Infinity Ward’s Post

Transcript

So to kick off our LA business trip, we were lucky enough to go to the LA Showroom, a very exclusive clothing store. So these are both the Travis Scott. Of the cooler on the way, my favorite on this track, Mark was able to basically show us how he started his business. Starting from the ground up, showing the players in our athletes, how to create a business, how to start from nothing and end up with something. I learned a lot. He said that when he started out. You have to be patient. And I think that's the problem that a lot of us deal with today's patients because I deal with that too. Best lesson I learned was you won't take some else. You just got to bounce back. We just got out of the NFL Network facility, we got to have a tour of the whole place, get to see some of the studios, and even got to be on air for a couple of seconds while they were doing free agency frenzy. My favorite part? They gave us the opportunity to sit down and actually be mock news anchors and do a little bit with the teleprompter. And it was really fun getting to sit down with a couple of the teammates. Good afternoon, University of Florida, and welcome to our inaugural show. I'm Taylor Spirito, and I'm joining me today are my esteemed colleagues Hayden Hanson, Fletcher Westfall. So we also got to listen to a panel of people who work for NFL Network. It was really cool hearing for them, especially when they get to work across the whole company and how those different parts of the company interact and work together. The next stop was the Lakers. We just got back from there. That was also an insane experience. We got to go to the courts all the way to the locker room and I saw the bronze locker. I never thought I would ever see that. They even let us get have a chance to shoot around a little bit. I even got to play one of the coaches. It was awesome. We also got to have a panel discussion with the other employees up there all the way from like the riders to the front office people, the ticket people, everything in general. And they really went into depth about their roles and how we can get started after football free shadowing people. So it just expands all the possibilities. Right now we're at one of Google's headquarters. Today we visited a couple of brilliant people. You know, they told us all about what they do, you know, just seeing how everything operated behind the scenes, the media side of everything. It's it's incredible. I mean, after spending time as an athlete myself, having the opportunity to take a step back and kind of share your learnings that you've gone through throughout the course of your career and to give that back to other athletes that have had similar scenarios is incredible. It was Jesse's former football player and his story really connected to with me, just because I see myself in him, you know, similar background and probably want to get to where he's at and think a lot of it starts with your your core and your hard work and your work ethic. Everyone knows as an athlete the amount of time and commitment you have to put into your craft. You have to take that same approach and professionally in business and just being a sponge to kind of learn and absorb whether from your teammates so that you're playing with. They're also now business professionals and professional sense. I feel like there's a lot to learn. This is the place that I wanted to go for this trip. After talking with the panel, I said the one thing I took away is to always reach out and look for connections. Connections were a main reason why a lot of the people got to the position they were in today. We are in Santa Monica and one of Activision headquarters and today we got to tour around the facility. It was really cool to see what goes into making games and like how they market and also how they produce the game. So the fact that they have this internal kind of advice or just insight on what parts of gaming are available to them, it's kind of amazing. We heard from many different people from our marketing leads and our PR leads and I spoke from ADENI perspective and as a former student. About the importance of how you can focus in on your talents and skill sets and really practice now and becoming what you want to as a professional. It's really feels unreal because it's like I always just seeing like what they produce, I never seen what goes into it or the preparation for it. So we're at Paramount Studios today. We just got done. They're going to tour around all the cool areas that they shoot in, the different areas that they make, the movies and TV shows that we love to watch. It was great. Alright was a real cool dude and feeling like he sat down, shook my hand, introduced himself. Just a cool to hear from someone else who came from the same place that we did that I'm going to right now. So it was cool to ask him a few questions and learn to help me figure out kind of what I want to do and what it would look like to pursue a future in a place like Paramount Pictures studio. And basically what I gather from all three of them is like your reputation precedes you. So how you treat people, how you carry yourself and how hard you work, we usually get you into the door. It was fine, you know, just getting to me, all the Gator alumni on connecting with them. When you come out here to LA, most of our alumni like everywhere, but it'll be good. Like if I ever come out here again, I can just connect with them. Ohh, I mean the Gateway program, man. It's it's one-of-a-kind. I mean, the older I get, the more I see it. This is my second Gatorade trip. I went to New York last year for spring break and I keep, I keep all the notes, all the internships. So it's going to help me take leaps into the professional world whenever my football career is over.