#199 Sports Careers Beyond the Game: Opportunities Off the Field with Stephen Master Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker Robbins  00:42

Does your kid love sports but isn’t headed to the professional court or field as a player? The good news is that the sports industry is one of the fastest growing business sectors in the world, with opportunities that extend far beyond athletics, from marketing and media to sponsorships and analytics. This industry needs well prepared young professionals to drive innovation and growth. I’m thrilled to be joined by Professor Stephen Master, a longtime NYU faculty member and sports business leader. Stephen has spent more than 25 years in leadership roles across the NBA, NFL, Nielsen and top sports marketing agencies. He’s also the founder of the sports biz Boot Camp, where motivated high school students get hands on exposure to the business side of sports. In our conversation, Stephen shares his own career journey, pivoting from finance to sports, and outlines the many positions available for students who are passionate about the industry. We’ll explore the skills colleges and employers are really looking for the importance of networking and internships and how parents can support their young person in breaking into this competitive but rewarding field. I’m Lisa Marker Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right into a great conversation. Lisa, Hi Stephen, welcome to the show.

 

Stephen Master  02:07

Thank you, Lisa, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  02:10

Yeah, I’m so excited. I mean, our viewers and listeners don’t know, but we actually got to be in person at the NACAC conference last week, which was, I don’t always have that pleasure with my guests, and so I already am so confident we’re gonna have a great conversation about careers in sports.

 

Stephen Master  02:30

Excited to chat. It was hard for me to be in Columbus, Ohio, being a Michigan graduate, but I did it.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  02:34

Hey, I’m not gonna open that can of worms on this show. I always say we’re not political on this show, and I think that’s gonna fall into that category. So we’re gonna, just like we did with aviation. A couple months ago, we talked about like, you might not be in the cockpit of a plane, but there are so many careers in aviation, if you are enamored with that, with aviation. You know, I even think of like my nephew. He’s an analytics for a railway system. So there are always a lot of, we’ll call it supporting roles for any industry. And I regularly hear from the young people, 15 to 25 that we’re supporting. They’re like, I want to break into sports, and they’re not going to be on the field or on the court. So I think your own career story is a great one to start with, because you have had a lot of experience and a lot of different roles as you worked your way to NYU Stern and your classes that you teach there, and the things that you’re doing concurrently. So let’s start back. Start back at Michigan, or wherever you want to start, yeah, and kind of tell us your own career journey within sports.

 

Stephen Master  03:52

Well, thank you. So I grew up in Chicago, in the Midwest, like yourself, and was always a sports fan, but I never thought about it as a business back then, it was, you know, 30 years ago, just I love the Michael Jordan era, which is where I grew up, the Chicago Bears, the Cubs, all of it. Was a huge fan, and then went to college at Michigan, and sports 30 years ago wasn’t quite the business it is today. It’s just there’s been so much growth and so many more opportunities. But at the time, I follow the more traditional business path. I got a job in investment banking after graduating from Michigan and was working in banking. Really enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it. It was, it was, it wasn’t my passion so, but I did it. It was, it paid well, it’s the bankers are generally well compensated. Lived in Chicago. And

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  04:39

can I ask a question real quick, yes, how many years were you in

 

Stephen Master  04:43

finance? I was in finance for four years, okay,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  04:47

and you pretty quickly knew like it was out of alignment with who you were. Yes.

 

Stephen Master  04:54

I mean, it was, it was, first of all, the is, any young junior banker knows, and. If they take that path, they’re working, oh my gosh, 15 hour days, seven days a week, very often, not a lot of time off. And it’s a grind, but you get into it knowing that so

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  05:12

well. I think, I think what you experience there is so common. What I see, you know, students being given advice to go in a certain direction, about like job security or prestige income, without thinking about some of the other pieces to really verify fit. So that’s

 

Stephen Master  05:33

why intangible is exactly obviously, for someone right out of college, you’re very well paid, and it is prestigious to say you work in investment banking. I worked at Houlihan Lokey, which is a pretty well known in banking circles. Yeah, it’s not Goldman Sachs, but still in the banking circles, it’s very well known. And it was a great first job. I learned how to work hard, have grit, and figure out how to get stuff done in deadlines. So that was that there was a lot of good, good about it. And also, when I decided to do career pivot and go back to business school, it was really helpful with my application, getting back into business school. So

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  06:08

okay, so you’re so you’re dissatisfied, you’re like, you know what, I’m gonna go and get a What did you get? An MBA? An

