Black Sports Agent Association

The Black Sports Agent Association (BSAA). This Association is geared towards establishing a larger presence of African Americans in the sports agent industry.

Reverend Jesse Jackson founded the BSAA in 1996 with the help of the nation’s most renowned African American entrepreneurs and professional of the Sports Industry.  The purpose of this Association is to address and resolve the imbalance representation in the industry.  These individuals collectively formed an international organization of agents and professionals to work together in hopes of increasing the presence and opportunities for African Americans in all facets of sports.

In the Association mission statement they explain that their goals are to strengthen the involvement, credibility, representation, image, and cohesiveness of African Americans in the Sports Industry. The Association has five major goals, which are to enhance the visibility, create and promote a vehicle to articulate the goals and objectives, educate and develop, promote ethical principals and practices, and advance the interest of professional athletes among African American player representatives.

The Association welcomes and encourages the participation of all members of sports related communities who share common goals of understanding, advancement and ethical practice of sports management and representation.

I would consider this Association a very important organization in the Sports Agent Industry. Being that the Sports Industry is dominated by the African American culture the presences of African American player representatives shouldn’t be barely visible, if not visible at all. The Association influences this industry in a major way by trying to breakdown imbalance barriers that separates minorities from representing athletes. It forces us all to pay close attention to the consistence trend in this industry. According to Bill Strickland "The argument used to be that there was an absence of competent black agents," says Bill, who, along with partner Mason Ashe, represents 30 to 40 athletes and entertainers, including Allan Houston, Rasheed Wallace and Daunte Culpepper. "I don't think that's the case any longer. But now you see players saying, “There are no black owners, so white guys can deal with other white guys better.” This is a very touchy but true trend that goes on in this particular industry. Me being an African American future agent, I can only hope that this is a trend that can be broken and resolved within this industry.

http://www.blacksportsagents.com/company/mission.php

http://espn.go.com/columns/aldridge_david/1342031.html

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Building Personal Brand Within The Social Media Landscape

Gary Vaynerchuk: Do what you love (no excuses!) | Video on TED.com

The speaker I choose from Ted.com was Gary Vayerchuk. His speech was very inspirational and filled with passion as he discussed the importance of people doing what they loved. He starts off with two major topics, which are patience and passion. Passion is the first topics he discusses advising people to stop doing what they hate and do what it is they love to do. He then explains patience second.

Mr. Vayerchuk explains his life story of being a wine seller, taking his family business that was making a couple of million annually to making 50 billion in only seven years. Although he manage to become successful in the wine industry one percent of him disliked the business so he walked away from his CEO position to start work in the community. His unhappiness inspired him to start Wine Library TV, which combines an irreverent approach to wine and a shrewd social media strategy. Gary then spoke upon patience. He explained how for 17 months, 5 days a week he did Wine Library TV. He emphasized of hustle and the importance of working hard at what it is you love to do. His field of expertise is using social media landscapes to build personal brands. He talks of how believing in himself and his brand has allowed him to make numerous national television appearances and landing him a book deal.

The presentation by Gary was very inspirational to me. The passion and enthusiasm he demonstrated about what he was doing was something I haven’t seen in a while. I’ve a lot as to how social media branding can really drive your brand and company. I plan to devise a strategic plan to execute this phenomenon within my company’s marketing strategy. He has opened my eyes up to really pursue what it is I love to do and work hard/ hustle for everything I what to achieve.

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In any industry, working in a team environment is a must. You may need to coordinate with your client, co-workers, sub-consultants, and many other stakeholders. As such, being able to effectively build, manage, and communicate with your team is essential.

Teamwork is such a fundamental aspect in numerous career field It’s almost unavoidable because of its colossal presence in every phase of corporate America. My definition of teamwork is simply getting tasks accomplished together with a group of people who all execute in unity.  Teamwork is very important in the Sports Marketing Industry. A vast majority of career fields in this industry are team oriented, people are very accustom to getting tasks accomplished through other people. Marketing Firms all have teams that work together to develop innovative strategies and techniques that will drive their products and services. This makes teamwork the backbone of this industry. Teamwork is stressed in this particular field.

A very important aspect of teamwork is the development of your team. When putting together a team I would first find the proper people to mesh well with others. Developing a winning team is very essential to the success of your teams.  It’s very important that when selecting team members you choose them wisely. I would do research on each of the potential team members to evaluate if they’re the type of people who will make my company and team successful.

Every group or team has to be in ordinance with the overall object. The only way that this could be is if there’s proper communicating. Communication is the most important factor that plays a major role in the teams success. It’s important to communicate well to avoid misinterpretations of the team’s objective. Good communication will also allow team members to understand their role and what their specific task is. This will also allow team members to discuss their strengths and weaknesses allowing a better understanding of where they could be most effective in.

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