How Veterans Can Break Into Sports: Translating Experience
Building a story that is tangible and connects with your audience
If you are new around here, here’s why I started writing. We are back with the second topics: how to translate your experience into a story that is tangible and connects with your audience, but does not belittle your military experience. For the last post on networking, refer back here.
Building out a strategy
As we discussed last week, it is critical to create a networking plan and strategy to break into the sports industry. The next step is using those early networking sessions to identify what function, type of organization, and any other key details for where you would like to end up. This will help you do the following:
translating your experience into the context of the type of role in sports you are looking for
Translating Your Experience
Where to Start
Once you have determined which focus area you would like to break into from conducting research (search and ChatGPT are your friends!) and having networking conversations, you can start developing a narrative. I’ll talk through this within my own context, but this can be applied to any military career or space.
In order to get my start and develop a narrative, I chose to take the direction of a full time MBA program, specifically the University of Texas at Austin. When presented with the option of transitioning into an IT focused managed role, or attending a graduate program, I recognized that I needed to take a knee and spend some time working through what was next. I wrote a bit about my first steps into sports (and rejection) at business school here.
At some point after my first year in business school, I had a mentor who really pushed me on prioritization and breaking out my non-negotiable list and my ‘wants’ or things I was willing to bend on, like location, salary, opportunity, etc. This allowed me to put together a narrative of where I wanted to go, while sticking to my priority list. This quad chart demonstrates how you could look at each aspect of the position or decision being made. You can attack this in any format, but it’s a good exercise to make sure you can be deliberate with networking, applying to jobs, etc.
Translation
Unfortunately, there is no Duolingo or Babbel to translate your military or past experience into sports. It takes reflection and building off the work you have done to map out your priority list. During my MBA, I focused on gaining global business skills that I felt would bring me closer to strategy-setting than my role in the military. I wanted to end up in a role that allowed me to be included in planning and strategy development and responsible to execute a plan within the general business and analytics spaces.
With that, I took quite a few classes on entrepreneurship, as we spent time analyzing case studies and building out our own business plans. In addition, my focus was on developing the hard skills necessary to be a leader in the strategy and analytics space - specifically coding skills, learning data visualization, and ultimately, how to communicate that to a wide audience. Finally, I took every opportunity to study abroad (Guatemala, South Africa, Copenhagen, and Melbourne) as a chance to learn how to take my military international experiences into a business context. I could use my military project management and leadership skills to analyze both qualitative and quantitative information, set strategy, and own the result. I needed to figure out how to put that into a sports context so hiring managers could understand my background, which brings us to building a personal brand.
For those who do not have the time or ability to attend a full time graduate or undergraduate program, there are other ways to do this. There are several transition programs that offer free or low cost training to veterans. For more advice on this space, I recommend going to the Sitreps2Steercos website and navigating to non-MBA career options, and joining the discord server.
Building a Personal Brand
The concept of ‘personal brand’ was foreign to me until I started my MBA. This included creating a LinkedIn profile, taking headshots, and learning how to position myself in the space I wanted to be in moving forward. Since there was a desire to work in sports, my focus was on taking what I learned in school and building a story about my experience that stuck within a sports context. Putting ‘the real me’ out there was incredibly uncomfortable (and still is), but it gets easier as time goes on. I have realized you can still be authentic while also building a brand.
So, how did I do this? I focused on areas that would get me closer to my ‘must haves’ in my priority list. This included building a comprehensive and relevant networking plan (as discussed last week), sharing content around my experience, and practicing telling my story to my classmates and professors at Texas.
My early content was as simple as discussing our career ‘trek’ to Nike and adidas headquarters, all the way to covering some of the challenges veterans face. This content can be developed using the mental map of where you want to end up in sports. For example, if you are interested in ballpark security and operations, you can post relevant articles and thoughts around that tied back to your own experience. As time went on, my portfolio of work grew and I was able to share some of that as well. I started building confidence that my thoughts and work were legitimate, even outside of the military. I started to believe in myself (this is cheesy so I’m putting it in italics). I will touch more on building a portfolio next post.
My class of veterans borrowed a concept from another MBA program to share “Vet Talks”, where a few of us gave presentations on our military experience in a light, digestible format. This allowed me to practice telling my story in a safe space, and realize that it’s okay to talk about myself. I also leveraged communications coaching and built a group of mentors and sponsors who pushed me to improve my ability to speak the language of sports. This is the biggest hurdle to cross, and something that took a long time to gain confidence, but it’s possible.
Conclusion
Two weeks in a row! Translating your past experience into a new industry, including sports, is never easy. While it can be difficult, it’s not impossible. The key ways to do that include building out a priority list of target areas and positions, finding ways to tangibly take your experience into a sports context, and finally, building a personal brand.
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