How failure led to the success of the Penn State Sports Business Conference...

When I got to Penn State as a freshman, I was overwhelmed by the multitude of things this university had to offer. When I arrived at my first football game in Beaver stadium as a freshman, I thought to myself..what would it be like to run this place..just for one night? This is when the seed was planted for a crazy idea...that everyone told me was not achievable…

 Flashback to 2014

As a freshman, I came across so many opportunities on campus and I started to take note on other students taking initiative around me. I kept thinking that I wanted to do something at Penn State that would make an impact on the school. I couldn’t quite crack what that was going to be. I joined clubs, I joined a fraternity and I helped some startups gain traction on campus. Some companies I worked for freshman year were: Cyberdust (Mark Cuban Company), UrbanBoard, McGraw Hill Education and University Beyond.

In my sophomore year, one of my professors Rick Weyer taught me about validated learning. Rick said, “Just go out and talk to people, get out of class and try something”. Rick wanted the class to take what we learned in class and apply it to the outside world. It was an entrepreneurship class and I was excited to learn from real experiences outside the classroom. Not all the experiences went as planned…

Validated Learning: Failures are Opportunities to Learn

Failure #1: Spartan Race at Penn State

Right before I got to Penn State as a summer session freshman, I ran a Spartan Race at Hunter Mountain in New York. It was 3 miles long and had 25 different obstacles. It was such a rewarding experience that I was truly inspired afterwards. Joe De Sena, the founder of Spartan Race had truly motivated me to be better and think differently. After reading his book I was instantly hooked on the “Spartan Mindset”

 When I arrived at Penn State in August of 2014, I was looking for something to keep me busy. I had an idea that I thought would change the culture for Spartan Race. My idea was to bring Spartan Races to college campuses across the country, a perfect way for Spartan Race to target the demographic of 18 to 24 year olds.

After some cold emails and calls, I finally had someone from Spartan Race get back to me saying they LOVED the idea. I was tasked with finding a venue and a date at Penn State for the first college based Spartan Race. I was only on campus for a couple of months at this point, but with an open mindset I started setting up meetings with anyone at the University connected to fitness, kinesiology, recreation, fraternity & sorority executives, and risk management. Finally, I was gaining some traction and ready to go back to Spartan Race with concrete details.

Spartan Race executives requested I meet them in New York City to lock in final details about the venue and execution of the first collegiate race. After months of planning, the date was set, and the first Spartan Race was set to take place at Tussey Mountain in early April of 2015.

I was so excited to see all the hard work pay off with this race at Penn State. A couple months before RACE DAY, I received an email from a Spartan Race executive saying in short, “Thank you for all your hard work, but at this time Spartan Race isn’t going to move forward with the college series”. I was absolutely crushed and didn’t know what else I could have done. It’s been a while since I have reflected on this experience and I can say now, four years later, it was part of what fueled my devotion for the years to come. 

Failure #2: Meek Mill Concert at Penn State

In April of 2017, my friends David Tung and Ian Bambrick invited me to participate in their startup company, ID Entertainment with a goal to bring the first hip hop concert to Penn State featuring Post Malone, Kirko Bangz and Tungi Ige. I agreed to come in and lead the sales on the ground at Penn State and schools surrounding (Bucknell, Altoona, and Bloomsburg). SpringFest as we called it was a booming success. 3,000 ticket sales later, Post Malone said to us after the concert, “I love Penn State man, I love this school”. We planned and executed a successful concert at Penn State.

Quickly after our show with Post Malone, we had our eyes on concert number two at Penn State. People believed in us to bring high quality artist to Penn State for a cheap cost and great experience at Tussey Mountain. We believed in ourselves as well. Over the summer, we locked in an artist and date for our next show. We re-branded our company and we’re set to launch the “Influence Music Festival” starting at Penn State. Our headliner was Meek Mill, Philadelphia based artist who is very popular for his single “Dreams and Nightmares”. We followed the same process as the Post Malone show and our sales we’re going well.

The weekend before the concert set for September 28, 2017 Penn State Football beat Iowa on a last second touchdown. Vibes were great on campus, and Meek Mill was coming to town. Meek Mill was also going to make a surprise appearance at Penn State Football practice. On Tuesday, September 26 our team received a call from Meek Mill’s manager saying that Meek would have to cancel the concert at Penn State.

