Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Hello and welcome back.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: This week we are extremely fortunate to.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Be joined by Tina Nguyen, someone with extremely impressive resume for a young age, someone who's worked with the NHL, someone who's worked in the chl, someone who's worked with mlse. And Tina's discussion today is certainly, yes, it's guided towards the, the hockey industry, but it's also guided towards early experiences with internships and essentially hitting the industry right away and sort of what awaits you in these next coming years. She's someone that is in your shoes. She's been in your shoes. She's. She's someone that's working in the industry and just trying to get her feet industry in Canada. And I think it's actually been very interesting to have Jeremy, to have Bodie, to have people who have at various stages of their academic journeys throughout Brock University to sort of counsel you in this process. Again, the, the purpose of this course is to take a, a wide view of the sports industry in Canada, specifically with the hock.
And we're very fortunate to have Tina not only in this classroom, but also willing to answer your questions about her experiences, even though she is still new in the industry as well. Someone who's, I think, eminently relatable to you and not someone that's been in the industry for so long. She's lost touch with what it's like to be out there applying for internships and out there sort of grinding and doing all the things that you're all doing right now as well. So again, that's just another reminder. If you wanted to reach out to Jeremy or Bode or Tina, please send me an email and I can pass that along to them. And again, we're very fortunate to have someone like Tina who's willing to speak speak to us in this class. And I'm looking forward to reading your form responses and your audio responses.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: 4P. 97 we are joined by Tina Nguyen. How are you doing, Tina? She is a Brock student here in her upper year. Tina, how are you?
[00:02:00] Speaker C: I'm good. How are you? Thank you for asking.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining us. We are incredibly fortunate to have your experiences here and I want to start early on in your sport journey. Tina, tell me, what's your sort of earliest experience with sport or earliest experience with hockey?
[00:02:15] Speaker C: I think going back to it, I would go back to like middle school. That's when I started like getting into hockey, getting into the leafs. I think the first, like introduction to hockey was actually the World cup of Hockey in 2016.
So I think I just saw a YouTube stream of like the finals going on with Team Canada. I'm like, I'm Canadian. Like, I'm supporting this and like watching that team of just like the best hockey players like in the world, basically, like Crosby, Marshawn, like Bergeron, Thornton, they were all on that team. And I was just so amazed by it that I was like, okay, I really like this. Like, didn't get into the Leafs yet, but so funny. Literally just gotten like a smart TV for Christmas that. That year and there's an NHL channel on there, so I started watching highlights on that. And my brother had grown up a Leaps fan, but I hadn't really gotten into it until then. And I was like, okay, like, these young rookie phenom superstars are so entertaining to watch. Matthews, Marner, Nylander, they were all beginning their careers then. And then at that point I hadn't even had like cable. So I would literally like, watch the highlights, read the play by play live. So imagine me in silence, just on the couch, like waiting for like, goal to like, show up and like, celebrate by myself. But yeah, until after that, I'd finally gotten away and access to watch the games. And I honestly hadn't missed a Leafs game for five, six years. Maybe like five or seven years, something like that. Like, it only taken until last year where, you know, life actually got a little busy that I had to start. Start missing them. But from then on, I think that was like the early start for me.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Fantastic. And early on in your. In your sort of schooling journey, you got involved in the hockey industry. Can you tell me a little bit about that experience with the NHL?
[00:03:54] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I always knew since I was in middle school, like when I fell in love with the Leafs, that I couldn't live without it. And I would. In my mind, I was just like, what can I do to make this my life and work in professional sport? So in high school, I had made sure that I had joined whatever clubs I could. I was like the executive for Advanced analytics, like sport Analytics Club. In my school, I'd coach soccer. I had volunteered with my sports Sports council in Mississauga, volunteered for the Mississauga Steelheads when they were in Mississauga. And then from then I had applied to the NHL's Youth Advisory Board. I believe I had done that in grade 11, made it to the first round of interviews that year, and then didn't go past the interview that that year. And I was like, devastated. I was like, oh, my God, this is the End of the world, like I'm 15, 16. I was so close to like to my dream like position basically. But after that I had, that's when I had really accumulated those experiences that I just mentioned and I reapplied to the position the next year.
