Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech & Live Events Podcast

Three Things I Learned in Saas, Sports Tech & Live Events 1. Take some time…in the middle. The human brain can only process so much. When we're overloaded, as we all are now, we default to binary decision making. The either/or logical fallacy. It leads to Red/Blue, Vaccine/Never, With/Against us thinking. We are all guilty of it. Had a friend compliment another for "being able to change their mind...

Companies have found a way to get a form of force majure into their contracts - and it is genius. Knowing a pandemic clause is too ambiguous, they are adding tiers of spend based on the allowed attendance. Fall below 25% allowed in the event, pay nothing. Over 50%? Pay the rate. We believe it will become the norm, as it already is in most tech contracts  Have heard from multiple sources Endeavor i...

1. It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to. WC Fields. We all have labels. I was a jock but I answered to good student - which we addressed last week. At AEG they called us ticket salesman. We answered to entrepreneurial sales professional. At Stubhub they called us brokers. We answered to tech disruptors. At TicketManager they've called us niche. We answer to market creators. I get c...

Three Things I Learned in Saas, Sports Tech & Live Events   What I learned selling a boxing sponsorship to a gentleman's club*   In 2004, STAPLES Center hosted an HBO fight and we were contracted to sell sponsorship packages.   I was assigned the inbound phone lines..    A call came in from Stars Planet, Inc which owned clubs in DTLA. David, the caller, asked what we would sell to his business   A...

1. Our job is not our identity. I played volleyball at a very high level growing up- for Nike, then USC and the U20 US National team. So did my sisters. The whole time, my dad would tell us "You are not a volleyball player. That is not your identity, it is something you do." His wisdom was lost on me but I listened. And it made my transition so much smoother than my teammates. I fell into that tra...

Would You Keep The Money? In early 2009, we were bootstrapping and close to the edge. We had ~$60k in the business. Total Then one day, a customer (a Fortune 100 company) sent us a check, by mistake, for $356k. It was double paying the business done in 2008. Pure profit. A lifesaver. I called the customer to alert them we were sending the check back. They said not to. Too much of an accounting iss...

Tough week as we said goodbye to my best friend of 15 years, our puppy Hula. Who was with us for the entire thirteen year plus run of our business.  1. Ignore the odds. Hula was born a runt who became a giant. She had a heart murmur, life threatening allergies, and her knees went bad when she was 3. Didn't slow her at all. All businesses are told what our limitations are. Forget them. Heart is all...

1) Don’t pick fights. Better yet, avoid them at all costs. You never know what the other side has in them and the winner never wins without a cost. In business, too many big companies underestimate start-ups and smaller firms. Some of them have serious fight in them and won't take to bullying.  2) Better to be a Warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. With #1 in mind, know companies will pic...

Here are four things we learned in building a team who wins culture awards over and over*  1. We learned to stop focusing on how people *should* think and started understanding how they *do* think. Instead of trying to find or create perfect people, we tried to create the best environment for imperfect people to succeed.  2. We learned "If you want to be loved, you have to give up trying to being...

Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech and Live Events 1) The algorithm isn't helping young entrepreneurs. There are many influencers offering soundbites tailored to get attention or get you to like them. They are promoted in all our timelines - not just yours - creating a noise, bias and most dangerously- groupthink - while burying useful media. We've found the most applicable advice is a b...

Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech and Live Events 1. People vote with their feet. When evaluating a company, supervisor, customer or partner, forget the awards, the posts, the review sites and the trade mag features. Most awards are bought. Most features are in exchange for advertising/favors (we get offered them all the time). Review sites are fake/gamed. Pay attention to the team. Are...

Chaos broke out this week when a group of retail investors took to a reddit message board to play a massive short squeeze on Wall St hedge funds using options on highly shorted companies GameStop, AMC, Blackberry, and others.    Everyone chimed in from Elizabeth Warren to Elon Musk.    We've seen this kind of short action before in sports business at the 2015 Super Bowl. A summary of what happened...