Just like that, over 2,500 people had bought tickets and were not going to be seeing Meek Mill. I remember my stomach dropping and David, Ian and myself were scrambling to figure out the best plan of action. 10 hours later, the press, social media and all attendees were aware of the cancellation. Just like that, months of preparation sweat equity and absolute hard work was thrown out the window. The aftermath of this failure wasn’t pretty as we dealt with refunds, lawyers and a lot of pressure to fulfill our contracts on deposits for security, venue, etc. None of these experiences can be taught in a classroom, and taught me the lesson of NEVER GIVING UP!

The first course of action that needed to be accomplished for the Penn State Sports Business Conference was to build a strong and dedicated team of students and advisers.

Building the Right Team: Surround yourself with people smarter than you

When I started looking for people to work on the conference, I wanted to recruit students who had skills and expertise in areas that I wasn’t so strong in. I thought it would be best for the team to bring in students from all different majors and with unique passions. I reached out to professors from marketing, advertising, public relations, finance, technology, creative and hospitality management in order to find a diverse group of students. It worked out very well and the team started to come together.

Student Planning Team:

A huge part of the conference was creating a board of executive advisers consisting of professionals in the sports industry who had experience working outside of college. Each adviser played a crucial role in the success of the conference as they offered advice, feedback and perspective. It was also extremely important to have Penn State professors support and to create a separate board for them. I saw it as having internal resources and external resources.

The Faculty Advisory Board was the internal backbone of the conference. Every decision and big accomplishment was funneled through these professors at Penn State. They provided the right perspective and knew how to accomplish something within the University. All of the professors brought a different area of expertise to the table. Our meetings were filled with enthusiastic emotion, personality, and intelligence. I am grateful for each professor putting up with my relentless and persistent attitude for almost 12 months.

LEARN FROM BEST PRACTICES

BrandThumb Symposium

April 21, 2017

State College, PA

328 days until Penn State Sports Business Conference

 A day after the Post Malone concert at Penn State, I volunteered to work at the BrandThumb Brand Symposium. Having no idea what my task would be, I was excited to see a conference take place in the Lewis Katz Law Building. That would ultimately be the venue of the Penn State Sports Business Conference.

 I showed up to the law building and saw a 6’5 man standing by the registration table. I thought to myself that I wanted to do something more hands on than working registration, so I introduced myself and said I will do whatever you need today. It ended up being John Gilmore, Co-Founder of BrandThumb and former Penn State & NFL football player, one of the most enthusiastic people you could ever meet. John told me that I would be assisting him in the AV room in the main auditorium.

Throughout the day, I worked alongside John to run all PowerPoints, videos, and audio for their symposium. It was a stressful day because there were technical difficulties with videos and audio, I took notes about everything that worked well and things that didn’t run smoothly. Another interesting note was that the conference was free of charge for all student attendees. I noticed that not every student who registered showed up, which made me think about “free registration” opposed to a ticketed event. It was then where I decided we would charge all attendees a fee to show up and attend the conference.

BrandThumb’s symposium played such a key role in the planning of the Penn State Sports Business Conference. Seeing the venue operate and function for a conference allowed me to understand all the areas to focus on for our event. Joshua Blair and John Gilmore, were instrumental in organizing speakers and sponsors for the Penn State Sports Business Conference.

Biggest takeaway: Do a walk through with all conference material! (Maybe two)

Hashtag Sports

June 25-27, 2017

New York, NY

263 days until Penn State Sports Business Conference

Over the summer I heard about a large conference taking place in the heart of New York City, called Hashtag Sports. I saw there was an opportunity to volunteer at the conference, and I was eager to gain experience working conference events. I signed up to volunteer at the networking events taking place at night so I wouldn’t miss any work during my internship.

It was a three day conference with big time speakers, sponsors and organizers. I tried to act as a sponge during my time at the venues to watch what the Co-Founder, Anthony Caponiti was doing. I saw him with an ear piece, clipboard, and he looked very focused. One thing I observed was how Anthony remained calm and collected, it was apparent how prepared and organized he was during the conference. That really stood out to me and I wanted to have the same mindset. We spoke briefly, as he was very busy during these couple of days.