Just knowing that all my experiences now like gave me so much more knowledge into the field and into like just advising in hockey, which was what the position was. It was a youth advisory board for the NHL. Working with the cmo, working with different NHL staff in the marketing teams, in the social media teams, fan engagement, social growth, like so many touch points.
But yeah, back in, I think that was 2021 that I had gotten accepted into the youth advisory board. I think there was 1100 people that applied in my year and they selected about 15 from that across North America. So pretty small class from some such a big like application pool. And from then like my second interview was with the CMO like imagine me like 16 just being faced with the literal CMO of the NHL. But got through that and yeah I got to basically the position was like meeting monthly twice to advise the NHL on any like ideas we had for her, how they can engage like Gen Z as well as like any new fans in general in terms of like for me my big philosophy to try to implement was like getting the game more diverse and accessibility. Just because I grew up not being able to have access to ice hockey, like my brother couldn't play and stuff like that. So I was like what can I do to like reduce those barriers to, for, for people to play hockey and served communities and some examples of, of what kind of came to life when I was with the board was NHL street, which was their new ball hockey program that they had done and they brought it over to different tent pole programs. They had an NHL like Black History Museum that they had put on like different things like that which was super cool to see be implemented. But yeah, we'd meet monthly, talk about ideas. They would also come to us with like things that they were going to put out. So for example like NHL Roblox, this was a game that they were putting out and they, they let us be the test users to it and, and play for the first time and give them any feedback. So it was a lot of cool things like that of just like giving them advice while also kind of being able to discuss like new things that they were implementing. And then we also got to go to all the tent pole events that they had. So I've been to the last three NHL All Star Games I went to the Heritage Classic. So it was super cool that they, you know, would give us an experience like that while we were able to help them. But yeah, that was my position with the NHL.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: That's fantastic. And something that relates to specifically we talked about with Jeremy, with Hockey Canada is, you know, maybe you're outside the, The. The structures of the league and you think to yourself, you know, man, have I got some ideas for them. And, man, I've got some, Some, some things that I'd like to change. And then you meet people who actually work in the league itself or with Hockey Canada or for a professional team.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: And.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: And then you start to realize some of these people are in, well, lots of the mass. Majority of them are incredibly smart and incredibly hardworking. What were some of the lessons you learned from. From actually meeting some of the people inside of the NHL in terms of your perception about the league before you work for them and then afterwards?
[00:08:00] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. I think you grow up having all these ideas and you're like, wow, how am I ever going to get to this, this place and be able to have a voice? But for them to have this position open to people from 13 to 17, like as young as middle school, you can, you can that influence to change for an organization as big as the NHL. But for me personally, I think what I learned is that things aren't as easy as they seem. Especially when you're like, I guess like a backseat GM or something like that is like, you kind of think that, like, wow, why don't they do this? Like, that would be so easy. Why don't they do this? Like, come on, like, you know, or why would they do this? And then you get there and you kind of realize, like, the amount of stakeholders involved, the amount of money involved, the amount of time involved, approvals, things like that, when you get behind the scenes means that you realize that, like, okay, so like, once, like the process of like an idea coming to life is much more than like, idea and then outcome. It's all these things in between that you don't know until you get there. Just because, you know, we would have suggestions for things and then kind of being able to get that feedback from them of like, okay, we have to kind of go through these people for approvals. Like, oh, like, you know, the legal team has to look at it, like, things like that. Like, I wouldn't be able to even like, give interviews about power players without contacting the people at the league.
So I think learning, like, the process of things was very helpful because, like, things that want to come into life, like, of ideas, they take a while, and you realize that, like, they want to be progressive, they want to, like, create change and make an impact, but it just takes, like, a while. I think that was really my biggest, like, takeaway from those people because they're so smart, but it also just takes, like, so long to do things as much as they want.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: I mean, Tina, that's a very valuable lesson, I think, especially students. You're in your fourth year, you're in your third year, most of you in your fourth year right now.
