Podcast Alert: Lorien Parry Luehrs – HomeTown Ticketing
Lorien Parry Luehrs – President & COO of HomeTown Ticketing – joins the show to discuss how digital ticketing is changing the game for high school sports and other community events. With 865M tickets sold each year, K-12 events (including sports and other events) account for 60% of ticket sales in the U.S. – pro sports sell about 200M for comparison.
HomeTown Ticketing is the market leader in digital ticketing for K-12 schools and colleges, and offers benefits beyond ticketing such as improved security, push notification marketing, and access to important game day data.
Together they dive into the digital ticketing space, and highlight the growth and impact HomeTown Ticketing is making in the space.
Details:
11:00 – COVID as an accelerant
12:55 – Lorien’s background
28:00 – HomeTown Ticketing
42:15 – The impact of technology on high school events
45:20 – Rapid Fire Questions
Books and TED Talks Mentioned:
Transcript
+^[00:00:00] Lorien Parry Luehrs: You have so many push notifications on your phone for movies, for concerts, for family events, for travel ball, there’s so much demand on people’s time. The high school actually has to get in that mix so that people can remember that. Oh yeah. The thing I want to do is actually go see our nephew, play a football game on a Friday.
If they don’t know that it exists and they don’t know how to buy tickets easily, they’re going to forget about it.
[00:00:46] AJ Maestas: Hello and welcome to the Navigating Sports Business podcast. I’m your host, AJ Maestas, Founder of Navigate, a data-driven consulting firm, guiding major strategies and decisions in sports and entertainment. We started this podcast, hoping to [00:01:00] share the interesting stories and experiences of the amazing people we get to work with at Navigate. And even though they’re visionaries and famous in many instances, their true stories aren’t often heard since they’re not on the playing field. Our hope is you get to know them better and learn from them as we have
Today, I’m happy to be joined by Lorien Parry Luehrs , President and COO at HomeTown Ticketing. How’s it going Lorien?
[00:01:28] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Good. Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.
[00:01:30] AJ Maestas: I’m so happy to have you here too, in my house. We’ve got you out of the frozen north.
[00:01:36] Lorien Parry Luehrs: It is still frozen. It’s hot there today I think, but it’s still frozen.
[00:01:39] AJ Maestas: I like the idea of seeing you more here at paradise.
So I’m happy about that. And if you don’t mind telling people just a little bit about HomeTown Ticketing, I think there’s a lot of exciting news going on right now, but just for those of us who might know who you all are.
[00:01:53] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Yeah, of course HomeTown Ticketing is, bringing professional level digital ticketing to the educational-based and [00:02:00] amateur athletic space.
And we’ve just broken into communities. So we really want to be the connector and the provider of access to your community level. So it starts with the high schools, we bring in through your educational athletics, or your activities going into your dances, proms, graduations. And then now we’re breaking into colleges, universities as well as your community events, fairs, performing arts centers, things like that.
So we really want to have people be able to access events in their communities. Very purpose-built for that solution.
[00:02:30] AJ Maestas: And it might blow some people’s minds that this doesn’t already exist. It doesn’t right. Like a large percent of the total potential market share. It’s currently cashbox, old school, just taking, right?
[00:02:41] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Yeah, across the board it’s like that.
We thought that it was going to be a lot easier to make that transition. But it’s always been historical cashbox. It’s always been continued to transition through having older individuals try to use their smartphones, being able to try to actually have a transparency data. [00:03:00] But everybody seems to go back to the cashbox and now we’re seeing that educational improvement of people making that change.
And we’re excited to see it. And most of the solutions at this level are self fulfilling. You’d have to be trained in software, have to be able to download it yourself, but we are here to help. We are here to support and we built the system specifically for that educational-based athletics community event.
And so the bells and whistles and things like that, that people could see when they go to professional sporting events, they can have at a stage, a model with each and every community in every hometown.
[00:03:35] AJ Maestas: So you’ll hate this parallel, with the Ticketmaster for amateur events. And just to frame this for people listening, something like 60% of events are in this sort of amateur high school world.
And so we’re talking about 500 million ticketed, and by the way, quite often, not yet in the digital realm. Okay. We’re talking about a big deal getting right, like two and a half times that of what we think of like pro sports ticketing, so [00:04:00] very cool. Very exciting. Are we allowed to talk about your most recent capital raise?
[00:04:04] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Yeah, we actually announced last week with minority investment from Nexa Equity to continue to grow and add more value and be able to scale with the demand of our product. They invested 75 million and just grow the equity with us and just want to be a true partner to be able to help our clients and help meet the demands and the way that we’re doing things with the ground game being able to meet the client where they are being able to have the technology that can scale up the number of tickets that we’re selling, being able to get into new markets.
Being able to work with professional level organizations like Navigate and others. To really elevate HomeTown as a national household name.
[00:04:41] AJ Maestas: So proud of you on so many levels, we’ve known each other a long time, 15 ish years picking it. And we’ve worked on some tough things and tough situations with tough people.
