Failure: The Best Learning Experience for a Sports Career

By: Dakota Zientek 

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“For anybody that wants to get into sports, you're going to get hit with failure,” said Kristoffer Dolen, the sales manager for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “If you want to work in sales, you absolutely, 100% are going to get hit with failure. You can be a victim of your circumstance, or you can celebrate it. Okay, I failed. How did I fail? Why did I fail? Oh, this is why. Okay, how do I improve now?” 

Dolen, along with most people at one point or another in their life, faced failure. However, there are things that you can’t control, and there are things that you can control. Dolen made it very clear that he focuses on the things in his control. One example of that is being prepared. 

“I learned that preparedness is key,” said Dolen. “The most prepared people are the most successful people. I learned to not do something at the last second. I also learned, if it's not perfect, if you're on a sales pitch in your location and it's not the best in the house, or your proposal maybe is missing a slide or whatever, never let them see you sweat.” 

While it is important to be prepared no matter what, even being the most prepared person doesn't mean you're going to be the best candidate in a job search. Obtaining a job in sports is an incredibly competitive field, and while that is well-known to those applying, there are ways to overcome that competition. 

Even though a degree is something that students worked hard to achieve, it takes more than a degree to get a job in professional sports. The way Dolen explains it is like being given a tool belt. The tool belt is your degree, but without tools, what good is the belt?

“[The Buccaneers] look at the people that have the hammer or the screwdriver, the tape measure, on their tool belt. And that's who the attractive ones are,” said Mr. Dolen. “The hammer could be the volunteer experience with the Dwight Howard Camp or it could be an internship with an arena football team. Everyone has every excuse to go to college and just say, ‘Hey, I got my four-year degree.’ But sports are so competitive right now. I mean, you need to stack your tool bet.”


So, to all degree-attaining graduates, it is important to look at the work it took to get the degree. Was it just a journey of going to class, doing homework, and then going to the bars? Or was it a journey of gaining all the experience you could, so that way when you're graduated, your tool belt is full of tools that will be able to help you down the road? 

Getting back onto the topic of failure, Dolen has faced failure and adversity at points in his career that could have influenced him to not try again. As you aim to enter the industry, it’s very rare to have a 100% success rate when interviewing for a position. However, Dolen was able to turn failure he faced into something he is able to look back on and use as a piece of motivation for others.

“When faced with adversity, you can either be like, ‘Oh, I'm a victim, I messed up. I can't bounce back from this.’ Or you can learn from [the failure]. You don't give up and you keep chasing what you're after. You've got to learn from every failure and treat it as an opportunity to grow. It’s all part of the process.”

The last main point Dolen made clear was how important it is to market yourself and how to make your own personal brand. 

“One thing I learned in my career, that I didn't really learn about in college, is the importance of a personal brand,” said Dolen. “I mean, you look at the highest, most respected brands in the world: Disney, Coca-Cola, you name it. They have a really high, high brand. And then you look at a sub-par brand and you just can’t compare the two. You always want your brand to be compared to the Disney or the Coca-Cola of the world.”

Because of the personal brand Mr. Dolen has created for himself, he is able to pass that on to the people he works with, as he really cares about giving back to those individuals and the generations that follow. And while a personal brand is important, leaving a legacy behind for others to follow is the way Dolen wants to be remembered. 

“Selfishly, do I want to be remembered and have a shrine or a statue or something? That'd be cool, but I want people to think of me and think, ‘It's crazy when you look at his career, how many people worked alongside him or on his teams, where they are now, and what they did for the industry.’ That's what I want to be remembered for 100 years down the road.”

So, what is YOUR legacy going to be 100 years from now, and how are YOU going to make that happen?

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