Sports Career Advancement Seminar

4 weeks - with weekly 90 minute live mentoring sessions via audio chat

Live Audio Chats with your Mentor and Industry Guest Speakers.

Who should participate:

This seminar is recommended for individuals formerly or currently working in sports looking to advance their career. Professionals with 2 years minimum experience in sports, those looking to elevate the status within their current team or company and/or make a change within the industry, those who are looking to hear from successful industry experts and how they blazed their trails!

Why you should participate:

This seminar will tap into the wisdom of sports executive leaders who will tell the truth about what is important in the industry, what defines success, how to stand out among your peers, how to demonstrate greater value to your organization, how to seek out new opporunties within and outside of your current organization, how to start with the end in mind regarding your career.

What you will gain by participating:

You will capture the shared knowledge of over sixty years experience crossing multiple leagues and sports. You will have personal mentorship on how to advance your own career, what your strengths are, and how/where to apply them, how to continually refresh your career plan and perspective. You will tap into a network of resources with personal guidance to succeed.
 

Sport Career Leadership Seminar includes:

• What does success look like?
• Which sports career is right for you?
• Where have you been and where are you going?
• Career Planning
• The top things you must know before working in sports
• Attitude, Aptitude, Servitude
• Leadership skills
• Methods to create positive energy and build a strong game plan
• Organize your financial, professional, personal and location goals
• Discovering your strengths and capitalizing on them
• Establishing accountability
• Maximizing where you are and where you want to go
• Superior Communications
• What do you know and who do you know - getting to the top faster
• Motivation, Abilities, and Self Management Skills
• Your ideal Job Description and how to attain that job
• How do you ethically look for a job and keep your current job
• How do you switch to other leagues?
• How to you advance from minors to majors or D3 to D1 schools?
   
• Length: This program is 4 weeks long, with 4 unique live audio chats every other week.
• Live Audio Chats: These will be held on four consecutive Wednesday evenings at 8pm eastern time, 5pm pacific time for 90 minutes. Headset, microphone and passwords for the online live audio chat are included in the course fee.
• Best Practices Discussion Board Postings: At the student's convenience, asynchronous learning will be taking place. Each participant will be responsible, on their own schedule to post items to share to enhance the weekly discussions. This will vary based on the weekly live audio chat. In addition, the online classroom will include modules and a resource library with examples from successful teams.
• Weekly Readings: Two books are included in the course fee and will be integrated into the unique aspects of the sports industry. Quizzes to enhance learning are offered in the online classroom.

  Goal:

Mentor:

Chris Keeney, President & CEO of A3 Sports Consulting

Chris is the President & CEO of A3, a sports consulting firm with expertise in ticket sales, sponsorship, marketing, event management, and leadership development.

Most recently, Chris was General Management of the Lone Star Sports and Entertainment (LSSE). As the General Manager of LSSE which is a special events division of the Houston Texans of the National Football League. As general manager of LSSE, Keeney oversaw major events including the Texas Bowl, neutral site college football games, international soccer matches, and stadium show musical concerts.  Further, LSSE has played key roles in the success of the Shell Houston Open (PGA), Pro Beach Volleyball (AVP) and is serving on the World Cup Houston Local Organizing Committee.  LSSE’s 2010 event calendar includes a Pre-World Cup match with Mexico in May, the Major League Soccer All-Star Game in July, a college football kickoff game between Rice and the University of Texas in early September, the Battle of the Piney Woods, the 2nd oldest college football rivalry in the state of Texas, between Sam Houston State University and Stephen F. Austin State University in October and the fifth year of the Texas Bowl featuring the new match-up between the Big 12 and Big Ten in late December.

Prior to joining LSSE, Keeney spent 13 years working for various Major League Soccer organizations, such as D.C. United, Real Salt Lake and the Columbus Crew. During his time with D.C. United, Keeney was awarded the Inaugural Commissioner’s Sales Person of the Year and the Commissioner’s New Business Leadership Award honors.  With Real Salt Lake, he served as the Senior Director of Sales. Under Keeney’s leadership, Real Salt Lake saw a 44 percent growth in season seat sales. As Vice President of Ticket Sales and Services for the Columbus Crew, he led the team towards revenue that exceeded its goal by 25 percent, due largely to an overall ticket sales growth of 29 percent and was awarded the 2007 Employee of the Year.