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>> Trevor Turnbull: Alright I'm going to get into the presentation here. So basically what
I'm going to do with you guys, we've got about an hour and fifteen minutes, I'm going to
give you like fifteen minutes of a presentation then we'll to get into some live interactive.
It's great to see that everybody has their computers here because what I want you to
really get out of this is to not only see the opportunity but to start implementing
some of these things that we teach on how you can use these tools to further expand
your network and just connect with key decision makers and hopefully help you land that dream
job over the next couple of years. I'll give you a little background into myself here.
So I'll tell you who I am first of all and relate it to a personal branding story. So
kind of like how I got into this whole space. Then, again, how you can use social media
and LinkedIn in particular to land that dream job. And the big mistake that people make
when they start using tools like LinkedIn, I'll tell you what that is. Why you can't
afford to ignore it and then we'll get into some questions. I'm going to tell you about
myself first of all. About fifteen years ago I was defined as this guy. I was a hockey
player growing up in Canada. Had some success, played at the University of Saskatchewan,
college hockey. Actually went to school at Iowa State as well. But that was the closest
I came to winning the Stanley Cup as a player, which was as a guy in his street clothes at
the Hockey Hall of Fame. So I decided it was time to stop pursuing that dream but I still
loved sports so I wanted to figure out how I could get into it. What I did was I went
and got my marketing degree at the University of Saskatchewan and from there I figured what
am I going to do? I have to go get a job right? So I went and became a sales guy; it was the
prototypical thing for an ex-athlete to go and get into the sales side of things. I started
to feel like this guy, unfortunately, just for a little bit because I was being taught
the old way of selling which was cold calling and doing whatever you have to do to make
the sale. So I really did not like that side of my life. But I had the opportunity about
four years ago to with with the Calgary Stampeders, which is a Canadian Football League team,
on their social side of things. So this is when social media was just starting to kind
of be a buzz word and the teams had come to us, the Stampeders in particular, and said,
"we hear about this Facebook thing but we dont really know what to do and what happens
if somebody says something bad about us, what do we do then." We had a lot of talking them
off the ledge to do in the sense we had to tell them that, "people are already talking
about you, they're talking about your brand if you know where to be found." And we discussed
this this morning in the class, you got to be there, you got to be present. So we helped
them overcome their fears and then we implemented social media into their game day strategies,
their sponsorship, their sales, their marketing and we launched a site called Stamps Connect
which at the time was very cutting edge. It was just pulling in all of the social accounts
that they had into one space but then also allowing the fans to tag their content on
YouTube and Twitter and Facebook and pull it into this site. So it was almost like a
band board using social tools. Nowadays you have widgets and everything else that you
can easily embed into the site so it's kind of old hat but at the time it was very cutting
edge. So I took that opportunity and that experience and I said I want to get into the
sports industry. So I had no experience really in the business side of it other than doing
some consulting with a Canadian Football League team. So I launched a Web site called SportBand
Connect. And this was the very first video that I ever did with bad lighting, and we
had the New York Islanders in Saskatoon which is actually where I'm from in the background,
so the sound was bad the lighting was bad but I basically introduced myself as somebody
that was going on the road to just connect and meet with as many people as possible in
the sports industry. Whether they be executives, consultants that work with teams, athletes
and we just documented what was going on in the sports industry from a social perspective.
It allowed me to open up this whole new world that I didn't think was possible before. A
great example, we were in New York and we met with Tom Jolly from the New York Times.
He's a senior sports writer for the New York Times. Kathleen Hessert owns a company in
Charlotte called Sports Media Challenge, she's kind of best known along with another girl
for getting Shaquille O'Neal on Twitter. These were people that me in Saskatoon, a guy that
likes the Riders that no one else in the world has ever heard of before until today, I'm
now connecting with these people. I'm meeting them, I'm talking about best practice strategies
with them. And it was all because I was using Twitter, and LinkedIn in particular, to connect
with them on a business level where I can show my expertise and really get to know what
their challenges are and help them solve some of those problems. The other photo on the
right there was from the Grey Cup, which is the Canadian Football League Championship,
with Brett Wilson. Brett Wilson is, are you guys familiar with Shark Den down here? No?