 

Stephen Master  06:14

MBA? I went back to Northwestern so I stayed in Chicago. I went back to Kellogg, the Kellogg School of Management, and I decided, You know what, I’m going to go back. And I Kellogg’s known for marketing. So I had the chance to go to either Wharton or University of Chicago or Kellogg. Those are the three schools I gotten into. I visited all three. Kellogg was definitely different. Wharton and Chicago are much more finance oriented, which is probably why they let me in to begin with. And decided, You know what, if I want to go back into finance, that would be a great place to go to school, but that not what I wanted to do. I figured I didn’t know much about marketing, but I said, Well, maybe I’ll pursue a different path. And I thought Kellogg could open a few more doors for me. So I’m going to career pivot. I’m going to go to a different type of program. That’s why

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  06:57

I chose Kellogg. Okay, and so you you graduate from Northwestern from Kellogg, and you’ve learned a lot about marketing. And so what’s your next step? Not back to finance, marketing and finance, it’s interesting. We give out all of the students that we have in our course. We give them the Berkman personality assessment. And people who are wired to thrive in marketing, have a very different personality from a personality DNA, from what we measure in individuals, from somebody who would thrive and love finance.

 

Stephen Master  07:33

Yeah, definitely very different. Well, as you probably know, or most of your listeners know, that in between first and second year of MBA is the all important internship? So I was very cognizant and thoughtful to say, hey, I don’t want to do the traditional route of management consulting or finance, which is 80% of the my classmates were doing. So I said, you know, I never left the Midwest. I’d love to be in this take a shot to sports, entertainment, media, marketing, whatever it might be, and went to LA during spring break and slept on a buddy’s couch and literally called up every Michigan alum and every Northwestern alum in the entertainment business and said, meet me for a cup of coffee. And one of the things that you’ll learn over the course of the next 20 minutes is, I’m so big on building relationships, right? And that starts with that first meeting, and you need a network, and you’ve got to put yourself out there. And as Wayne Gretzky says, going to use the sports analogy, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. You got to take shots

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  08:30

Well, I’m sure too. And we see this with the 15 to 25 year olds that we’re supporting who are career confused, not quite sure what they should aim at it is it’s one thing that’s set behind a desk, right? And we’re typing away. We’re looking up things and watching videos about jobs, but the rubber meets the road when we get into what’s really module four of our course, which is about curating real world experiences and building connections. And that’s where it gets scary, like imposter syndrome can set in, and you might get some nos before you get yeses. Did you I got a lot

 

Stephen Master  09:07

of no’s. I got a lot of that’s what I was gonna ask. And most of the people I reached out to don’t come to campus, right? Like the entertainment companies generally, generally did not come to recruited business schools, Goldman, Sachs and McKinsey and BCG and those places did, but that was, like I’d said, not what I wanted to do, at least for my summer internship. I wanted to try something different. So again, flew out to LA on my own dime, stepped on my buddy’s couch and literally set up nine coffee chats. And I chatted with anyone who would talk to me about the entertainment business or the sports business, or anything in media.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  09:41

And by the way, this was before zoom. So that was in real life, not

 

Stephen Master  09:45

only before zoom, it was before LinkedIn. I literally had to make phone calls to everyone and say, Hey, can you meet me for a coffee? And you know what? I really wanted to not just have a phone call. I wanted to get to know them in person, right, to build a relationship. Relationship, and I felt like, in order for me to do that, I needed to be in LA and connect with people in person. I can’t emphasize the importance of that.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  10:10

I do think that, as you’re saying that you’re like, I learned a lot of lessons from my time in finance, right? That grit showed up, like, who just flies to LA is willing to sleep on someone’s sofa and just start going at it on the phone to connect with alum. Like, amazing. And what a great example for our youth. Like, that’s fantastic, Stephen, right?