That. That lesson that you learned at a young age, Tina, that you have some ideas, they have ideas. A lot of people want the same things here, but moving these machineries, this machinery around and moving these complex industries, you know, one team at a time or one league at a time is very difficult. And Jeremy alluded to this as well, that, you know, he had ambitions of changing things incredibly quickly and seeing how quickly things actually move was. Was. It was a rude awakening for him. But that was certainly not the end of your hockey journey. Take us there. So you're. You're. You've graduated high school. You decided to come to Brock. But during your time at Brock, what is the. Some more experiences you've had in the hockey industry?
[00:10:32] Speaker C: Yeah, from. From there. I was in my first year at Brock, still on the NHL's youth advisory board, because I have a later birthday, so I was able to stay on there for a little bit longer, fortunately. And then after my first year, went into my second year, just kind of, like, knowing that I should get more experiences within school and get more involved in school. So I joined a club called the Broxburn Business association, and I had joined the partnerships team there. And that is kind of when I realized, like, this is what I want my pathway to be in hockey. Of course, I had, like, the marketing experience from my experience with the NHL, but then joining that club and realizing that this was something I was good at, something I enjoyed, like, the two key things in what you should kind of do in your career, I realized that that was what I wanted to pursue. And then from there was like, okay, where do I go from here? How do I get more experiences in this? And I had saw that the Brampton Steelheads, newly Brampton Steelheads, were having internships for that summer. The following summer, after my second year as a ticket sales and partnerships role. So I was like, okay, this is great. It's my, like, local team, so it's close to home and a team that I kind of grew up watching. Like literally went in middle school to go watch these games. And now I can get like, experience in a partnerships role with a team that has newly relocated. So it's like opportunities for new businesses, new partners, new relationships and things like that. So the summer of 2024, I was able to intern with the Brampton Steelheads in a partnerships role. It was super cool because it was just like my ability to flex my skills in such a small organization. Like in those organizations, one person might have a title, but they're really doing like seven different jobs, right? So I was able to, you know, design merch. I had overtaken the. The Women in Sport Night theme game where I was like spearheading the whole entire theme game myself. And. And I had a cool idea to be able to have all the corporate or all the partners and businesses of that event be women owned businesses, which was super cool to be able to amplify that within the game. We had some really cool speakers. Megan Chayka was one of our speakers.
A couple more people from MLSC as well as the organization of the Steelheads itself were able to speak. So that was super cool to run. And then aside from that, my main job was honestly just getting like, more partners for them for this new season. Just more revenue, honestly, like, make money for the team was my job.
I think by the end of my internship there, I'd sent out 700 emails over the course of like two and a half to three months. I would just sit there and, you know, send those emails and get those out. But it was really cool to be able to learn, like, what makes a partnership, like the business development side of it of selling and pitching and kind of like aligning, you know, the property and the brand, why this partnership makes sense. And a big marquee like partner that came out of that that I had started conversations with was Algoma University, who's one of the biggest partners of Steelheads. Now. They're the home bench sponsor. They have it in Ice logo, I believe, as well as they have a rank board as well. So that is a pretty big partner. They also have like social media assets and things like that that got done way after my internship. So a big takeaway from that, once again, is how long things take. Like, I had started that almost at the beginning of my internship and the conversation didn't finish until I was back at school. So, yeah, that was. That was a really cool experience in terms of like, starting out my professional career in like, A real professional like, way, like working in an office and things like that. But yeah.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Oh, fantastic. I mean, again, those junior markets, you've essentially had a quite a roller coaster ride of your sort of sport industry history right now, where you start off in a league and sort of said the chief marketing officer, he said cmo, that's chief marketing officer, right?