It's not Shark Den, Shark Tank here right. Dragon's Den in Canada. So he's one of the
Dragons thats on the Dragon's Den that's similar to Shark Tank down here. So very entrepreneurial
guy, was somebody that was, again, somebody that I didn't think I would get a chance to
meet that was I was actually able to just hang out with. So why I'm telling you all
this is because it's a personal branding story. Me, this guy that didn't have any experience,
was able to go in and really position myself as an authority in this area and go from being
a hockey player to a sales guy to now being fortunate enough to stand up here and tell
you guys about this kind of stuff and hopefully help you take advantage of these tools in
a new digital age where maybe some of the baby boomer older generation is not on there
yet but they're very quickly getting on these tools and by you guys getting into this space
right now you really are going to be able to take advantage of it over the next couple
of years. So again this is what it has done for me, and this is kind of expanding on what
Katrina was saying in regards to what I do right now. So obviously I have used LinkedIn
as a means to book numerous speaking engagements. My own personal success story of conference
organizers contacting me because they're simply going to LinkedIn and typing in "sports business
consultant", "sports business speaker", whatever it happens to be. If I wasn't optimizing my
profile to be found for those things I would never be found. So just the fact that I did
optimize my profile, I now get paid to be at these conferences. So I'm kind of my own
case study in itself. So T3 Connect is my own business where I work with some athletes
and brands; Sports Networker, which you may have heard of, has anyone heard of Sports
Networker before? How many people have heard of Sports Networker before? Any hands? Four?
How long have you known about it? What's your experience as far as your understanding of
what Sports Networker is all about? >> Audience Member 1: I actually found them
through connections on Facebook. Warsaw has a page, they liked an article, so I ended
>> Trevor: Right, so just recently then probably? In the Last week or so.
>> Trevor: Well I'll tell you what it is. Sports Networker is an online resource for
people to help them excel in the sports industry. So learn from leaders in the space, whether
it be around sales or marketing or sponsorship, game day, athletes, and then really the main
focus is how to land a job in sports. So you guys, being in an MBA program, you probably
have some experience already. We really target this at people that are looking to break into
the industry. The Sports Executives Association is more something where we've taken it to
that next level where we do advanced trainings and we bring in people to help us do these
trainings for the members of Sports Executives Association. So that one is more of an exclusive
one that we run as a membership site. We have like 30 writers that write for us at Sports
Networker, its an online blog. Sports Executives Association, we've currently got about 400
members in there, we run monthly Webinars all about educating in the sports industry.
And then the Sports Industry LinkedIn group is the largest LinkedIn group focused around
sports business online. There's about 55,000 members currently in there. So it's a great
place for people to come to and connect and talk about best practice examples and really
leverage each other's networks from a LinkedIn perspective. Which leads me to why I'm here
to talk to you guys, so why social media? Sports is obviously a hot thing right? You
hear about, we mentioned this again this morning too, everybody says they want to work in the
sports industry and a lot of times you get the response "because it's cool. I really
like sports." Well everybody likes sports right? There's tons of competition for these
jobs and how do you stand out? How do you actually get your resume on the top of the
pile? Or even bypass that application process to get in touch with the right person where
you're not necessarily going through the traditional channels of searching the job boards and trying
to find ways to apply for jobs. There's obvious ways. Education; you got your undergrad, you're
in an MBA program, great things to be doing obviously. You're learning about best practices.
We get to hear from a guy like Declan this morning who has tons of experience and can
give us his background and understanding of where things are at. Great example of that.