When I was working the networking events, it was a great opportunity to hand out my business cards, which mentioned my position with the Penn State Sports Business Conference. Jon attended most of these events with me, and we tried to tell as many people as possible about our conference. We gauged interest, and most importantly asked if some of the professionals would be willing to travel all the way to State College. That was a huge barrier to our event. We are not located in a major city, and the transportation that makes the most sense is by car. The drive is a monotonous four hour trip.

Hashtag Sports was a tremendous opportunity to see a conference operated by professionals at such a massive scale. I had a hunger to do the same.

Biggest takeaway: Act like you’ve been there before

Michigan Sports Business Conference (MSBC):

October 5-6, 2017

Ann Arbor, MI

161 Days until Penn State Sports Business Conference

 Over the years I’ve learned to analyze and learn from best practices in whatever industry you want to be successful in. When I heard about the Michigan Sports Business Conference and the success behind it, I thought to myself I have to be there this year. I wanted to maximize the opportunity at the conference, and I was ready to pay attention to every single detail the day of the conference.

It was a business trip for me. I talked to as many people as I possibly could in my days in Ann Arbor. I attended the Thursday night reception, Friday conference and Saturday tailgate. After a while, some people were wondering why this Penn State student was so passionate about a Michigan initiative. It was so valuable talking to the student planning team, student attendees, professionals, and faculty members. Everyone had a different perspective on why the Michigan Sports Business Conference has maintained success year after year.

After the conference, I created an entire PowerPoint presentation to show my team that included pictures, videos, takeaways and more. One of the takeaways that I wanted to focus on was EXECUTION. The student planning team at Michigan did a phenomenal job on executing every aspect of the conference. The entire event flowed well and it looked like a professional event agency put on the event. I wanted to emulate that at Penn State. I thought about how important that was to the success of a conference. The speakers and attendees are only a small fraction of the overall production of the conference. I wanted the Penn State Sports Business Conference to be an EVENT.

I sincerely thank everyone at Michigan who helped guide me and teach me about planning a conference. Not one person was trying to hold any information from me and never saw us as a competitor, which was really awesome. I even selected Michigan in my NCAA March Madness Bracket to win it all, especially after hearing Coach John Beilein and Duncan Robinson speak at MSBC.

Biggest takeaway: Flawless execution with videos, PowerPoint slides, and communication

Wharton Sports Business Summit:

November 3, 2017

Philadelphia, PA

132 days until Penn State Sports Business Conference

 When I attended the Michigan Sports Business Conference, I met another student, Noah Klayman, who goes to University of Pennsylvania. Noah and I were both recipients of the BIG Initiative Award at MSBC. We quickly became good friends, and Noah told me about a conference he was planning at UPenn in November. Immediately, I told Noah I would be there and I could not wait to see another student run conference.

There was a big difference in MSBC and the Wharton Sports Business Summit. UPenn’s conference was the FIRST ONE of it’s kind at the university. It was really important for me to see a conference in year one to understand implementing a new initiative at a school. I attended the conference with my Co-Founder and Vice-President Jon Marcus. I thought it was really valuable to have Jon come along to see for himself what a student run conference looks like and operates.

 It was a great day of keynotes, breakout sessions and workshops with different industry professionals. I thought the Wharton Sports Business Summit did a tremendous job implementing networking into their conference. At the end of the day, students want to meet and connect with industry professionals for internships & job opportunities. Jon and I created a similar PowerPoint highlighting the event to show our team at the next meeting. A huge takeaway that played a crucial role in the Penn State Sports Business Conference was their catering. They had boxed lunches for all attendees, which might seem like a small detail, it worked out really well and is how we decided to use Panera boxed lunches at our conference.

Two student run conferences later, I had a pretty good idea of how we were going to plan and executive the first Penn State Sports Business Conference.

Biggest takeaway: Boxed lunches, networking and time cards for speakers

Super Bowl LII: The largest event in the world

February 4, 2018

Minneapolis, MI

39 days until Penn State Sports Business Conference

When I was notified about the opportunity to work at Super Bowl LII, I believe I was the happiest and most excited kid on the planet. It has been a dream of mine to even attend a Super Bowl, but the ability to work the event and see all the behind scenes was a surreal opportunity. I was off to Minneapolis ten days before the largest event the world. As I was leaving the conference team behind, I ensured them I would come back with ideas, feedback, and takeaways to make our conference successful.

