By Mary Kate Krueger
Alex Melendez, a 2018 business administration graduate from The University of Tampa, took an unconventional path after graduation to fulfill his dream of becoming an entertainment agent. His unique journey led him to success with Halite, a popular YouTuber who boasts over 1 million subscribers.
Melendez was an active member of campus life during his time at UTampa: a member of the pre-law society, president of Alpha Tau Omega (ATO) fraternity, speech and debate club member, and many more activities.
Despite being involved in various campus activities, Melendez owed much of his undergraduate success to the UTampa Speech Center.
After graduating from UTampa, Melendez was accepted to Villanova’s prestigious law program. While a law degree is not essential to becoming an agent in the entertainment industry, Melendez explained how obtaining a law degree placed him at an advantage in the industry.
“Being in law school teaches you how to take a no into a yes; how to turn a situation into a creative solution,” claimed Melendez. “My professor taught me how contracts work, which I applied that to the content creation space by making my own contracts.”
In 2020, just a year before graduating from Villanova Law School, Melendez was faced with the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic. Forced to move back to Pennsylvania for his final year of law school, the global crisis added yet another layer of unpredictability to Melendez’s career path.
This was where Hunter Frazier, currently known in the digital world as “Halite” and with over 1 million subscribers on YouTube, came into the spotlight.
Frazier attended the University of Oklahoma and, similarly to Melendez, was the fraternity president of ATO. Upon graduating in 2020, Frazier found himself in a period of ambiguity, facing the end of his lease and the challenges of transitioning into the next phase of his life.
This was when Frazier started diving into content creation, and he thought it was a great time to get into it. With everyone spending more time online and staying indoors, the digital landscape was buzzing and ripe for new content.
Introduced through a mutual fraternity member, the two young men chatted online for months discussing both their dreams: for Melendez to become an agent and for Frazier to become a content creator.
“I think that the most effective way to become successful in content creation is to not find someone just as talented as you, but with someone who is just as motivated as you,” explained Frazier.
After several months of online collaboration and building a strong connection with one another, Melendez invited Frazier to move into his home in Pennsylvania. Frazier accepted the offer, relocating from Oklahoma to join Melendez. The two then embarked on their journey to chase their dreams together, and the rest is history.
By day, Melendez was completing courses for his law degree while Frazier created online content and built a media presence — mainly on Twitch. By night, the two worked at Melendez’s father’s restaurant to invest in their dreams.
As “Halite,” Frazier primarily used his digital platform on Twitch to stream video games such as Fallout. He began exploring with games that had as few as 50 total viewers.
“We started with a game called Vigor, which was a survival game for Xbox,” claimed Frazier. “Nobody was playing the game, so we got to make a lot of mistakes and learn from it, and as time went on, we moved on to bigger and bigger games.”
Now, with more than 1 million subscribers and 14.9 million views on YouTube, Halite has become one of the most popular streamers and content creators in media.
Along with Frazier’s success, Melendez began gaining more clients through the Canadian-based digital marketing and talent management agency, Dulcedo, where he currently works as the team manager and senior talent agent.
“Hunter was the first client I truly managed,” claimed Melendez. “He’s the reason I got any future talents.”
Alex Melendez now works at Dulcedo, managing 10 to 15 talents while working alongside 8 to 9 other agents.