#145 with Reed Duchscher - MrBeast's Manager Joins the Brainstorm

**Shaan Puri** (0:23)
What's up, everybody, we got a special guest in the house, Reed Duchscher, and Reed, this room is baller. Is this your office or is this your bedroom?

**Reed Duchscher** (0:31)
Yeah, this is our office in Dallas, Texas. I wish this was my bedroom. Maybe I need to rethink what my bedroom looks like and add a bunch of toys and stuff.

**Shaan Puri** (0:39)
And I see you got the painting on the wall. I feel like I get retargeted for that ad constantly for that painting. If I see it right, I don't know, it's a little bit blurry. You got the fancy blurry camera, so I'm not sure if I'm seeing it right.

**Reed Duchscher** (0:48)
Yeah, it's the Ari Golds. I've had this thing for like seven years. It's when Ari Gold like bought, this is from Entourage for people that don't know, it's a HBO series, when he went in and he bought like a rival agency and he went in with a paintball gun and basically fired people. It's like an iconic episode.
Yeah.

**Sam Parr** (1:05)
I will find you.

**Shaan Puri** (1:07)
Dude, that was a pretty good Ari impression, I like that.

**Sam Parr** (1:12)
I too grew up watching that. Ari was one of my heroes for a while as well.

**Reed Duchscher** (1:16)
Yeah, it was weird. Like I loved the show and I thought everything they did with the show was so fascinating, but I was always into the character E. Not specifically like him as his specific character, but what he did, like his manager, like the manager role that he played.

**Shaan Puri** (1:32)
I'm glad you said not him specifically because he was boring as fuck.

**Reed Duchscher** (1:35)
Yeah, yeah, boring character, but his job, like I was like, his job seems to be so interesting because it's like management isn't about like necessarily just about managing a client. It's about access and the access that comes along with managing a client like Vince and Chase, where it's like when you're as manager, you're kind of open to all this stuff that exists, right? Whether it's talking to different actors, actors, musicians, like deals that come through. Like, so that's what fascinated me about it.

**Shaan Puri** (2:02)
And so that's pretty good segue. So why don't you tell people what you do?

**Reed Duchscher** (2:05)
Yeah, so I run a company called Night Media. I formed it in 2015, was an NFL sports agent working with some cool guys that people probably know, like Barry Sanders, Marcus Allen, Tim Brown. And I did client services for them within a sports agency. And I met a YouTube group named Dude Perfect in 2015
And that really started my career as a digital talent manager. And now fast forward to where we are in 2021, we currently manage people like MrBeast, who I'm sure if you're logged onto YouTube, you probably see his videos on trending. And we work with ZHC and a few others. And what we specialize in is we say gaming, lifestyle, technology and entertainment is really where we like to focus at Night Media.

**Sam Parr** (2:44)
So how does the economics of that work? I mean, do you have employees or is the manager just your one man show? What's that look like?

**Reed Duchscher** (2:50)
It used to be a one man show. It's got a little bit more complicated as the years have went on. So we have quite a few people internally at Night Media. And we also, I think about talent management a little differently than most people do. And I think about it in like, what's a new age talent management company look like and how do you serve as creators? And so for us, like the management bucket is one that becomes important. So we have a lot of internal talent managers that work with clients. We also have an organization more of like an incubation studio for owned and operated companies like MrBeast Burger that people have saw in the news recently and a few other companies that will launch with creators. So we also play the business partner role. And then we also have like a venture side of this business where we invest in emerging software and studios and companies that we find interesting. And so to me, that's kind of like the three pillars that like a new age talent management firm or digital talent management firm should have.

**Sam Parr** (3:40)
And are you used to invest? Are you using your own cash flows or are you using your client's money?

**Reed Duchscher** (3:45)
A little bit of both. It started out as like us investing off the balance sheet of like, yeah, we think this company is cool. We think this studio is awesome.