A career in sports can engulf you. For most others, sports are the escape, not the job. The sports industry tries to work around the daily schedule; all the most important stuff happens on nights, weekends, and holidays. Sports are central to social lives, fuel and activate passion, and, for some, affect emotional well-being.
It’s also challenging and rewarding in all the best ways. All the conversations, engagement, relationships, experiences, and memories you can create. You produce content and promotions that are entertainment, you sell excitement, community, and (hopefully) joy. You analyze fan psychographics, study platforms, create feelings through content, manage massive projects, drive creative partnerships, manage a brand, and practice customer service.
Eric SanInocencio has built a career in sports, content, digital, and marketing. He has grown up in the industry, picking up all those skills and ascending to leadership roles in top-level organizations in college, pro, and amateur sports, along with a stint at Amazon. While working in sports is a dream job for many, and it is a heck of a lot of fun, make no mistake — it’s a business. It’s important to understand that as one embarks on a career in sports, it’s integral to connect all the thrills and emotions of fandom into meaningful business goals.
“Social and sports is almost always viewed through the lens of fun content to create and fan engagement,” said SanInocencio, who started his full-time career in the Gulf South Conference, a Division II NCAA conference. “The quicker that you can understand how this ties into the larger business objectives, the quicker you open the door for you to consider other opportunities that could be completely different and that might fit a timeline that’s better for you as you grow in your career.”
SanInocencio grew in his career by chasing new challenges, embracing the unease inherent to stepping outside one’s comfort zone. The willingness to run towards those opportunities is key to growth, not just in a sports career but in any career. The ethos has served SanInocenio particularly well, because he was treading a career path in parallel with the growth of the field. There was no such thing as a ‘Senior Digital Media Director’ at a sports team, a role SanInocencio held at the Houston Texans, let alone a growing team of content creators, strategists, and analysts fueling platforms and a paradigm that was evolving as SanInocencio was coming up. At every career stop, he continued growing by facing new challenges, living in that zone of discomfort, and coming out accomplished and better for it.
“It’s okay to feel terrified of an opportunity,” he told me during a two-hour interview discussing developing a career in sports, growing into a leader, and navigating the job market today. “That means it’s probably something that you need to go after. A lot of times…[it’s] ‘What’s the next step in your journey? How do you find it?’ Especially now, where there are so many people looking for jobs, it may be harder to stretch like that.
“But if there’s any indication when you’re signing up or contemplating a career change or a job opportunity, it should scare you a little bit. ‘Can I really do this?’ If it doesn’t, you’re probably selling yourself a little short.”
SanInocencio did just that when he went from the ACC to Amazon, where he was the Head of Brand and Content for the behemoth’s selling partner communities. Amazon is well-known for its distinct culture, and even an Amazonian language that SanInocencio says sticks with him to this day. It was fascinating to hear about the interview process for a leadership position at the multi-trillion-dollar organization.
SanInocencio indulged my interest, going into detail about what it’s like to interview for a job with Amazon.
“You go through that first interview, which usually takes about 45 minutes, because you have to respond in a way that gives context, clarity, action, and results,” described. “You’ll hear the term STAR method when people are interviewing. That stands for: Situation, Task, Action, and Result. That’s how they expect you to respond. They’ll say, ‘Neil, tell me about a time when you were working with Greenfly, when you had to complete a project that was going over budget, and you had to communicate to your leadership team that it was going over budget. What happened when you had that conversation?’ Then you, as a respondent, have to say, ‘The situation was a) here’s what I had to do, the task was b) here’s the action I undertook, and here was the result.'”
Going through the process, SanInocencio came to appreciate that his career in sports business had more than equipped him with the qualifications and skillset to thrive in any organization, including one of the world’s biggest.
“Imagine me trying to give this STAR kind of results and answer series based off questions they would ask me [and] all my answers are sports-related, to folks that have no idea what sports is,” he said. “So it challenged me as a communicator and as somebody who can advocate for myself to be able to explain why us drafting Deshaun Watson and not knowing that we’re going to draft Deshaun Watson makes sense for a leadership principle that’s ‘disagree and commit.’ I’ve got to do the work to say, ‘Here was the situation. Here was the task that was at hand. Here were the actions we undertook and why, and here’s the result.'”
By the time SanInocencio was ready to leave Amazon, lured by the siren call of getting back into sports, he was a seasoned leader. He had experienced leading a team, overseeing a budget, and driving brand and strategy for organizations that reached millions. The path to leadership is not linear, nor is it identical across industries. Many of today’s sports leaders have experience unpacking bobbleheads, cutting up highlights, helping tarp a field for a rain delay, or shooting from the photo well — some of them still do it even with titles like Director or VP.