Although the Super Bowl experience was not a conference, it was a tremendous opportunity to gain experience in the event industry. Some of the tasks were working registration, guiding media personal to different events (Radio Row, Media Day, NFL Experience and more), and working game day of Super Bowl Sunday. Our supervisors during the experience, Michael Signora and Scott Berchtold, led stadium walk throughs at the U.S Bank Stadium. The walk throughs were vitally important to the success of all game day operations on Super Bowl Sunday. Michael and Scott were very explicit and detailed in their explanation of the stadium and all areas to be aware of.

 Fast forward to the week of the conference, and I’m leading a walk through at Beaver Stadium and the Lewis Katz Law Building for the conference team of 20 students. Before the walk through all members of the conference team received an email with their roles and responsibilities for the day of operations. The email they reserved was modeled after my game day assignment at Super Bowl. It was extremely detailed and covered all tasks to be aware of. I learned a tremendous amount from Michael and Scott during their walk throughs and implemented a lot of their strategies during our planning of the event.

 It was interesting to implement strategies and lessons learned at the Super Bowl to the Penn State Sports Business Conference. I learned that no matter the scale of the event, it is vitally important to plan and operate like it is the “Super Bowl”. I got back from the Super Bowl in Minneapolis and told my team the Penn State Sports Business Conference is our Super Bowl.

Biggest takeaway: The team is as strong as the weakest link, everyone needs to understand the full scope of the event and worst case scenarios that could come up during the event.

Work Ethic & Preparation: “Hard work beats talent, when talent fails to work hard”

The Penn State Sports Business Conference team met twice a week for over six months in planning the conference. Monday nights were individual team meetings where we were very focused on personal development and focusing on individual goals. Wednesday nights were team meetings where each team would present their updates for the conference. For an example, the sponsorship team would announce any new deals that were confirmed and new companies they were reaching out to.

Outside of the weekly meetings, there were multiple meetings with university officials, venue managers, professors, advisors, risk management, public relations, financial services and more. Every day there was something that would come up and require work to be done to ensure success. Our team did not have an easy path to making the conference happen, as Penn State has many boundaries and policies when it comes to events on campus.

Our mindset was no matter what it takes, we will get it done and answer any question that anyone had regarding our event. We were locked in on making this happen.

Biggest takeaway: Hearing the word “NO”, is not the end of the conversation…

Daily Affirmation: Setting a goal, and going ALL IN

At Penn State, one of my entrepreneurship professors, Peter Whalen challenged me to try something different. Peter had created a program called “The Method of More”, with the goal of having students think differently and change their perspective on life. I bought into the program and started to change my daily habits. Some of the habits were meditation, freezing cold showers and daily exercise.

One of the challenges was to create a daily affirmation. A sentence that included my first and last name, and a goal of what I wanted to accomplish. I thought about this for a while and thought my most overwhelming goal is to create a successful sports business conference at Penn State. With that in mind, I wrote my affirmation out on a piece of paper and the important part was that it needed to be written down 15 TIMES A DAY!!

The affirmation read: I Alex Sheinman will host a successful Sports Business Conference. 15 times a day, until I was saying that line in my sleep. Looking back on the challenge to write a daily affirmation has truly changed my life and made me insanely focused on creating a successful event for Penn State.

Next Chapter: Learning won’t stop after graduation…

 As I reflect on the experience of creating the first Penn State Sports Business Conference, I have learned so much about life and could not have asked for a better opportunity to teach me lessons I could not learn in the classroom. The conference taught me to truly understand what it means to work well with other people, no matter if they were a student, professor, professional, alumni, dean and so on. I learned how much I truly love surrounding myself with other people that share a similar passion to make an impact on the world we live in. I changed my daily habits, mindset and focus for over a year’s time and it truly paid dividends on my life as a whole.

I’m truly looking forward to the next chapter in my life as I move on from Penn State University. It was my ultimate goal to leave Penn State with something valuable, and I truly believe the goal was accomplished. With that, I understand the work is not done yet and I cannot wait to see the success continue of the Penn State Sports Business Conference. I will forever cherish the experience and people that made it so worthwhile. The lessons learned will stay with me as I look ahead for the next chapter in my life. I hope to see this conference flourish in upcoming years when I return as a proud alumni.

Alex Sheinman

Penn State Class of 2018

Co-Founder, Penn State Sports Business Conference