 

Stephen Master  10:34

And now I say to my students that you have the advantages of LinkedIn that I never had, right? So I knew that Sharon Markowitz was a Michigan graduate, but that’s all I knew about her. But she, she answered my call. We ended up meeting. She happened to work at the Walt Disney Company, and she, she was, had a great conversation. We had a really hit it off, and she didn’t know much about sports, and she said, we just acquired this company was the mid 90s, Espen, and I’m not sure what they do, but I know they’re in sports. And I go, Well, that would be ESPN. And you definitely don’t know much about sports, if you that’s kind of a big deal. Yes, yes. So Disney had just acquired them, and she said, I think I could use your help. We’re working on some licensing strategies with ESPN. And I said that would be great. So that was my summer internship, and that was my foot in the door, right? It’s getting in the sports business is not easy. And I, you know, I say this all the time, you got to get a few internships. You got to get some exposure to it, and you’ve got to break in somehow. And this was my break, if you will. So that summer, I worked in LA, and it was such a like night and day experience from my finance background, in an office here you’re in Disney or on the lot. There ever people are driving around bikes since happiest place on earth, and they’re all waving. How are you? You know, they’re so friendly and such a different culture and different vibe. And I said, I can get used to this. This is what I want to do. And again, I had worked in banking for four years where I was just looking at Excel spreadsheets, literally for 14 hours a day. So this is completely different, and this was much more creativity and how we could come up with a licensing strategies. And it was, it was a completely different than anything I’d ever done before, and I really enjoyed it, and it and it really resonated with me. So I had that summer internship experience. I went back to Kellogg. I continued to work for Sharon the rest of my second year at school, and said, Okay, I’ve got to figure out a way to get into this business. So did all kinds of interviewing. Ended up someone knew somebody at the NBA, and got an internship or interview at the NBA, National Basketball Association at the time that was Michael Jordan was still in his heyday and playing. And like I mentioned before, I grew up in Chicago, so for me, this was an incredible, amazing, amazing thing to be able to go work potentially for the NBA during the Michael Jordan era, as being such a big fan. So I interviewed with them. The reason they really liked me, but obviously they liked my finance background, and that was that was interesting to them. But what really got me the job was I worked at Disney for the summer. So that internship. You know, everything you do, it’s certainly not linear, but you make different career choices during it down the road. And if I had an internship, let’s say that summer in consulting or went back to banking. There’s not a chance I got that opportunity at the NBA, but because I worked at Disney, had a lot of good experiences and stories to share from my experience working at Disney in the integration of ESPN and all the work we did there, they’re like, this is the this is a good candidate for us. So I ended up working at the NBA for about four years, and that was the time when they were expanding wildly International, all over the world. And it was incredible. And that was really, as they say, was my Harvard Business School training in sports marketing, right? I got to work at the NBA build great relationships, not only at the league, but with agencies, media companies, sponsors. All the licensees, Nikes and Wilson’s of the world. So that was really my kind of foot in the door. Was Disney and which got me to the NBA, and kind of my career role from there. But it was really, it was, it was the it was incredible job. It was a dream first job coming out of business school and very, very different going back to you make decisions, right? What I made less after MBA school than I was making before I went to MBA because I was in investment banking, right? And if I’d gone to banking, my salary would have been double, maybe even triple, of what I was making at the NBA. I was still fairly compensated again for that industry, but it was a much lower compensation or salary than I would have had if I chose to stay in a finance route. But that was what I wanted to do. That was what I was passionate about. So I made that decision, and everyone’s got to make that decision of what’s most important if finance is. Is something you’re passionate about, you probably have the chance to make more money. Well, have

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  15:04

that. You know, one of the things that we do with those that we’re supporting is we do a values inventory, right? And so you’re exactly right. For some, they’re gonna go, oh, well, money Trumps, you know, some of these others. And for you, you’re like, the money’s nice. I’m not going to be starving if I go this other route, and I’m going to be much happier. And so it’s really getting honest with yourself, and this is too where I see sometimes young people being influenced by other voices right on the procedure money, like maybe the parent or some other voice in their life, or like, oh, but you you want more money. Like, we struggled too much and but that’s not really what the individual wants. It’s about supporting what your kid wants for themselves. So I love the example of really know what you value, right?

 

Stephen Master  15:59

Yeah, my passion, and by the way, from a prestige factor, the NBA is right up there with sacks as an example. That’s true. It just the compensation is just not there. So this four years, I literally traveled around the world. I was going to China, Australia.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  16:14

I mean, that’s adventure. An adventure is about nature. I was

 

Stephen Master  16:17

in my 20s, still my late 20s, early 30s. It was an incredible opportunity for me to take a brand that I loved in the NBA and the Chicago Bulls at the time and Michael Jordan and kind of be an evangelist, to grow that game of basketball around the world. So for me, it couldn’t have been a cooler job. And there was a lot of brand prestige, and at a cocktail party, it’s pretty cool to have an NBA business card. Yeah, I didn’t make nearly the financial rewards that some of my classmates made, or many of my most of my classmates made, actually, but that was okay. I was okay with that, and I made that decision. So

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  16:55

let’s talk like I heard, as you’re you’re talking, and my brain’s trying to keep up with all the opportunities, right? You said, like, sports, media, entertainment, the sports world is ripe with opportunity right now. And let’s talk about what some of those opportunities are. You know, you mentioned licensing. Like, talk a little bit about that. Let’s start going through, like, where are some of the greatest opportunities if you aren’t going to be on the court or on the field to work in the sports industry?