[00:14:19] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: You know, that level of face to face, but the highest levels of the organization, like the NHL, then you have junior hockey, which, as you sort of mentioned, is a lot of people working very hard, understaffed, underpaid. I think that there's no CHL team that would mind me saying that the vast majority of their staff are underpaid and they're, they're overworked. And that's just the reality of junior hockey. And I think that one of the things that we've talked about throughout this course is that understanding the, the economies of the hockey industry and the Canadian sport industry more broadly, the economies of.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Scale are very different.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: And you said you grew up watching Steelheads games. I mean, I'm sure that many of the people listening to this watched a junior hockey or watch junior sports or minor sports in their, their communities. And you can kind of imagine these, these, these teams to be giant businesses. And then you get inside and you realize, no, they are. A lot of them are running on shoestring budgets. A lot of them are running on. On operating on deficits. A lot of them are. Some of them are losing money. And when you get a sense of that, you understand that. Like when you, when you mentioned the fact that your portfolio involves so much revenue generation, I mean, what a day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year occupation it is for most of these junior markets, which is just trying to bring in dollars. And it also helps explain some of the sort of more sociocultural issues in junior hockey when you understand that these are businesses to keep the lights on and keep those teams in those markets. And, and then from there, obviously you see, you leave Brampton or not leave Brampton, your internship's over, and then you, you move on to even bigger and better things. Take us into your next stop.
[00:15:46] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I love this story because I think it's a little bit different than your. Your typical pathway to, to internships. But while I was in the Broxburn Business Association, MLSE had come to us with an opportunity for global partnerships, case competition roadshow. So our president last year was interning with MLSE at the time. So we had a couple of Representatives from MLSE Global Partnerships department, they came to us, give us, gave us kind of like a partnerships seminar as well as like telling us about the. The case competition itself that they hold.
And then after it, I had was like, do I want to enter this case competition? I don't know. I was kind of honestly set on interning for the NHL before I found out that they don't have interns in Toronto. So I was like, I need to pivot. But I was like, should I join the case competition? Should I go up to them and talk to them? They've been talking to like 50 people today. But, you know, this is a lesson for everybody out there. Go up to the professionals and introduce yourself. Give your elevator pitch. I had gone up to.
It was Marco Mateo there, and I had given my little elevator pitch mentioning Algoma and the Steelheads, which, you know, one of the representatives there, like, recognized. He literally told me after that, he wrote down my name because of it. So once again, master that elevator pitch. But aside from that, I had joined the Case competition with a couple other people in the club and we went through to the finals in MLS HQ. It was around like close to 300 teams that had applied for the case competition across the world. Like, there's people from Spain and France entering. I don't know why, but people in Europe entering. And we had made it to the top 5% out of the entire case competition, 1400 people that. That had entered the case competition. And from that there were 70 people in the finals and they had said that they were going to interview the team that had won the case competition and then six to 10 standout students. So my team didn't end up winning, but I was one of the, like, standout students that had, you know, stood out to them in the case comp.
I got my interview after, and from there they hired four people out of those 1400 people had entered the case competition. And I was fortunate enough to be one of those people. So, yeah, last summer, or, sorry, this past summer, I was just completed my internship with MLSE as a global partnership summer associate. It was such a cool experience. Like from the whole process of getting there is basically from like November to the end of February. So a whole like three, four month process of getting there. And then the experience was super cool because their summer associate program is different from their other internships where it's a rotational program. So you get to rotate throughout all of the sub departments of Global Partnerships, that includes partnership development, partnership marketing, commercial strategy, revenue strategy, media integrations, and business planning and insights. So I got a really good holistic view of the