Show me the money

I started this column last year as an antidote to anxiety over finding my passion and setting myself up for career success. Since then, I have learned two critical things: First, it's okay to use your Princeton years to find your passion rather than to perfect a marketable skill set and second, careers are episodic rather than linear, so the transition from Princeton to the 'real world' does not set you on an inevitable track in the field that you first venture into.

I want to open up a dialogue with you this year: send me your requests. Do you know alumni who want to share their stories? Do you want to know about how lifestyle choices can affect career objectives? Is there a career that you think you want to explore? I will talk to alumni to check out their stories and how they managed to go from Princeton to career success.

Rick Giles '83, this week's profiled alumnus, founded the Gazelle Group, a Princeton-based sports marketing firm in 1994. An economics major on the football team, Giles was always interested in sports and business. When he discovered sports marketing, those two passions came together. A graduate of NYU's Stern School of Business, Giles worked for Trans World International, a division of IMG, the world's largest sports marketing firm, for eight years to learn the trade. In 1994 he left that company and struck out on his own, creating the Gazelle Group. He has remained a member of the Princeton Football Association (PFA) and has been a mentor to at least one sportsand business-minded Princeton undergrad.

A.D.: When you were an economics major at Princeton, how did you envision your future career? Could you see your way to where you are now?

R.G.: Absolutely not. When I was a junior at Princeton, I had no idea what I wanted to do. Obviously things were a little different then from how they are now, but at that time, that was a great position to be in. One of the reasons to go to Princeton was to find out what you wanted to do. Back then, many if not most people were going on to graduate school or to Wall Street and I imagine that is still true today.

The sports marketing industry was not nearly as mature at that time as it is now. Today many colleges have sports marketing programs and Princeton has sports marketing seminars and forums and career nights. Back then sports marketing was a very ambiguous term and not one that was thrown around nearly as freely as it is today. There was no real business or industry back then. The way I thought about it was "I really like sports and it would be great if my chosen career path involved sports," but I had no real knowledge about what kind of jobs there might be in the business of sports.

A.D.: Did you play a sport at Princeton?

R.G.: I played football.

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A.D.: How did you guys do back then? Better than now?

R.G.: The Princeton team has had a great season this past year! A lot of things were different back when I was playing. Hopefully the strength of this past season is an indicator of a lot of good things to come for Princeton football.

A.D.: Why did you choose to go to business school straight out of Princeton?

R.G.: Well here was my situation: I went through the structured career counseling and recruiting process at Princeton. I interviewed in a lot of different fields for a variety of jobs without knowing exactly what I wanted to do or why I wanted to pursue specific jobs. I got offered a position in this program that was sponsored by what were then the "Big 8" accounting firms. I graduated from Princeton on a Tuesday and started at NYU's Stern School of business less than a week later! In this program, I went to business school full time in the summer and then in the fall, winter and spring, I worked [during the day] and went to business school at night. We were paid throughout the program. It was uniquely beneficial to someone in my position because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. It offered me a chance to go to business school and earn an MS in accounting while simultaneously getting work experience. At that time, I was working for a firm called Touche Ross. We were working inside different client companies so we were learning a lot about how businesses operate and what the business world really consists of.

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A.D.: Was it hard to remain a student after Princeton?

R.G.: Once you have been through senior spring and graduation at Princeton, it is hard to start something new five days later. It was a fairly easy transition for me, but it was very quick.

A.D.: If you want to go into sports marketing, what is the best way to spend your undergraduate summers?

R.G.: The best plan is to get into some kind of internship program where you will learn a lot and gain insight into what the business is like. That's something that didn't exist when I was making career decisions, but now many smallto medium-sized sports marketing firms and sports marketing departments within big companies offer internships. When you work at a big company in a narrow expertise, it is sometimes hard to get a feel for what goes on in the industry. Internships at smaller companies are a great way to gain exposure to the broader picture.

People often want to work in sports marketing because they love to watch or play sports, which are good reasons, but they probably aren't the top reasons. The top reasons to choose this profession are similar to any other industry. It is important to find a career that you enjoy, that's fulfilling, that you look forward to getting up to go to work every day, and that you can work hard at. The more you commit to a career, the more you'll get out of it. This business is not all glamour. Sports marketing is cool because it is more fun to deal with games, events, sponsorships and ticket sales than it is with stocks and bonds and interest rates, but it's still a job. Ultimately, we have to control expenses and generate revenue to be profitable like you do in any other business.

A.D.: What makes you passionate about sports marketing? What are the best and worst parts of it?

R.G.: As a business owner, the answer is really the same for both the best and the worst parts. I worked for IMG for eight years and it was a great experience. I learned so much. I got there at the point when sports marketing was just starting to mature and I rode the crest of that wave of maturity and growth on the front end and I was able to benefit from that tremendously over the eight years that I was there.

When I decided to start my own company, I found that there are both more risks and more rewards associated with that. The returns are not necessarily financial all the time, but you have great freedom and independence and this great feeling that you own what you've created. In contrast with working for a big firm, in your own company you can choose who you want to work with and what you want to do. So the answer to your question is in the question: what makes it so great is the passion that you have for what you're accomplishing. Every day you're responsible for not just yourself but for colleagues, clients, and the overall business. You have to worry about those things every day.

A.D.: What do you look for when you hire someone?

R.G.: The number one thing that we look for in a hire is good people skills. For example, shortly after we got started, I met someone who was also a Princeton football player at a function for Princeton seniors. He had no idea what he wanted to do, but he was interested in working in sports and he was a great kid. We talked for a while at this dinner and I gave him my number and told him to call me if he was serious about getting into sports marketing. He called me and we met up to discuss expectations and what it's like to transition from graduation to working in a sports marketing firm. He called his mom and told her that he had this great interview with a Princeton alum about a great job and he was raving about the possibility of working at Gazelle. His mother said, 'what did he think of your resume?' He was horrified to realize that he forgot to give me his resume. The story ends well because we hired him and he was a great employee. He worked here for five years and then went to law school and now works in his family business. To me, people skills are more important than many of the criteria on a resume.

A.D.: What is the most important part of your post-college life outside of your career?

R.G.: That's a great question because when I was your age, I wasn't thinking about that. Without a doubt, once you have a family, that becomes the most important thing in your life and your career is somewhere further down the list. If you prioritize differently from that, things don't work out well.

At your age, coming out of school, a career is the most important thing because you spent all of this time and money getting an education and you have to make your splash in the real world. It is often hard to see beyond that but your life evolves as you move forward and you do develop a little more balance. That balance is one of the great things that Princeton is teaching you now.

A.D.: Is there a Princeton memory that you're especially attached to?

R.G.: There's nothing about my Princeton experience that I would want to change. It was the greatest four years that I can imagine at any college. I'm not sure that all of the greatest memories that I have of that time are fit for print, so I have to defer on the specifics..