 

Stephen Master  17:28

Well, I’ll tell you my next job after I left the NBA, I got a job at an agency, actually, so I went to one of the bigger sports marketing agencies in the world, called octagon, at the time, and they’re still one of the biggest sports market agencies, and they’ve got two different sizes of got two different sides to their business. One side is athlete management. I don’t know how many of your listeners have heard of the or seen the movie Jerry Maguire, which is kind of that consummate movie with Tom Cruise, where he he plays a player agent.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  17:55

Oh, good. And I feel like right now it’s probably so old, but it’s a good one. Go back and watch it exactly. Not saying that, right,

 

Stephen Master  18:03

exactly. So occupant has a big athlete management business. Now it’s funny. They call it influencer marketing. They used to be called athlete management, but basically they manage influencers, many of which are athletes or entertainers or YouTubers, and they help them navigate their career from a marketing portfolio perspective. So if they they’ll take an athlete and they say, well, they should do a State Farm commercial. They could do a car commercial. They do a Nike deal. And how, you know what deals they take, or they help get them deals, and they help think about their portfolio of brands that they want to represent. So that’s one side of the very different from what I did. So

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  18:40

like they are, what I heard there was, like you said, even a YouTuber, so which would just fall into the entertainment, but not necessarily sports, right? So they’re, they are representing entertainment of which entertainers? Yeah, entertainers, which is sports would be one bucket under that umbrella of entertainment,

 

Stephen Master  19:02

exactly. And so we always say, I work in the sports and entertainment business. Octagon was a sports entertainment agency, and athletes is a big piece of it. One of the important things to note is athletes are super important. But so many of these non athletes, whether they could be a an announcer, right? Bob Costas or Mike turnkey or Adam Schefter, right there in the sports business, but they don’t play on the field either. They’re announcers. And by the way, not only do they make a living doing that, but they also have a lot of endorsement deals,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  19:41

right? Yeah, so though, so those same people are using an agent as well

 

Stephen Master  19:46

right to not only negotiate their contract with ESPN or NBC or whoever, they’re also working with car companies and insurance companies or, you know, beverage companies. So they could be doing. Gaming, gaming companies, so that so many of these personalities now have the ability to make incremental dollars outside of their kind of their day job, to be able to do endorsement deals and make marketing, marketing money. So that’s one side of the sports marketing agency side, or one of the sports marketing agency world. The other side, which is what I worked on, is working with corporations and brands. If you go to any sporting event or even watch on television, you see a patch on the jersey. You see signage everywhere. If you watch the US Open, there’s signage all around the corner. If you watch any soccer match, they have low rotational signage or basketball game, right? So those deals are very, very complex, and they’re in many cases, 10s or not hundreds of millions of dollars, if it’s a property like the NFL or the Olympics or the World Cup, right? So many of those brands like they would hire an investment bank to help them go public, or they’d hire a investment bank to help with a debt offering. They hire a sports marketing agency to help them negotiate a deal with the NFL, right? So that was the side I worked on. I worked on the brand side coming out of business school, and Kellogg is known for brand management and marketing, and I had worked in the NBA and did a lot of marketing deals. I was very valuable from that perspective of having worked on the property side, and also, you know, did deals with brands to an octagon where I kind of understood the kind of connection between brands and properties. So the agency sits in the middle of that. So it’s really what’s then. There’s so many more jobs and agencies than there are at leagues, per se, right? Yeah. So there’s dozens of agencies out there who sit in the middle, and they put together these deals. And the deals could involve brands working with media companies. They could do brands working with athletes. They could be brands working with properties. They could working with brands doing social media deals. But the agency is kind of sitting in the middle of that, and they do all of the kind of the work behind the scenes to make it happen. Love it. That was what I worked on at octagon. And I was in the agency space for about seven years. And the reason I went from NBA to octagon was it was more money, right at a sports property, I was paid certain amount, and an agency valued that experience, having spent four years at a sports league, and they were able to significantly increase my comp to go work on the agency side, because they valued that.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  22:29

