SportTechie’s Athletes Voice series features the views and opinions of the athletes who use and are powered by technology. SportTechie caught up with retired Washington Redskins cornerback Chase Minnifield about his transition to tech entrepreneurship and how he hopes to mentor minorities and athletes following the same path.
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Chase Minnifield had a successful collegiate football career with the University of Virginia. His brief tenure in the NFL as a defensive back for the Washington Redskins ended abruptly in 2014 after he suffered a concussion. Since then, the son of four-time Pro Bowler Frank Minnifield has built success in the business world. He now hopes to inspire other athletes and minorities to do the same.
Minnifield, 30, was a two-time all-ACC player at Virginia. He was one of 15 Cavaliers to start all 12 regular season games in the 2011 season, and entered his senior year’s postseason as a top-ranked defenseman. He was projected by some to be picked in the third or fourth rounds of the 2012 NFL Draft, until his hopes were dashed by a knee injury that caused him to miss the Peach Bowl.
He eventually went undrafted, but was picked up by the Redskins practice team and then bounced back and forth between active and practice rosters for the next two years. He had limited active time on the professional field, however, and was forced into early retirement in 2014 by a concussion sustained in Week 13.
Not long after he departed the NFL, Minnifield threw himself into the world of entrepreneurship. Aged 25, he started his first company, Helping Hand, to provide moving, cleaning and apartment turnover services for college dormitories and student housing complexes.
Since its launch, Helping Hand has provided services nationwide to a number of universities, including the University of Maryland College Park, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Virginia. Minnifield also uses Helping Hand as a way to get former teammates and minorities into the world of entrepreneurship by offering them Helping Hand franchises and giving one-on-one mentorship.
He was recently named a 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 honoree in the sports category for his work as the founder and CEO of EZ Turn, a digital platform geared toward property managers who manage temporary housing. EZ Turn counts major colleges, such as the University of Kentucky and the University of Southern California, as its clients. The company helps clients digitally track and manage invoices and communication with contractors.
He is also the founder of the Minnifield Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering and inspiring under-served youth through arts, academics and athletics.
The Challenge of Tech
“I was an entrepreneur before I was a tech entrepreneur. I’m very excited to be in the tech space. I think everything is going to be digitized going forward and think there’s a lot of opportunity in the tech space currently. If there’s a way of doing something now and it’s not-tech based, it’s going to be tech-based quickly.”
“There’s been a whole bunch of challenges. It takes an abundance of knowledge to go into an industry as lucrative as the tech industry. There’s a large learning curve if you haven’t been into it as a tech investor or coder … if you’re just coming in as a guy with an idea.”
“I always say you have to be a sponge. Learning the industry, learning the terminology, learning how to build term sheets and raise capital. All of these things that were brand new to me going into technology I learned quickly in a YouTube University education, and on podcasts, in audiobooks, and from mentors in the space. Mentors helped guide me along this path as well.”
His Ventures
“Helping Hand is a service providing company and we did cleaning, painting, maintenance, security—services for the housing industry in different areas of the country. The issue I fixed with technology, which allowed me to create EZ Turn, is that they were using spreadsheets to ledge and schedule out and to oversee their work on a daily basis. Me being a vendor, a younger one in this space, I was thinking ‘I can’t keep up with all these papers.’ They’d just end up on the floor. After three years of doing this, I decided I was going to try to fix it.”
“We’re growing very fast, five times in a year’s time frame. Anytime there’s a temporary housing situation, our platform will be able to provide a channel where anyone doing work can be properly scheduled out and managed. Anyone—vendor, contractor, user—can get access to what’s going on in that space. We’re now in multi-family housing, student housing, Airbnbs, hotels, military housing.”
The Athlete Mindset
“The NFL has allowed me to always understand that you have to make adjustments—what your plan is isn’t always going to go as planned. With Helping Hand, I originally had a different plan than what it is today. In a space where I thought I could fix a problem, as a former cornerback in the NFL I was able to see, basically, this is how they’re doing it now, and say ‘I bet we can come up with a better way to make this better for everyone involved.”
“Especially as an athlete, I understand that it’s OK to go back to the huddle, the drawing board, and make things more efficient than the way we’re doing it currently.”
Help and Inspiration
“I’ve been inspired by Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley—anyone who has played sports and gone into a second career or entrepreneurialism successfully. It gives you a lot of motivation that this transition isn’t the end of the world.”
“With Helping Hands, I’m helping athletes out of sports [to] transition into entrepreneurship or investors in the tech space. Former teammates of mine and current players in the NFL, they’ve seen my success in growing Helping Hands into a nationwide company.”
“I try to provide them with the Helping Hands business plan that I’ve been able to duplicate in multiple areas. Then we figure out if they can execute at a high level but always provide mentorship and side-by-side help. Athletes, and I tell all my guys this, might not know all the different ins and outs of the business, but there is one thing that I know for sure: for every athlete I work or partner with, when things get tough they’re going to be going harder and harder and harder. They’re not going to let go of the rope. Those are the people I like to surround myself with. It’s not going to be smooth and dandy but you have to be willing to fight to progress.”
Empowering Minorities
“I think it’s extremely important for us to progress in the minority community in entrepreneurship spaces. I think by providing the Helping Hand platform, we’re able to allow people to jump in without having that fear. I provide a soft landing into entrepreneurship. It’s not like you’re looking over a big cliff and doing a freestyle jump, you’re more jumping into a pit. I try to be the pit by promoting minority entrepreneurship.”
“I want them to understand that, in general, there’s an opportunity for minority entrepreneurship. Don’t get comfortable with where you’re at—be ready to look into a new space and a new opportunity. I was very comfortable with where I was in the NFL until it abruptly stopped.”
The Future
“I think there’s an opportunity for us because society and the way we live are going to change drastically via technology. If you look at life through that lens, there’s a lot of opportunity out there right now. If you step out and see how things are operating, somehow, someway technology will make this process easier and faster for everyone involved. It makes me very hopeful for opportunities of the future.”
“I am constantly thinking of new ideas. I’m sure my fans think ‘Ah, here he goes with another business idea/plan.’ I’m kind of viewing the world as ‘How can I make this place better?’”
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