ESPN-Mike Soltys (Long Post)

[jaahmuhl]

Raw Content: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s0MP6e2F-vmZ1h64faLQh4ydOtg_tVHq?usp=sharing

[jaahmuhl]

Transcript: https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/6K4G2sOvbZ2BQJMVeLEpRqNtd9W94ptFrPqeoE0IU2wBvIyKM9wD56DyjFU9bK-m4kwFD2FvJ6r4xGKWNlWebxS3liQ?loadFrom=SharedLink

[James-Moore18]

1. Clip
2. Podcast Intro (Same Across All Podcasts)
3. Quick Intro of Person's We are Interviewing (10-15 secs) + Company Overview
4. Macro Story/Idea
5. How it relates to the person we are talking about in the podcast
6. Transition to the podcast
7. Starting point for the podcast

Clip: 8:03-8:37 OFFICE HRS GENERAL INTRO: Hello hello everyone (EXCITED AND WITH ENERGY) welcome back to Office Hours. A show about how to make a successful jump from college to young professional life. We know that landing your first job can often be an intimidating, complicated and stressful process, but its not impossible! (UP ENERGRY) And we’re here to help by giving you access to some of the brightest minds in business to get their advice for how to build a successful career. Take what you can (short pause), pick what you like and listen for that stroke of brilliance that you can use to help you get hired. (edited)

CUT

I’m your host Brett and along with my co-host James we have ESPN's Former VP of Communications Mike Soltys on the show today. Over his multidecade career at the company he became the leader of the communications department for the worldwide leader in sports, but the company he joined in the late 70s was much different than it is today. In fact if you can imagine it when he first started with the company it only had one building and he was actually ESPN's first ever intern. Want to guess at it his salary during that time? A whopping $0. That's right he worked for free in order to get his foot in the door, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions he could have ever made.

ESPN info:

They have been ranked by Forbes as one of the most valuable brand in the world, and they are also a great place to work, especially for new graduates, ranking 16th out of 250 on Forbes’ best employers for new grads list.

They are showing no signs of slowing down either seeing as how the company’s total day viewership was up 32% during the first quarter of 2022 compared to 2021’s first quarter numbers. This increase also lead to ESPN’s best first quarter since 2017.

Soltys Story: As a student, it can be easy to get caught up focusing on finding an internship or full time job with a big company even if it does not align with your true interests and goals. This can be for many reasons including the pressures from parents, becoming overly concerned with “prestige”, or even just the perceived security of the position. In today's podcast we explore how you might be missing an incredible opportunity because startups and smaller companies often times have roles with significant growth opportunities even for younger staff. Taking the “risk” can sometimes be worth it in these scenarios, because there is of course the off chance the company grows to being one of the biggest in the world. But Even if the company doesn’t reach that level of success you will often have a much deeper level of work experience and build stronger relationships with people in the field because you'll be given more responsibility from an earlier stage of your career. Our guest today, Mike Soltys is the perfect embodiment of this idea. When he was in college he faced a similar choice to many of the people listening today. Go work for a big company after school with a lot of perceived security or take a chance on a small one.

Soltys Info: Mike worked with ESPN for the entirety of his professional career, starting with them in the summer of 1980 as an intern. He arrived at ESPN during his junior year when Mike was searching for what he wanted to do the next summer when he met one of the founders of ESPN, Bill Rasmussen. He gave Bill his elevator pitch, and as he recalls it in the podcast, some of the key words in that pitch to Bill were “ I’ll work for free”. After being hired as the company’s first ever intern, one thing lead to another and soon after graduating from UConn Mike was working full time for the very young company.

CUT

While hindsitght is 20/20, Believe it or not, going to work for ESPN at the time was a pretty big risk because The “Entertainment and Sports Programming Network” or ESPN was not always the go to source for Sports information for most people when it began in 1979. As previously mentioned, when Mike first got to ESPN the ESPN campus was one building, with as he likes to describe it a bulldozer out front pushing around dirt. Today, the ESPN plaza has 19 buildings on 120 Acres that include 1.3 million square feet of office and production space for their 4,000 employees to work in. Mike has since left the company, but he still loves to organization and everything that it gave him throughout his life at the cable network headquartered in Bristol Connecticut.

[jaahmuhl]

@James-Moore18 looks great. you just need a caption for the podcast that people can read as they review the different podcast options.

[James-Moore18]

Caption: "I'll work for free". These are the magical words that Mike Soltys says landed him his position as ESPN's first ever intern when the company was just starting back in 1980. 40+ years of hardwork, countless awards, and many memorable moments both in and outside of sports later Mike is still with ESPN, as their Vice President of Communication. In this interview Mike talks about the early days of ESPN and some of the growing pains. He also walks us through how its changed like how social media has impacted the way we talk about sports and he gave some incredible advice for students battling between going to work at a startup compared to a bigger company.

[jaahmuhl]

@James-Moore18 this is more of an example of a caption. I don't think it has to be this long, but you've got to give it a lot more meat than what you have written.

The very first time Tristan Walker shaved, he woke up the next morning with razor bumps all over his face. "I was like, what is this?" he remembers saying. "I am never shaving again—ever." He soon discovered that like him, many men of color were frustrated by the lack of shaving products for coarse or curly hair. Fifteen years after that first disastrous shave, and after countless meetings with doubtful investors, Tristan launched Bevel, a subscription shaving system built around a single-blade razor. Eventually his brand Walker & Company grew to include 36 hair and beauty products, used by millions of men and women across the U.S. In 2018, Walker & Company was sold to Proctor & Gamble, and Tristan became P&G's first black CEO.

[jaahmuhl]

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/11/1080195179/telfar-telfar-clemens-and-babak-radboy

[jaahmuhl]

@James-Moore18 Can you record the intros for this?

[James-Moore18]

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s0MP6e2F-vmZ1h64faLQh4ydOtg_tVHq?usp=share_link

[aflies1]

Podcast audio - https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1rlpzHwIXJJS7_qXQPr6yLnVK_YNlRgsY