It’s interesting, because I think that, you know, you said it’s really cool to go to a cocktail party and hand over your NBA business card, right? And that would sound to somebody who loves sports like, Oh, my word, NBA or NFL. Holy cow, but it was actually more lucrative to not be at the NBA for you than to be outside the NBA,

 

Stephen Master  22:53

right? Because I was able to leverage that, yeah, that experience and the relationships I built and my ability to understand the dynamics of the industry from the property side, and having traveled around the world, they valued all those things, so they were willing to pay me more to, you know, work on the agency side and represent their brand clients.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  23:11

So when you if you think about, you know, you went to business school, but if you think about like your peers, even at that time, or with the opportunities that you know are available now. What are common college degrees? Is it in you know, sports entertainment, sports management? Is it more just general business? What do you see people coming out of college with that are getting these landing these opportunities, or is it not the degree that’s landing them the opportunities?

 

Stephen Master  23:43

I think degree is important to somewhat but not that important. What really is important is getting those internships right at the end of the day. I think just taking courses you’re interested in and not the degree itself, right? So I teach at CERN, which is the NYU business school. And I teach sports related classes in the business school. So they’re getting a much more well rounded degree. They’re taking finance classes, accounting classes, market general marketing classes, strategy classes, HR, you know, statistics. They’re taking all that stuff. And by the way, they take some of the electives they could take a technology class or a digital marketing class or a sports related class. So I think the more well rounded degree is probably the best bet that being said, some of the sports management programs are top notch. My alma mater, University of Michigan, has a great sports management program which really dives deep into it. Instead of taking one or two classes, you could take eight or 10 classes. But even the sports management program at Michigan, which actually happened to sit on the board for there’s a lot of opportunities to take classes outside of your major. Because I think people are looking for well rounded candidates who could write well, who could communicate well, who could deliver great presentations, who could build. Great presentations. Those are all really important skills. And the biggest thing in sports the ability to sell, right? You’re always selling something, so you’ve got either selling yourself, selling your brand, selling a property sponsorship, selling an athlete, you got to be able to sell. And those are super important skills. And I don’t really care what your major was, as long as you can sell, you’re going to be successful.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  25:24

So when you’ve got a school like Michigan who has an excellent sports management degree, are they helping students really land? Are they connected and say, like, here’s the internships, it’s easy to get one. Or is a student still, because I could understand if somebody’s like at Stern, at NYU, and maybe they have to find their own internships a little work harder to get their own internships versus like Michigan, like a top sports management program, is there going to be better internship opportunities At a Michigan over an NYU.

 

Stephen Master  26:02

Well, I coined this phrase, what I like to say about at Michigan. And again, I’m an alma mater, and Kenley had two of my children went there as well. So I’m a big fan. So you’re just bleeding blue. I am bleeding blue, but I will say this. We we joke around. And I coined this phrase. ESPN is good, but the best network in sports is Michigan.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  26:21

There you go. So you’re already at your internship,

 

Stephen Master  26:24

right? So we have a, we have a really, really robust network that I, again, I saw on the advisory board for the sports management program, so I know it firsthand. Yeah, we do a really, really nice job of engaging alums who work in the media business, I would say the broader sports entertainment business. I don’t want to just pigeon, okay, it’s, it could be, could be, they could be working at Facebook. They could be working at fanatics. They could be working at could be working at Disney. That could be working at Paramount. But we really, really lean on our alums to try and generate opportunities, or at least open the door for other Michigan graduates. And I would say this a little biased, but Michigan alums look out for each other, right? We look out for each other and we look out for people who are coming out of school. We all are very, very passionate about our school, and we all want to give back, not all, but as a rule, generally, we definitely do a pretty good job of trying to help other Michigan graduates. I

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  27:27

hope and pray that that’s the case for most schools, right? And I do think if I you know you and I are similar age, we had to hustle to network, and it was probably easier for people to say no or not return a phone call. I feel like people, young people, get it’s easier to get a yes. Of course, they get some no’s, right, but it’s easier to get a yes with like LinkedIn and alumni networks and things being online, you’re going to get some no’s, and you got to be brave, and you got to keep going to network and build those opportunities for yourself. But I hope that students experience, and the students we work with have experienced a lot of yeses, 100%

 