Work experience; I jokingly say it but everyone that has done an internship job realizes that
it's less about what you're learning as an intern and more about just doing crap work
right? You're filling out spreadsheets, you're picking up coffee, you're tailing along behind
somebody. You're not necessarily learning anything in the space that you want to be
in. As you get past the internships and the school and everything you're getting into
a regular job so you are learning. But really it's all about networking. And it's less about
how many people you know nowadays and more about how many people know about you. Thats
what social media, and LinkedIn in particular, really gives you is that sounding board to
be able to do is to control what people find when they Google you. Because people do go
online and search your name right away. If they have any inclination of hiring you or
recommending you or whatever it might be, they're going to Google your name. So that
first impression is absolutely critical. And it may be somewhat known now, but it's probably
a little known fact that LinkedIn is one of the highest ranking sites when it comes to
search-ability. Here's an example of mine. My name, which I've registered my name as
a domain, obviously comes up number one when I search my name. But number two is my Twitter
account and number three is LinkedIn. These three are direct reflections of a person's
first impression when they go to find out more about me. So what am I saying about that?
And these are the kinds of things that I want to show you guys. So the big mistake. I referenced
earlier that a lot of people when they're first entering into this social space and
trying to figure out how to use these tools is how do I reach out to these key decision
makers? The big mistake that they always make is they make it about them. So "what can you
do for me? Can you hook me up with this guy? Can you send an introduction to this person
for me?" Those tactics dont work. They dont work in real life; when you walk up to somebody
and meet them for the first time you can't ask for an introduction to somebody in their
network without first offering some value and finding out what their needs are. Or even
simply just asking a question. People love talking about themselves and their own story.
That's really what we do around the Sports Networker side of things is we interview people
without any expectation of getting anything in return other than to learn from them and
to help other people learn from them as well. That builds relationships and that's what
it all comes down to is the fact that good business is still personal. We can look at
the science of all this stuff but theres a great quote here: "18 holes of match play
will tell you more about your foe than 19 years of dealing with him across the desk."
And again the reference is the fact that business-wise the best deals are done with personal relationships
and getting to know people aside from what they do on a day-to-day basis. Learn about
their kids, their family, their favorite teams, whatever it may be, the causes that they support.
So these tools allow you to do that. Again I'm not an advocate here to say that everything
we've ever learned about networking should be thrown out the door. Social media is just
meant to enhance what we already inherently do which is try to connect and meet with the
right people to be able to land these jobs. So LinkedIn; A few stats for you. 120 million
members currently; this just changed within the last month or so, there's two new members
added per second. Since they went public, they've really taken off. It's gotten into
the mainstream media so people are really starting to take notice of it. And who cares
about the amount of people that are on there, but I think the biggest thing to take from
this is that the older generations are getting on these. We're not seeing the biggest numbers
there; generation-wide under 40 type thing, the generation X type thing and whatnot, is
definitely still the heaviest users and mostly the ones that are on these social tools but
we're seeing the most increase in participation in that like 40 to 60 age group. And these
are decision makers. These are the people that are in control of budgets and in control
of jobs and opportunities and everything that you guys need. Especially in the sports industry,
you see every single league and team and agency and sponsors right across the board are represented
on LinkedIn. So the bottom line is you just cant afford to ignore it anymore. So we're
going to get right into some live, interactive training here and I'm going to ask for some
feedback from some people and were going to point you out and hopefully not make fun of
you but I want you guys to really be able to just take something away from this where
you can see some improvements instantly in your profiles. These are some of the things
that we're going to do. We're going to first of all talk about how to optimize your profile,
so to make sure that you actually can be found. So when people google your name your LinkedIn
profile is going to come up high for the reasons that you want it to, not because you have
party photos from back in high school that have been put up online that you didn't even
know about but have your name on. So controlling what people find. Building your network; so
how to add connections using the "3x" rule. And this goes back to the concept of not making
it all about you. So how can you reach out to people in a way that actually makes them
want to respond in a non-intrusive kind of way. The value of recommendations, how to
connect with these key decision makers and finally becoming an expert authority on the
niche that you want to be involved in. Whether it be sponsorship or sales or on the team
side or league side, whatever it happens to be. So that's a lot of stuff but I want to
leave it open to questions too and I really want this to be interactive where you guys
can ask questions based on your own personal experiences.