the best, so the hard work and dedication paid off that same summer of 2003, the Antoine company had so much popularity with hanwen's mixtapes that I love to see what they achieved an ESPN reality show and was documenting their first national tour of 30 cities in the United States, so my brother and I were excited when we found out they were coming to Oregon.

Portland was the closest city to my hometown. We drove over and got up. there, I can't wait to see my idols play for some of you baseball players, you might remember the names of the hot sauce in the main event of Oh Escalade. These guys were my idols, so we got there and it happened before the game they had. tests for the locals and apparently if you pass their test you will be able to play in the game against the m1 players so I thought I would give it a try. He had a striking game. I love this style of play, so I jumped in there.

The tester had some moves and made a couple of shots. The next thing you know, the crowd was very excited and another player was voted out of about four or five hundred players to come in and play against the team and he won that night, so the next. I'm beyond excited, I'm going head to head against the headlining artist of Hamelin's mixtape tour, we're having this battle, the crowd loves it that night after the game, they asked me to go on tour with them and then they told me ESPN The reality series is actually about the locals trying out at each tour stop and going through this whole series of summer eliminations to narrow it down to one winning contestant to win a contract with Team Antoine, so I was on this one. contest and I didn't even care at that time because I was just excited to play with my idols.

He was on top of the world as far as a hoop dream could go. This was it for me, so I ended up playing out of my mind that summer. I was making moves. and taking shots that I could never duplicate I find myself in the last city of New York, in Madison Square Garden. He ended up making a game-winning three-point shot from about ten feet behind the three-point line and we beat team one. for the first time and I ended up winning the contract to sign with that and be the winner of the ESPN reality show at 18, so that's what started my professional career and during my career with Antoine I had an incredible time, but it was very ironic because months before I was playing in college at the lowest level and didn't really have a chance, so the hard work and dedication paid off.

We were at ESPN for six seasons. I had an incredible career. I was able to play in more than 30 countries. I was able to make a lot of friends, I met all my favorite athletes and artists and besides playing with Antoine, during this time I was also trying to get the NBA to play in mainstream leagues and minor leagues and things like that, but at a certain level. At that point, around 2007, I realized that opportunity and politics were on my side, making the NBA very, very difficult, so I decided to stick with street ball because I had already built a legacy in this genre. and I said I was going with all my strength.

I thought that was my calling at the end of 2008, my teammates and I thought we were going to renew our contracts for a seventh season at ESPN, but it turned out that we didn't get any calls to renew their contracts and one was under a different owner and They decided to no longer use their street ball tours to promote their brand, so for us this was devastating. We really didn't know what to think. You know, I had not prepared myself for the next phase of life, so I find myself in 2009 with less than $200 in my bank account I did not know what to do to make ends meet, coincidentally in my closet I found this box in which there were I saved 75 of my Antoine game t-shirts and I knew they contained a lot of value because around the world, even though we didn't reopen for the next year and a Street Ball was still very popular, so I sold all my t-shirts on eBay anonymously and I made like 30 grand and I lived off of that for about six months and that's how could I get on my feet other than that?

I was doing some clinics here and there, training and I would do one-off games at the world level, so it would be like an Africa game, I would do a game in Brazil, Russia, but the games didn't come every month, you know, we could have a couple of games one month in three months, there are no games, so it is very difficult to make ends meet. 2011 I ended up meeting a guy in Los Angeles who said he wanted to start another street ball company. He wanted to continue where Anwen left off. He said he had a TV show for our tour on Fox Sports, so my teammates and I were naturally excited.

You know, this is a second chance. Most people have their wave of fame or being on top. I don't get a second chance so what I was saying was unbelievable I was going to start this tour we were getting ready to sign contracts we were in Los Angeles 2011 I'm with my good friend here Troy Jackson better known as Escalade exhale for his size he was around six nine between four and five hundred pounds, but he is incredibly talented. I mean, this guy was an incredible athlete, he dribbled like a guard even though he was the size of a sinner, so we're in Los Angeles. getting ready to promote this tour, things are looking very good.

I woke up that Sunday morning to find out that my best friend died of a heart attack, so I was im

media

tely distraught. I couldn't even think about basketball in the most downtime of all my time. Life, this moment here calls me to ask life's most important questions for the first time. You know what I'm supposed to do. What is my purpose? What will happen when I die? So I ended up going to his funeral three weeks later. Brooklyn New York, his brother was actually conducting the funeral service. His name is Mark Jackson. He actually he's a famous former NBA player, famous NBA analyst, but he's also a pastor and during the service it was very difficult to attend a very difficult funeral for me, especially you know.

I talked to Escalade every day for six to eight months of the year, but at the end of the funeral he made an altar call and said, hey, you know what if you want to be where my brother is in heaven right now? Feel free to come. at the altar, give your life to Jesus Christ and I felt really compelled to do it, so I did it and I became a Christian at that time. It was a major turning point in my life, fast forward to 2013, working on my YouTube channel, trying to come. Looking for ways to expand audience I had videos that had 50,000 views 150,000 views.

I did pretty well, but I was trying to figure out how quickly we can reach the audience. How can I get millions of views and have a much broader platform? mine, we sat down and put our heads together to get an idea. He liked basketball, but he was also familiar with cosplay and we came up with a concept wherewe put basketball and cosplay together and what it was was I brought to court dressed as a superhero to play people 101 as a joke and naturally we used the Spider-Man character because it covered every part of the body so we ended up filming this Spider-Man dressing up video that lasted about 25 minutes in the park I feel like I was meant to do it because every move I was making was working.

I don't think I missed a single take. I'm going home that night I ended up editing the video myself a couple of hours I uploaded it to YouTube they said it was going to take like five or six hours so I was tired at night I went to sleep I woke up in the morning Next the video had three million views to my surprise, I was about to blink and it looked like that was the end of the week, it had seven million views. The YouTube channel went from sixty thousand subscribers to half a million in just one week and that's how I became a social influencer.

Nowadays being a social influencer has been great. Now I get to see even more of the world. 40 different countries have been doing this for 15 years. I was able to do incredible campaigns with some of the biggest companies in the world. I have a clothing line that I started a month ago called Global Hooper. Things have been going very, very well and finally, basketball has allowed me to live the dream I never knew I had. You know when I was little I was trying to aim to be an NBA player, but instead I became a global basketball cheerleader and I realized that he was actually my colleague and that he was a much better fit for me, so I hope that today you can inspire me a little for my story, but I want to send you I am left with three things that I learned: number one, you have to prove yourself every day, number two, listen, know, it is not the end of the road, and number three , I would encourage everyone to try to find their passion because I think that's often where you can find your passion. purpose thanks guys for your time