Stephen Master  28:12

and it goes back to my story. I got that internship at Disney. I didn’t just reach out cold. I mean, I didn’t have LinkedIn, but I phone calls, but I went through the Kellogg alumni director and the Michigan alumni directory, the two places I’d gone to school, because I knew there was a higher propensity for them to say yes, yeah, absolutely. It was easier to get to yes. And by the way, I get people all the time. Hey, will you talk to my friend’s cousin who wants to be in a sports business? And sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. If it’s a if it’s a Michigan kid, I almost always

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  28:40

do it. Yeah, lean into your alumni network. Which also brings me to a question. You know, we support students on all educational pathways, right? Not everybody’s wants to go or can afford to go to college, or even desires to go to college. Is the sports industry, sports entertainment industry, one in which you really need a degree to break in, or are there opportunities to find you’re like, prove yourself and work your way up?

 

Stephen Master  29:10

Good question. I think it certainly helps, right? Because there’s so many qualified people who do have degrees. Yep, and as someone who’s 18, right out of high school, and doesn’t get one, it’ll definitely be harder. I mean, look, you know, you could have, you could have had a summer internship selling beer at Wrigley Field, or selling soft drinks in Wrigley Field, and maybe you break into the Cubs that way. But I definitely think it’s easier if you have a college degree to break into the business they want hustle, for sure. And if you’re great at sales, you’re great at sales, but I feel like you just definitely learned some skills and learn about the business a bit by taking a few classes about marketing to really help. And it’s such a competitive space that if given the choice between someone who has a degree and who’s had two or three internships during their college years, versus. Someone who hasn’t, they’re almost always going to side with the person who’s got, yeah, experience in internships, which is why I got the job at the NBA as the story earlier, right?

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  30:09

Well, I mean, internships are fantastic because really, it’s a multiple month tryout that the employer can try out the candidate. It’s like the longest job interview ever to see if you’re really a fit without any you know it’s low risk for them before they say yes and make a commitment, which they’re just so valuable,

 

Stephen Master  30:30

right? So shaping their narrative so much younger now, right? Like I just recently started, I, like I said, I teach in college, but I recently started a sports business boot camp geared toward high school kids. That’s

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  30:41

what I wanted to talk about next. Yeah, like, yeah. You’ve got your consulting, you’ve got your teaching at NYU. Tell us a little bit, because you are with this sports business camp for young people, you’re really trying to give them some experiences and teach them. How are you supporting them? And what are, what are some of your gems that they’re getting out of that?

 

Stephen Master  31:03

Right? I’ve always been passionate about that intersection of sports and education, right? I started at NYU in 2004 and I was still working full time at corporate jobs as an adjunct. And the reason I did it is because I just love teaching. I love being able to pay it forward and kind of educating that next generation of business leaders, and in this case, hopefully sports business leaders. So I’ve been doing it for 21 years. I’ve been teaching, and what I found was, as I was talking to parents, and even my own son, who’s still in high school, is a senior in high school, was more and more high school kids were thinking about college, and what do they want to do in college? And they’re feeling this pressure to think about, hey, do I want to be a lawyer? I want to be a doctor? When I was in high school, I just felt like I just got to get into college. And now more and more thinking about their application, and how they can have a good application, how they could be thinking about maybe, you know, you call it a passion project, a capstone project, whatever it is. You know, they all have different names, but at the end of the day, they’re saying, Okay, if I want to pursue this path, I got to start thinking about it at 16. What can I do? Maybe shadow somebody. So I developed a sports business boot camp. And the sports business boot camp is really for high achieving high school students who want exposure to a college level course. I’ve taken, basically taken my NYU course, which I’ve been teaching for 20 plus years, which uses Harvard Business School case studies, and we don’t use a textbook. We really use real world case studies that bring in great guest speakers from the industry, so they can learn about different careers in sports, learn about different pathways to sports. And I’ve repackaged that for high school kids, and the initial response has been fantastic. So I encourage anybody who is of that age, who’s 15 to 18, who’s thinking about potentially pursuing that maybe they don’t know what they want to do, but hey, I have interest. This might be a passion that I have. I love sports. Can I actually take my passion for things on the field and take it off the field? And you know, what’s the business behind the game, right? Well, this is a great way to explore it, and it’s a low risk way to do it. You know, we our boot camps are generally a couple of days. They’re not super expensive. It’s a great exposure to, like you said, you don’t know what you don’t know. And you think, Hey, I love baseball. I’m going to work at you’re in Cleveland, in the Guardians, or I live in New York, the Yankees. There’s a lot more you can do in sports than go work for your local baseball team. And we get really into that, and we get to do these case studies, and we have these different projects that students really are enjoying, and they’re getting exposure to a college level course. And that’s what’s the important thing about the boot camps