We discuss the upcoming arms race in sports property consulting How private equity money has changed the Super Bowl Ticket market in only 5 years and why we won't sell out - and those who suggest as much are worth of ignoring

Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech and Live Events   1) "The only thing I could ever give him credit for is hiring me." Many give little credit to those who enabled their success. I was the same way It's not personal. Just know that's likely how your team sees it and that's a good thing.  (And don't be that person….)  2) Only 30% of the population flosses. "So many come in here and, by t...

Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech and Live Events  1. "10 years to 10m ARR." The social media gurus talk often about the growth rate needed for your saas to be a unicorn. Don't get too roped in by black-and-white approaches to business. We've had a number of successful private equity firms looking for "10 years to 10m in ARR." Many more friends who took that path and eventually became m...

Everybody wants to quit sometimes, especially in the very early days or hard days which many experienced for the first time in 2020. And that's normal. If handled poorly, however, it can be terminal to your business. It happens to every leader no matter the position on the org chart at some point - Check out Numbers 11:10 where Moses quits. I get calls from friends at "the top" regularly. It's imp...

How do we handle stress and hard decisions during chaotic events? What helps us center ourselves to make better decisions and stay focused on our long-term life goals? 1) If you want to make GOD laugh, tell HIM about your plans. When the world fell apart, we did what we always do - plan for everything. We laid out eight models. Then we got to work. Nine months later? None of those scenarios were c...

We explore what led us to start our own company including The most common question asked is "how did you do this." Truth is, I dont know. The answer I keep coming back to: we were willing to make a lot of mistakes and, once we jumped, the economy collapsed and we didn't have any choice but to continue The driving force was fear of regret. We talked about it often. We were more afraid of ending our...

Should I take a Ticket Sales or SDR job edition.   A common piece of advice when starting your career is to find what you love and get your foot in the door. There are a lot of examples - Jack Welch at GE, Erik Spoelstra of the HEAT, Bill Belichick of the Patriots, Barry Diller etc. Businesses and teams use these inspirational anomalies to recruit.    I started in a Ticket Sales job and I've manag...

Promotion, promotion, promotion, cinnamon roll edition.     How Not To Deliver Bad News     In spring 2004 it was clear an NHL work stoppage was coming. Our team of 20+ salespeople sold full-time through the summer. Then we hoped for a season. As the games were cancelled, we "lost" the commission we would have earned. Finally, the season was cancelled and a meeting called the next morning for an h...

2020 Thanksgiving Thankful For Edition 1. Optimists. Cycles happen and that's when the tough get going. It's also when the paralyzed, the pessimists and the naysayers get loud. I'm thankful for those who don't accept what's "supposed to be." I've learned they will lift your career to the highest highs. There aren't many of them as it's always easier to be a pessimist. Pessimism isn't fun, even whe...

Three random things I learned/heard this week in saas, sports, tech, and live events: 1) "Don't hire other company's bad habits." Erika Nardini of Barstool caused a stir when putting an SDR on blast for a poorly written solicitation email*. Where you learn your craft matters. It is not the SDR's fault her company is teaching crappy habits. But it is hurting her development and stalling her ability...

In this week's episode, we discuss how to view your competition, and how they likely view view. We explore how just one person off script can kill a deal and how that happened to Nike with the future two-time MVP Steph Curry (and us with FedEx) Finally we share a story about trying to fit in during middle school and some life advice which changed how we viewed friendship and business. 1) Treat com...

We explore the often misunderstood difference between networking and selling and why it separates great salespeople from good ones. We get tough feedback from our teams. We discuss how to handle it and what to do with it. And finally, the NBA is coming back December 22nd and there are some hard convos on the way if fans are to return 1) Hard conversations on the way in the NBA 2) Consider the sour...

We explore how and why due diligence is so important to all we do and what that's meant in our journey. We discuss what our role is as a leader when hiring a team. And we learn that pressure is a privilege for only a select few.