Margretta Dry

I would say internships and relationships have been key. I had a professor at college who told me to make sure I connect with people, build that relationship, and keep that relationship. I think I wouldn't be where I am today without keeping those relationships and just working at it. It's okay to ask for help or lean on someone to try to get where you want to be today. I also believe in just putting your head down and working hard. If you just put your head down and get your job done, that's going to have people notice you at the end of the day. Being yourself and being a hard worker is what gets you noticed.

The best advice I've received is to just be yourself and be a hard worker. Put your head down and just work. I think sometimes people overthink things, but if you just put your head down and get your job done, that's going to have people notice you at the end of the day. That's what really matters and what will get you recognized.

I would say don't be afraid. When I first got into it 4 years ago, it was definitely a male-dominant industry. I was one of the only 4 women in the office, and now we just had a meeting last week and there's up to 15 women. It's nice to see that more and more females are getting into it, because I think when people just see sports, they're just like, oh, that's just male dominant, that's not something a girl would want to do. So I would tell younger girls, hey, don't be afraid. If you're passionate about it and you want to go into it, go into it. When you have more opportunities and you see more females in sports, I think that will help the younger generation get into it more.

I think the biggest challenge is that we work a lot with overseas vendors. When we do game day giveaways to get the cheapest price, we go through factories in China, Taiwan, and places like that. Just keeping those relationships is important, and hopefully in the future nothing happens, but if we weren't allowed to go overseas anymore, that would drastically change what we do. We'd have to keep everything domestic and those prices would bump up. Teams don't want to spend double the price for domestic when we can do it for half the price overseas. They have these crazy budgets where they want something for a dollar or less, and then you have to try to make money off of that while you're also selling it to someone. Another challenge is that as we grow as a company and I manage more accounts, I need to make sure I focus on each client all the same and give them all equal attention, making sure we can deliver the goods for all of them equally.