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  33:40

before you go and you spend all of that money on tuition. You know, I had a one of our students, and this probably was about 10 years ago, and it thought for sure he wanted it and computer science, and he was in high school, and he was crafting that fit to major, which we have a past podcast episode with Rick Clark of Georgia Tech, where they talks about how within admissions, they’re evaluating that fit to major, right? And so that you, they’re going to look at what is your narrative throughout high school that supports your choice of major. So this student, we had, for sure, like it computers, big gamer, smart kid, he could have handled the computer science degree for sure. It does this internship heading into his junior year of high school, and absolutely hated it, and was so bummed. And I’m like, Are you kidding? That’s a win. Like, you

 

Stephen Master  34:41

know when you’re 16, right? That’s right. Only got when you’re 26 Exactly.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  34:45

We got to curate those experience younger so that we know. And honestly, at the very end of his internship, I some of my listeners have heard this story because it’s one of my favorite ones, because we reframed the this isn’t a fit to a win, because. He was really bummed out that he had invested all this time, like, Okay, you made money, and you’ve got something going on your resume, but you know that you don’t want to do this the very end of that internship, because he stuck with it to the very end. Right the IT department. It was at the nation’s largest grocery chain, which is Kroger, which is headquartered here in Cincinnati, and they did something with the finance department. Well, he lit up. He liked what he was seeing over there. So then he curated some additional real world experiences to verify fit there. And Stephen, you’ll be happy to know he went to Michigan to Ross and got a finance degree up there, and he works on Wall Street now, but it’s all about verifying fit so

 

Stephen Master  35:44

and by the way, in sports, there’s so many, if you get a law degree, you could be a sports lawyer. Work, yes, sports transactions, if you’re in finance. Now, sports has become an asset class. So there’s so many opportunities in sports finance where it used to just be a couple of rich owners that own the now they’re selling minority interest. And there’s all these new leagues and new teams, and it’s a very active marketplace, right? All the streaming companies, Netflix, Amazon, prime, they all have sports rights, right? So there’s so many different pathways to sports and so many things that you could be interested in and then, secondarily, still work in sports, right? It doesn’t necessarily need to go work for the Yankees and sell tickets and sponsorship for the Yankees that. And I keep using them because they’re a well known, high profile franchise, and everyone thinks that that’s what. I love baseball. I love the I love sports. I want to go work for the Yankees. You and 100 million other people love sports and baseball, right? You have to have a real point of difference. And how do you want to stand out? And you do that like you said. You said it perfectly. Go do a few internships and see what you really like, and maybe you don’t want to work in sports, or maybe you want to work in sports in a different capacity that you initially thought, right?

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  36:50

Well, and to that point of the story I told about the it internship. When you go get an internship, you are going to see other departments, other people in action and take advantage of your time there and ask to talk to other professionals. Yeah,

 

Stephen Master  37:05

one of the things I talk about my sports business boot camp is the three most important words in sports, and I hold them relationships. Relationships, relationships. It’s so critical you really, really need to build relationships internally, wherever you do your internships or your company when you start your first job, or and externally, you know, go for cups of coffee with people, like I did back in LA in the mid 90s. It’s so important just talk to people. Build up that network. Build up those people, of mentors. It’s so critical to your career, because most of the time, you’re not going to stay at one job for 30 years. You’re going to move around. In general, you find yourself at your next job because of someone you worked with at a prior job, because they know you, they like you, they trust you, and they enjoy they know what they’re getting. And there’s

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  37:55

been multiple studies that show that it is not your first degree, like, if we’re using the LinkedIn, right, it’s not your first people, the people you know the best. It’s the second. So it’s the people who know your people that are the greatest lever to pull on getting the connections that are going to result in an internship or a job. And there’s been multiple studies done that show the power of, you know, and I just did this with a student that we were working with. I went on to LinkedIn. I said, Well, what was the name of that lady that you met? And then, and this was somebody on Long Island. And the students on Long Island, we go on to LinkedIn, we look up this person, and this person, the student that I’m working with is shying away from, like, putting themselves out there, right? And I said, well, let’s just look at what this looks like. So he said, well, this person gave me their card. I looked up the person on LinkedIn, and then I said, Well, look, oh, she’s posted six times in the last month. You can start by like, liking her post, commenting on her post if you feel like you don’t have valuable content to put out yet. And then I went over to her profile. I’m like, Oh, look, she’s in New Jersey. She was at an event on Long Island. Of the people who commented on her latest post, two of them were seconds to me here in Cincinnati, I go, let’s look at how I’m interconnected with her. It’s all about the connections and building those connections, yeah,