Consider an NFL analogy. It’s almost a given that the hottest head coaching candidates are the top play callers, the most coveted offensive and defensive coordinators. But it’s not automatic that all these talented individuals will thrive in the head coach’s seat. SanInocencio notes the importance of recognizing the different skillsets required to be the best doer, a master of a certain practice, versus an effective leader of doers.
“Sports is a little bit different [than other industries]. Even if you’re the VP, you may get out there and shoot some content on your phone,” said SanIncencio, who started out in sports information at his alma mater, the University of Montevallo, before taking the initiative to start and grow in social media and content. “You may be writing an article. You may be hosting a podcast. But still, there’s a difference between execution and strategy.
“As you grow in your career, you have to let go of that execution side and focus more on the strategy, which is hard because most people who are put in management positions were great individual contributors. ‘Man, you’re our best videographer. Why don’t you run the video team?’ Those are two different backgrounds needed to make sure that those go well. That’s a different type of request that you’re asking of somebody.”
SanInocencio put his leadership and oversight skills into full gear when he went from Amazon to Perfect Game USA, taking on a VP of Social Media role with a remit to transform the organization in need of an evolution. That’s an exciting opportunity for anyone to step into such a leadership role with the ability to implement a big-picture strategy and operation. But it isn’t easy. Whether you’re ascending within an organization you’ve worked in for years or, like SanInocencio, arriving fresh from the outside, there’s the unique challenge of wanting to promise the world and envision the pinnacle, while understanding the realities of the limited budget and resources one has or can command.
SanInocencio discussed how he approached taking on the position with Perfect Game, which was a chance for him to get back into sports after his time at Amazon.
“It was like, ‘Here’s where I think is the maximum revenue. If you give me this amount [of budget], here’s how I would spend it,'” he said. “Each place is a little bit different. Most of the places you go will already have an established departmental budget that you have some ability to influence and make change. But PG was unique in that social media was considered part of all these different areas that were already in existence, and we were bringing it together.
He continued: “What I’ve tried to do is use the Amazon idea of working backwards. What is our goal as an organization, or what are the three goals that we have, and how, as a social content marketing department, can we influence the success of those goals? Then I want to build a team that feels personal ownership of those, so that I don’t have to tell them every single thing they need to do, they already know.”
SanInocencio talked about the operation he grew at Perfect Game, driving impressive growth across platforms as he learned about marketing to the young demos in PG’s target audience. After parting ways with PG, he finds himself seeking the next opportunity. And going through a job hunt in a tough job market, not just in the greater sports industry, is teaching him new lessons about himself, years into his career, and with an impressive track record on his resume.
“I think you’ve got to market yourself the way you would market a team or a star athlete,” he said, as we discussed the honest realities of a job hunt. “Sometimes that’s hard because that means we’ve got to put ourselves out there. Sometimes we feel like it could be a little cringey, but you have to stay top of mind for people. When opportunities do come, and they go look you up, there’s not just some static story about you. There’s an evolving story that they can read about, learn about, and understand.”
If you haven’t experienced a gap between jobs, you’re in the minority. At any given time, there are friends, family members, or professional acquaintances in your network seeking that next role. It was cathartic to discuss with SanInocencio as we both brought our own experiences to the table. The best thing we can do as a community, and for others, is to be proactive in lending support, picking each other up, and cheering each other on.
“Just know that whatever you’re going through, you are not alone. You’ve got a community of folks, and sometimes you just got to reach out to them,” said SanInocencio (I can confirm, personally, he practices what he preaches) “When you’re on the other side, and you’re in the job, and you know somebody is struggling or trying to find that next opportunity, it may not be going as easy as they would like. Be that person that reaches out to them.”
Aspiring for a career in sports feels like a dream when you’re young. The realities of working a job eventually set in, but the magic of sports continues to shine even as the day-to-day grind of project management, reports, and recaps persists. In reflecting on the past and the future, and all the lessons he’s learned about himself and in dispensing advice to others, SanInoncencio talked about the difference between a job and a career. We should all be so fortunate to have a job that’s gratifying and fulfilling. We can all still chase the dream. The path isn’t linear, and certainly not easy, but nothing worth doing is. It’s the challenges we face along the way that make the achievements matter more.
“If your dreams don’t scare you, they’re probably not big enough,” SanInocencio said, as we wound down our interview. “That’s, to me, where it all comes to. If you shoot for the stars, you may land on the moon in a different area. You’ve got to go for something. Because if not, that’s the job instead of career. That’s fine. If you just want to be this and that’s all, that’s great.
“But if you want a career, I don’t think you can limit yourself because you don’t know what the future holds for you. You just know that you want to chase something that you care about.”
WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ERIC SANINOCENCIO (there’s tons more!)
