Making the Fan

Our guest for this session is Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. Jared oversees Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams, as well as the company’s focus on Modern Work.  Obviously, the different elements of Microsoft 365 are deeply embedded in all of our daily work, from Outlook to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and more. His team has tremendous insight into the data behind how...

Today’s episode is a little different than usual. This episode is the edited audio from one of our Fireside Chats, something that our invite-only community has access too. Our subject matter experts for the chat were Brad Wurthman, Senior Associate Athletics Director for External Operations at Virginia Tech and Chris Grosse, Assistant Athletics Director for Marketing at Penn State University. Brad...

The Deputy Athletics Director for UCF, one of the most innovative, creative, organizations in college athletics, joins us today. In his daily responsibilities, Scott has oversight of all external units, including Brand Advancement, Strategic Communications and Video Services, as well as being heavily involved in revenue generation.  In a time right now where revenue is tight for all sports and liv...

Our guest today is Brian Betts, a 22+ year Disney Cast member and former executive. By trade, Brian is an industrial engineer, so this episode is going to have an analytical and methodical approach towards improving customer experience. In his career at Disney, Brian did everything from helping launch Disney Cruise Line and Disney’s Fast Pass, to overseeing experience insights within My Magic+, Di...

We’re joined today by the legendary Quint Studer. Quint is a philanthropist, an entrepreneur, and an expert in delivering quality experiences, for customers and employees. He’s the co-owner of the double-A baseball team, the Pensacola Blue Wahoos , and the founder of the healthcare consulting group, the Studer Group . In Quint’s approach to patient experience and fan experience, it all starts with...

Our guest today is Drew Bedard, the Vice President of Marketing at Bristol Motor Speedway and Kentucky Speedway.  On July 15, 2020, Bristol Motor Speedway hosted the NASCAR All-Star Race. The event had almost 30k fans in attendance, the largest attended event in the US since COVID cancelled sports in March 2020.  As sports & entertainment venues across the US prepare to reopen, I thought it wo...

Today’s guest is Mike Crawford, the President and CEO at Hall of Fame Resort & Entertainment Company. Previous to his current role, Mike held a number of leadership roles with Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts and The Walt Disney Company.  At 4 Seasons, he was the President of Asia Pacific and then Portfolio Management around the world. While at the Walt Disney Company, he spent the majority o...

This is second half of a two-part interview with Mike Millay. This part of the interview dives deeper into the behind-the-scenes stories at ESPN Wide World of Sports and explores Mike's own revelations as leader at Disney.  Mike is the longest tenured executive in ESPN Wide World of Sports' history. He's also my Dad and a Senior Partner at EngageMint, so this was a special episode f...

This is first half of a two-part interview with Mike Millay. This part of the sheds light on the business model powering ESPN Wide World of Sports and explores how the cultures of Disney and competitive sports merged. Our guest today is Mike Millay, the longest tenured executive in ESPN Wide World of Sports' history. He's also my Dad and a Senior Partner at EngageMint, so this was a spec...

Our guest today is Jahaan Blake, founder of The J. Blake Group.  We'll cover two main topics in this epsisode.  Creating infrastructure behind the scenes that allow your front-line staff to create genuine moments of connections with fans The importance of coaching in leadership We spend much of the episode discussing her prior roles that led her to start her own company, primarily her roles i...

Our guest today is Kevin Gober, the Sr. Director of Employee & Guest Experience for the Atlanta Hawks. Kevin and I worked together for a long time at Disney Institute, on what we informally called "the sports crew."  Kevin was on the content and facilitation side of the organization, leading and designing massive customer service trainings, whether it be for 10,000 volunteers at the...

Today’s guest is Javier Martinez Garcia, a Senior Advisor for Manchester City F.C and former Disney executive.  We get into a number of topics, here are just a few:  1) How to get your senior leadership team aligned around a customer-centric strategy  2) Fan experience vs. match-day experience 3) Making business decisions built around your unique brand promise 4) How physical and digital worlds me...

