The Future Depends On What You Do Today

By: Cass Ferguson

Have you ever thought about where you want to be one day, whether it be personally or professionally? It’s a great question to think of, but there is no pressure to have a 100% locked in answer because for us here at Sports As A Job, we like to think about it as a tree. The stump being your goal (for example, working in marketing), as you move up, the stump gets smaller so you narrow it down to wanting to be in sports, and then every branch on the tree is the path you could take.

There seems to be a trend going on with the more people we chat with and that is most people started their journey playing & participating in sports. For Lillian Stathopoulos, that is where it all began. She started playing soccer when she was about three or four where she was able to grow as both a soccer player and a soccer fan. As time went on, thoughts about, “What do I want to do for university and my future?” all came into play for Lillian, but little did she know her love for sports would eventually bring her to working in sports. She said, “Even though I played soccer and loved sports, I never really thought of sports as a career.” But looking at her journey thus far, she has done some amazing work.

Lillian went to Brock University and completed her four-year undergrad and even specialized in marketing. Starting off with more of a generic program, she started falling in love with marketing. She took part in intramurals and was friends with a lot of people who were in the ‘Sport Management’ program at Brock University. This exposed her to the business side of sports. When she was in her third year she became more exposed to the business of sports during a sports economics class.  She said, “Hey I can actually do this as a career. So cool. Would never have thought.”

Fast forward to her fourth year, she realized, “I’m not finished with school yet. I need more out of this.” She thought that after working so hard it would be enough, but it wasn’t. She decided to go back to school to take the 1-year post grad certificate ‘Sports & Event Marketing’ at George Brown College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Going to George Brown was the best decision because she mentioned, “Why not learn from the best around some of the biggest sports teams, companies and brands in Canada.”

Through this program she gained so much insight into the industry, including networking, events, projects, guest speakers and so much more. Throughout the program alumni from the Sport and Event Marketing program came in to chat to students, and for Lillian, this is where her Toronto FC & MLSE adventure started.

Fast forward a little in her journey. Lillian said, “Since I took the opportunity to speak to just one person while in school, it led me to meeting someone who told me about an internship opportunity with the Toronto FC Game Operations & Marketing department.” Furthermore, this interaction led her to accepting the internship offer, which then led her to being part of the TFC game crew, and then getting a marketing contract with the Toronto Argos, and then moving to Food & Beverage. These opportunities gave Lillian the chance to learn what it really takes to run an event/ game from start to finish, and she said, “This was really cool, because you don’t truly understand what it takes until you are diving into it yourself.” 

Moving from her full time internship to going back to school, but staying on with MLSE with a part-time contract, one would think how does someone have the time to do all of this. Lillian said, “I love working there and I was so ready to get into the working world, but I did it because I really and truly love it. Staying on allowed me to learn about more of the branding aspects of the company and honestly allowed me to do a lot more that I didn’t have a chance to do as an intern.”

Having the ability to learn more is all someone wants, but for Lillian, being what she said, “Thrown into the fire” allowed her to figure things out because you won’t learn unless you try. It was when she was challenged the most, growing the most and sometimes she was uncomfortable, but she said, “This is when I produced some of my best work because when you’re trying to market a product to someone who doesn’t necessarily want it, and this can happen in any industry.”

She brought up a good point that if “marketing something that might have been done before is fine to do, but changing it up to suit your brand and being unique is the best option. The sports industry is somewhere that anyone can be successful, but if you do have a passion for it and you’ve been involved in it your whole life this can help give you a step up on others because in the end, working in sports can be rewarding.” 

What you have done in the past has a massive impact on where you are now and sometimes we don’t think of that, but it is true. The education you have done will only benefit you in the long run, and with that, we asked Lillian how her education had prepared her for the “real world”.

She said, “University prepared me through all of the case studies we did. We would have clients from around Brock University come in and present their cases. Then for the full semester we would work on their business problems and present the best thing for them.” Both university and college bring different aspects to the table so while at George Brown Lillian said, “The Sport & Event Marketing course allowed me to hear about real world experiences through guest speakers because you were able to see that these people were you a few years ago. Along with speakers, we were given real world/ hands-on learning experiences that prepared us well.”

No matter if you’re someone already working in the industry or you’re someone who’s a free agent, there are ALWAYS ways to improve yourself. We asked Lillian what skills she has or is working on that would make her the best candidate for a job.

She said, “Working in marketing there is always things to learn. It’s forever changing in marketing. For me, I’m working on the Adobe Creative Suite applications including Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. The more you know the better person you can be for a future company.” Lillian further talked about what she could bring to the table: 

• Copy writing 
  
• Organization 
  
• Able to prioritize tasks
  
• Knowledge of marketing tools 
  

Once you get into the industry you don’t stop learning and you don’t stop meeting new people so the moral of the story is to take as many opportunities as you can while you can. 

Connect with Lillian through her links below: 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lillystats
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lillianstathopoulos/

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