department and it's like set me up so well for the future. But with there I was able to help them activate and execute on different like partnership deliverables. My accounts were MasterCard and Sun Life. So I got to work on some really big accounts in MLSE's partnership portfolio and I was able to help them execute contests or different activations, ideating for, for different things for partners. That's kind of with like commercial strategy where you can kind of work almost like as an agency and as an internal agency. So that was a lot of ideating, strategizing, partnership development, getting, you know, that was my favorite part of it. It was helping develop new business and new revenue and going out and pitching and selling to partners, which is super cool. Like talking to all these big CEOs and CMOs of, of these companies as just a little intern myself and pitching to them was super fun. And then yeah, aside from that, got to do, you know, some things about reporting and end of season reporting for the, the teams as well. I, I mainly worked on the Raptors vertical so I was able to see a lot of how they operate on that side. But a lot of my partners also touch Leaf, so that was also really cool. But yeah, I got to do so many cool things there. Learn about how the like best organization or the organization that just has such a high level of excellence, why they, they do things that way. And, and with having so many resources available to you, going from the Steelheads, you know, an organization of less than 10 people to organization of hundreds of people was, was really crazy. And you know, knowing that you probably don't even know everybody on your floor is, it's insane. But I got to have coffee chats with so many people in the department, whether it's from, you know, vice presidents to coordinators. So just learning about the whole entire department itself was, was super awesome. But yeah, I couldn't have pictured a better internship. They gave me so many different tools to work for my career and there was a lot of change that happened at the company during that time. So it was interesting as well to kind of witness, you know, turnover rates and, and things like that and just kind of management change and kind of just knowing that the only thing you can do here is just kind of keep going. So it was cool to see it from the inside.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: I mean, what a journey already. I mean again, you're still just starting off on this process and if you're listening to this Right now, you think to yourself, wow, I can't believe I have none of these experiences, or I haven't done that yet. That's totally fine. This is not a normal situation that we're talking about with Tina right now. I mean, one of the lessons, though, you can imagine Tina's early career here in a microcosm of your own journey in the Canadian sports industry right now. And the lessons that she's learning quickly, hopefully that all of you can learn at the same sort of pace and maybe for the next four or five years, is that you're not necessarily going to be on a linear pathway towards. So you're going to start a junior B team, then a CHL team, then an AHL team. That might be the way it happens. It generally won't be. You're going to go up and down and up and down. And one of the things, Tina, from your own journey that I was noting there is your time in Brampton and the experience of working in a situation which you're being stretched, in which you're having to do a lot of things a lot of different ways and on small budgets and having to learn to do things for yourself all the while you're in university, learning all these various skill sets at the same time.
I think that that's an important lesson. I think for anyone listening to this right now that's thinking about the hockey industry is getting those experiences at smaller clubs, smaller than the Steelheads, even junior B teams, junior C teams, junior A teams, doesn't matter.
That served you well. I think, Tina, when you went to mlse, because you were used to the idea that you're going to do many different things and serve many different sort of areas. I think something that, you know, this course, for instance, goes into many different aspects of the sports industry. Specifically, sometimes we're talking about analytics or collective bargaining or what have you. And likely you come into Brock with an interest and a speciality in one of those areas. And what I encourage students again, over and over again is you are likely not going to get a job specifically because of one skill that you have. That's my. My best piece of advice at this. Through the journey of our students, the students that have many different skills, the students that are able to leverage multiple skills at once or develop new skills on the fly, those are the ones that seemingly succeed, you know, over the long run. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes it is just data and it is just analytics or it is just decision making. But, Tina, in your experience, did you see that a need to have multiple types of skills in the workplaces that you've worked so far.