 

Stephen Master  39:29

and those relationships. And in fact, when people are looking, when I’ve hired jobs in the past, I will put a post on LinkedIn. Hey, we’re looking for a new finance person. We’re looking I had my own company, sports podcast company, when we needed new hires, I put it out to my network that, hey, do you know anyone who would be good for this position? And had a quick little three sentence description, and they would share it with their connection. And I’m sure what happens is someone that I know, like you said, it’s the second connection shares it with somebody. It says, Hey, undermines hiring for this. Role you should connect

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  40:02

with them. Or I comment on that and say, Oh, I’ve got somebody in mind. Well, now it goes into my feed. Oh, Lisa marca Robbins commented on this, and then whoever look at what it is, it’s, yeah, connect, connect. And

 

Stephen Master  40:16

it’s super important. And I know so many students spend so much time thinking about their resume and their CV. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t have one, right? But at the end of the day, we’re a digital world now, and I don’t, I don’t think I even have a CB anymore. I just, when someone wants to what’s your background, I just send them up my LinkedIn post my LinkedIn profile. Yeah, right. It’s, it makes sure that’s really good. It’s, I tell everyone to all my students and my own kids make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date and really, really thought,

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  40:47

thoughtfully done. Yes, we actually have a LinkedIn guide for students at flourish coaching co com, forward slash LinkedIn, if people want to download it, and it kind of walks you through like, what makes it good and how to do it. So this has been fantastic, Stephen, we will, for sure, link to your sports business camps in the show notes. Is there

 

Stephen Master  41:10

sportsbiz bootcamp.com because we were saying we’re seeing our websites, sportsbiz bootcamp.com and I look forward to, if any of you guys are interested in sports, chatting with you about the industry or the business, you could look me up on LinkedIn, and I’m happy to connect with any of your clients or any of the listeners, because connecting and building relationships is what I love to do. There’s the power of LinkedIn and talking about the business of sports, right? So it could come to my if they could come to a boot camp, great if they can’t, that’s fine, too. I’d love to chat.

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  41:44

Okay, so you heard it. You got an offer there for an informational interview listeners, which is something we teach about the power of that in module four of the course, Stephen will have your website and your LinkedIn profile in the show notes, so that people can connect and just send Stephen a DM and say, I’ve heard you on Lisa’s podcast. Can we chat? So terrific. It was great. Thank you so much.

 

Stephen Master  42:10

Thank you again. It was really great to be on the show and looking forward to continuing our relationship that and again, like Lisa said, we met for the first time a week ago, right? I mean, connected. And the first thing I said was, I’d be at this show. I sent her a text, hey, I’m going to be here. I assume you might be here, because it’s your business as well. And we got together for an hour and had a cup of coffee. It starts with that

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  42:34

absolutely we did not know each other three weeks ago, exactly. And it was actually on social media, somebody posted about your new sports business boot camp for young people. And I thought, Oh, this is somebody who could talk about this industry for our listeners. And I don’t even know her, but I she was in my feed because of a mutual connection we had. And I said, Hey, could you introduce me to him? Here’s my email address. She’s like, absolutely she sent the email of introduction. You and I connected separately. Then we both realized we’d be at the same conference, spend some time together in person, and here we are. So there’s the power of connections. My friends,

 

Stephen Master  43:13

exactly. Well, Lisa, it was great. Have a great weekend. And thanks, Steve, thanks again for having me. Thank you. Okay, bye. If

 

Lisa Marker Robbins  43:26

your child is passionate about sports, I hope this conversation showed you just how many opportunities exist beyond playing the game itself, and I thought the insights beyond the sports industry were pure gold. You’ll find links to connect with Professor Stephen master on LinkedIn and his sports biz boot camp in the show notes, Stephen is sincere about talking to young people about the industry. I encourage those interested to take him up on his offer to connect. And don’t forget, if your student is working on building their professional presence, you can download my free LinkedIn profile builder guide at flourish, coaching, co.com, forward slash, LinkedIn. It’s the perfect starting point for networking, which, as you heard in today’s episode, is a key to landing internships and launching a career. As always, my goal is to help your child launch into a future they’ll love with clarity and confidence. You