MY JOURNEY: JORDAN SUBBAN

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

“Being a pro athlete over the past seven years, I’ve been blessed to be afforded a ton of opportunities off the ice in business and entrepreneurship that others might not get—but I hadn’t always been taking advantage of those opportunities.

A switch flipped in me five years ago when I was robbed at gunpoint in my own home. I was alone, all of my valuables (including my prized Xbox) had just been stolen, and I found myself bored and wondering, ‘What’s next?’

This was my wake up call, the moment that I realized I had been missing out on all of the additional benefits — aside from getting paid to play the game I love—that come with being a pro athlete. Without video games and things like that distracting me, I was able to open my mind and start to consider what I wanted to do with my life after my professional hockey career was over.

Pro athlete has become a profession in which it’s almost assumed that there will be someone there to control your finances and your opportunities with regards to sponsorships and deals and such.

But, what athletes need to realize is that once your career is over and you’re notmaking money on the ice, your agents and financial advisors—the people handling your money while you’re playing—will start to disappear very inconspicuously. When it’s all said and done and you’re finished playing, it’s a business, and if you’re not a Sidney Crosby or Wayne Gretzky, you’re going to have to find other ways to support yourself without an advisor to do it for you. This may not be true for all sports, but through my seven years playing pro hockey, I’ve come to realize that we, as pro athletes, have an abundance of time on our hands. For example, I would go to the rink at 9AM and I’d be back home at 11AM, which gave me more than enough time during the rest of the day to educate myself on financial literacy and ways I can continue having financial success when my playing days are over.

To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking for help, but I’ve always been of the mind that you should see how far you can reach your hand on your own before reaching it out to somebody else for help. No one can do anything all by themselves, but you don’t know how much value you can bring to a situation unless you educate yourself on the relevant information, whether it be financial or otherwise.

Leagues that I’ve played in, like the AHL, have programs in place to help players learn about how they can support themselves after hockey, but they’re usually not mandatory, so a player has to seek out the programs to see the benefits they can bring. There are also programs that allow hockey players a smooth transition into a life of firefighting, which is a popular choice since it’s a somewhat similar environment.

That just wasn’t for me, though. Other guys use their names and their social media platforms to boost their visibility and become marketable that way, but I decided to go a different route directed more so at tech, computer programming, and app development, which I have really enjoyed.

I’ve now attended The Bridge Summit by Next Play Capital for the past two years, and it’s been a great place to meet tons of different kinds of people, from like-minded athletes, to start-up tech entrepreneurs, to venture capitalists and other types of people I wouldn’t normally be mingling with.

I’ve now reached a point in my off-the-ice career where I feel comfortable starting something of my own. To that end, over the past year or so I’ve been working on a platform that will help black-owned and BIPOC businesses standout in a positive way and reach their goals because there just isn’t enough awareness and focus on supporting black- and BIPOC-owned businesses right now, especially considering this social climate.

I haven’t been blind to what’s been going on in North America and across the world, and leagues like the NBA have had some very positive reactions and initiatives aimed at drawing attention to and stopping racial injustice.

Since the NHL is a mostly white league, I believe that a message of solidarity with the NBA or even a partnership to support and get involved in similar programs to defeat social injustice and police brutality would hold a lot of weight. Because the NBA’s player pool is something like 80 percent black, so it’s expected that they have this reaction, but a majority-white league like the NHL taking a stand on and drawing attention to these issues could make a huge statement. That’s why I consider myself more of a social entrepreneur, matching profit with purpose to work for the greater good. But not all athletes have to be social activists, and what’s most important for us should be to become financially literate so that we can get to a place where, if we so choose, we can seize those opportunities to support social causes after we’re done playing. Our careers are short, and when we’re playing, our names hold the most value, so finding a way to monetize that value is important for us. What athletes need to think about off the ice is empowering and investing in ourselves so that we’re in a position to have success as post-pro-hockey retirement entrepreneurs.”