[00:23:12] Speaker C: Yeah, 100. I definitely agree with, with everything you just said. Like I always say that, you know, find your niche and find one thing you're really good at, but within that niche, you're gonna need to have so many different skills. Like I even with me, like starting off at Brampton, like I wasn't expecting to design merch. I was hired as a ticket sales and partnerships intern. You know, so, you know, being able to have some graphic design skills, but also having those communication skills to, to talk to people and develop those relationships in our different conversations with different new partners or current partners. And then also being able to problem solve. Like in my Women in Sport event, you know, we had two speakers not able to make it the day of. How are we gonna adjust from here? I think that being able to have such a diverse set of skills is so important and that is through, like you said, getting those experiences with, with you know, smaller teams or smaller organizations. Obviously I've mentioned like three big experiences from my life, but I kind of left out, you know, a couple volunteer experiences that I had with the Brampton honey badgers, with IndyCar, with, you know, I, I think I also did some writing for fansided, which was this like journalism website which I found out is not what I want to do. So but from there I was able to take those like writing skills and apply it to writing copy in MLSE for different PowerPoints and things like that. So it's like little things that you take from those experiences you're able to apply to your, your future experiences. Especially in my role with mlse, we had so many different sub departments that I was working with. Like I wasn't only on partnership marketing, I wasn't only on partnership development, media integrations, had a lot of reporting, a lot of numbers, things like that, calculations. Same with business planning and insights. So that was a lot of kind of numbers, Excel based things. You know, I took a sport analytics class in at Brock which was really helpful for that. So I knew how to use Excel and then revenue strategy. I had to do some research and work on accounts that were as big as Molson in Sun Life that are, you know, seven figure high seven figure accounts where I was kind of handling the research for, for that which was super cool. But that had to do with, you know, being able to find scholarly sources and articles which I did a lot in school and which we, you know, we took our research class in first year. So I think like we go through some of these classes not knowing where we're going to use these skills. But then I I fortunate enough to get to the workplace before graduating and then seeing where I'm able to apply these skills. So I think it's so important to be able to have a diverse array of skills.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I mean, Tina, what a great message to deliver to these students that, yeah, out there you are going to be using these courses, these courses that you maybe you excelled in, maybe you crushed the finance course with Chris Chard, maybe it was a struggle for you, but they are skills that you're going to need. Maybe you were awesome in sport analytics, maybe in partnerships.
The truth is, having a little bit of expertise in all of these things is kind of what makes Brock's education so unique in this way. And this isn't an advertisement for Brock, but it is great because you're already here.
But hearing your experiences and speaking to my students experiences, I think is incredibly important. One thing that I do wonder about is the sort of changing landscape, I should say, of the way these corporate atmospheres have developed over time. Like, for instance, from the time that you've started your career here, Tina, you started in the sort of immediate aftermath of COVID and sort of a remote workforce for the most part, or a hybrid workforce. Things are switching in that regard, even at mlse. Things are moving back to in office and things like that. And I think one of the aspects that is most, I think troubling for me when I look to the future for our students that are coming in, say, first year is a notion of I'm not totally sure what their workplace is going to look like.
And this speaks to the sort of the need for flexibility. But can you sort of speak to the sort of various workspaces you've worked in in the sport industry so far? How much of this was in person? How much of this was was online?
How much of this needed to be in person? How much of this needed to be online? Has it your experiences changed in that regard in terms of where you're physically doing the work?
[00:27:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say, well, with the NHL, that was fully remote, other than going to the in person events, all of the meetings and whether it was slack, whether it was zoom, those were all fully online just because of the nature of all the members of the board being from across North America. Some people were from Hawaii, some people were from Carolina, I was from, you know, Mississauga. So those are fully remote. Even throwing it back to like when I was doing work with the Mississauga Sports Council that was supposed to be an in person co op, but luckily in high school and grade 11 they made it like remote because of COVID So those are fully remote experiences. When I got to Brampton, that was was kind of more when like the hybrid work schedule was like in play. So I was in office like two to three times a week, I would say.
And then the rest was remote, like fully from home.
I think like there a lot of my work there, I definitely could have done remote, like even like meetings with some like prospective partners. They were all honestly remote other than the off 1, 2 that were in the local area.
I think just because of the nature of work I was doing there, it was a little bit less dynamic in terms of like the partnerships. Work I was doing is mainly like, I would say like 80 to 90% outreach. So you know, obviously when you're just sitting on your laptop, sitting, sending emails, I can definitely do that in my room at home.