Moon Javaid, the Vice President of Strategy and Analytics for the San Francisco 49ers, joins us.  We discuss two main topics on this episode: How the 49ers are measuring their customer experience. We cover specific tools, implementation strategies, and business outcomes How the 49ers approach creating incremental and non-traditional revenue 49ers Fit - health & fitness centers owned by the 49e...

We sat down with Barry Jacobson this week to talk about the difference between customer service and premium service. In Barry's 30+ years a Disney Cast Member, he oversaw some of the most premium experiences Walt Disney World had to offer. From the convention centers and catering to Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings , to his last role as head of Disney's Golden Oak -- a community of luxu...

Jill Marchick, the Vice President of Customer Insights and Engagement for the Indiana Pacers, joins us on today's episode.  This is an especially relevant episode if your organization is considering putting a survey out or gathering information for how your customers feel about your organization and returning to events. And it’s even more important that you listen if you’re feeling lost about...

In today’s episode, we’re going outside the sports & entertainment industry. We’ll be talking about designing an entire business around customers’ deepest needs. Hopefully the wildly different context will give you new inspiration to become more customer-centric in your own organization.  Today’s guest is the CEO of a solar-agriculture company, based in Kenya. So while I do the usual and try t...

Today’s episode focuses on leadership during crisis. Our guest is Doug Thornton, the EVP of ASM Global. Doug oversees all Arena, Stadia and Theaters worldwide, directing the operations and financial performance of this division.  We tackle questions like “how do you acknowledge your fears and anxieties without letting them weigh you down” and “how do inspire confidence in your team when you yourse...

Our guest today is Justin Schneider. He’s the founder and CEO for Wolf & Shepherd, a rising footwear brand making high-end, performance dress shoes.  We wanted to have Justin on the show for a few reasons.  1) He was a former student-athlete himself. And he shares how that experience has impacted his approach to live after sports.  2) His insights around storytelling, innovation and creating e...

Duncan Wardle, the former Head of Creativity & Innovation at the Walt Disney Company, now helps organizations around the world embed a culture of innovation into their DNA.  In our industries, we’re running from one to event to the next, and it’s easy to say  “we are too busy to think.” This episode with Duncan will provide you ways to start thinking differently.  In his 30+ years at Disney, D...

As a senior leader, coming into a new organization can be hard. You want to understand the current culture. You want to get to know the people. You want to assess the organization's strengths and opportunities. You want to put your own stamp on "the way we do things around here" in the least intrusive way possible. Those plans can quickly go awry when you're forced to deal with...

Subscription models - seems like almost every industry and product has one. Except for live sports & events. But what if... In this episode, we're rethinking the entire business model of ticketing and access to sports & events. Our guest, Chris Giles, was the COO of the Oakland Athletics, where they created a first-of-its-kind membership model called A's Access. The program debut...

Nick Lawson, the CEO of SQWAD sits down with us to talk about the future state of sponsorship in sports. Nick's company works with sports properties around the world to help them sell more sponsorship through digital contests. What kind of contests? Could be trivia games on your team app, digital scratch and win games, or supplementing live mascot contests with a digital component. Nick is le...

Disney's Magic Band. Carnival's OceanMedallion. Our guest today was behind both industry leading tools that enabled massive experience ecosystem transformations. Forrester defines a customer experience ecosystem as “the web of relations among all aspects of a company - including its customers, employees, partners and operating environment - that determine the quality of the customer expe...

For Episode 15 of Flip the Switch, we take a journey w/ our guest, Dan Cockerell, the former Vice President of Magic Kingdom. The episode’s larger theme is around leading your team and your organization with a human touch. We explore Dan’s involvement and influential role in running the Magic Kingdom theme park; we cover how to build rapport with your employees and develop a good culture; and we g...

Our guest today, Jesse Cole, is the Founder of Fans First Entertainment, Author of Find Your Yellow Tux and Owner of the Savannah Bananas, who have sold out every game for 88 straight games and has a wait-list for tickets in the thousands.  How do they do it? Well, simply by being the most fan-centric organization in sports. The Bananas take it being customer-centric to the extreme. Jesse famously...