And then with mlse, I worked three days in office and then two days at home. So that was another hybrid schedule. But kind of near like the end of my internship, I wanted to come in person more often because I was like, what a great opportunity it is for me to be able to work into this office that, you know, I dreamed of working half my life. And I think it was like easier for me to get work done, easier to kind of like network with the people there that, that do come into office on the Mondays or Fridays, which, you know, heads up is like the vice president, sometimes the senior vice president of your department at times. So I think that was like a little more helpful to be in person, just being able to like connect with your peers and your colleagues. So I would say that like, even though your work is like doable, like at home, where you can like sit in your room in the comfort of your home, sometimes it's more valuable to like go into work just because of these other factors of being able to connect with people and stuff like that. And I think it's something we take for granted, honestly. Like, yes, we love not being able to get out of our pajamas in the morning, but at times it's also like we spent so many like so much time at home isolated from everybody. Like, here's our chance to like get in person, connect with people.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah, Tiena. And again, it's something that four years ago I think I would have thought to myself, well, I think the most majority of the workforce is going to be remote at some point. And I'm surprised and Sometimes alarmed at the rate in which we are returning to a fully in person environment. But I guess my advice to all of you from hearing what Tian just said, would be to be flexible in terms of your expectations for work.
These fully remote opportunities sometimes even shouldn't necessarily be fully remote or vice versa. Fully in person. Sometimes you get there and you end up on a teams call all day. But in the spirit of offering advice here, Tina, and thank you so much again for all of your time today. Can you offer some advice to those of you who are just starting out your journeys? I mean, you're right along with them in your own journey right now. But maybe if you were speaking to yourself in first year, what would you tell yourself upon entering the program at Brock? And maybe also some words of wisdom for also some of your, your classmates here as they, as they enter the sport industry.
[00:30:39] Speaker C: Yeah, this is a really great question and I'm going to try to stray away from the normal kind of answers of like networking and, you know, volunteering. I think everybody knows that they, they have to do that. I think like, maybe like two or three pieces of advice I would give is one, to give yourself grace. Like, I think a lot of us forget that a lot, you know, a lot of people listening to this right now might think that they're, they're so behind and, you know, they need to do more. And I honestly feel like that every day I Scroll on LinkedIn and see people getting new positions. So everybody feels like that, like, be easy on yourself. Like you are your own self and the energy that you put like into this world is what comes back to you. So just know that like, you know, it's only going to get better from here and that, you know, there's so much good, like, coming towards you and like, just be easy on yourself. Like, I get everyone's their hardest critic. So I would say, you know, give yourself some grace and patience with, with your career and school and everything like that. Number two, I would say, is to be like, what was I thinking? I was, I was gonna say, like, be like authentic and genuine in, you know, every experience you have, especially interviews and things like that. Like, I think when we hop into an interview, we think that we need to be like the best version of ourselves, the perfect person, the perfect candidate for these things. But we forget that, like, you are going to be here for four months a year, things like that. You want to be able to present yourself and be able to have these people know that like, this is who you are. And I think Being yourself gets you further than, like, trying to put up a front of. Of who you are. And, like, when you get asked, like, your greatest weakness, tell them your greatest weakness and tell them how you're working on it. Don't lie and say that. It's like being a perfectionist or something like that. So I think, like, every interview I've gone in, I've, like, you know, said slang and things like that. I got asked my favorite karaoke song in my MLSE interview. You know, they just want to know that, like, like, you are someone that is, like, coachable and that they can get a drink with after work. Honestly, like, you're going to be spending eight hours a day with this person. They want to know that you can have conversation with that person. So I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to, like, be this perfect person in. In interviews, but it's really just authenticity is what gets you far this. And the last thing is kind of just to, like, put your all into everything.
What you put into things is what you get out of it. And you might, like, enter internships thinking that four months is a lot of time, but it goes by so quick. And like, in the beginning, like, ask those questions, be curious, take initiative. Like, when I was with mlse, they told me so many times, like, come to them with ideas, like, it doesn't matter that they're this huge corporation. They want to hear from us, like, from different voices and perspectives. So get those ideas churning. Don't do. Don't wait for people to, like, tell you to do things. So those are the ways to stand out and kind of navigate this career, hopefully.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Tina, that's great advice, and I like the authentic interview advice there as well. They've heard every answer you could possibly imagine. You might as well give one that's true to yourself. Thank you so much, Tina, on behalf of the entire class, for all of your time and your insight.
Face that no one can forget.