And, and I’m going to ask you to tell your life story for us, because I think it’s interesting. It’s pretty noteworthy. $75 million as a minority share of your business, big trajectory. This is a woman run business, you know, Lorien’s the . [00:05:00] President and Chief Operating Officer. You’ve been an entreprenuer before, you felt tough times.
I think it’s worth taking a breath and soaking that in. Like, wow. Cause where were we in the middle of COVID? I mean, the business, I assume, goes to almost zero.
[00:05:12] Lorien Parry Luehrs: There weren’t any events. We weren’t selling tickets to anything, everybody in the ticket industry knows that.
[00:05:19] AJ Maestas: Yeah. And, and just to frame, if you’re able to quantify how many customers you have signed up already where you’re at, because you’re the market share leader.
[00:05:26] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Yeah. So through that transition, we were founded in 2016, the digital ticketing world began at the professional level 2011, 2012. And historically, the high school, market’s about 10 years behind.
So right in the midst of it with, or without a pandemic in the middle of it. Moved to digital ticketing, to technology. We’re seeing it at the professional level, we’re seeing it across events, Live Nation, concerts, festivals, and then high school usually follow suit. And then community events, fairs, and so on. And so with [00:06:00] that change, we started the founders, 2016, ’17, ’18.
I joined in October, 2019. And really kind of supercharged the ground game from there. And we established an entire team of, from a competitor. We clipped all of those schools in the beginning of 2020, and then through the pandemic it was like, I actually think that I have capacity to make a change. I have the time to think about it.
I have the resources that are needed to be able to track people coming into the event, being able to not have cash transactions, not have face-to-face transactions. And so it had people thinking about how to use technology plus, making our lives easier with the pandemic but it was also things that they’re like, oh yeah, I needed to do all these things.
Normally I need security, I need data. And so it kind of got people thinking. So over the last two years, we went from 21 schools. So over 13,000 K through 12 schools, we have 3,300 high schools that [00:07:00] are on the platform right now there’s 18,000 across the country. So we have about set a 15% market share there. And then going into colleges, we have 308 colleges that we signed up.
55 conferences, 17 state associations, now 25 fairs. We’re very happy with that and seeing how that goes this summer. Really excited about continuing to grow. We’re imagining having 5,000 to 6,000 high schools up by the end of the year. And we, it just continues to grow with the big districts, realizing that they need a purpose-built solution for their entire district and not kind of offsetting it with athletics and the football person does this thing and the performing arts person does another thing. We’re bringing it all into one house. Making it so that we can have reporting, have accountability, have data, be able to do push notifications, be able to have an app on our phones to know where your kids are going. All of those things are things that like, people didn’t realize they were missing and now they can’t live without.
So they’re excited to see where it goes from here.
[00:07:58] AJ Maestas: It’s like 2005, [00:08:00] 2006, you know, the pro sports world right, where it’s like 15% share might not sound like a lot to people that is market leading share and all indications just going to go that way. So this wasn’t growth where you’re like stealing marketshare from competitors.
It’s all just new sites where people are awakened into the reality of owning that data for security purposes, for resale or good CRM practices. It’s really kind of cool because it’s like reliving the cycle of pro sports world. And just to quantify that for, for folks listening, 70% of the pro sports teams are not a hundred percent digital.
There’s another 20% that are 90% plus digital. Let’s use the NFL as an example, fewer number of events, they’re 99% digital.. So the pro sports world is basically heading towards a hundred percent digital. It’s very close there already. And here we have in this world, it’s just this like great wide open blue ocean situation.
[00:08:44] Lorien Parry Luehrs: And it gives us a roadmap in front of us, so we know exactly kind of the trends that are happening and it’s important for us to work with you on and your teams on looking at the data on how it took five years for people to adopt and looking at three-year adoption of a fully digital solution, because we [00:09:00] want to meet the client where they are in that journey.
One of the schools might be in a specific, you know, only use cash. We don’t know how to use WiFi you know, we can’t connect anything. We are making the transition to even from flip phones, to smart phones in our community, to another community that is completely digital. They’re looking for a solution.
You have the millennial moms that use an app for every single other thing at the school and they have, the only reason they carry cash is because they have to access their kid’s event. And so wherever you are in that journey, we want to meet you where you are, take you by the hand and then take you the rest of the way as has been laid out by the professional level.
And that’s why I’m saying that we bring professional level ticketing to that educational base level because you know, the pros have already figured it out. And we just need to do it again and again, that’s how we’re doing.
[00:09:46] AJ Maestas: I mean, I know it seems so obvious to some many people listening to this are in the pro sports world, you know, chiseled veterans.
You’re like, you got to be kidding me. This is really how I’m gonna choose the spaces and the high school world. But, you know, COVID, zero events or approaching zero events. It’s a hell [00:10:00] of a story because you know, for a lot of people, we’re now going to look back in hindsight and say COVID was an accelerant, but for real, this is meaningful..
There was, you know, you absolutely had to get cleaner and safer. Contact tracing all these things. And it’s a fantastic story because I’m guessing you all were sitting, you and Ryan and the whole crew is sitting around and thinking, oh, what are we going to do know spring of 2020 Football season right? And fall sports are when things really pick up. Imagine just sitting there in March, April, May. And then here we are just a few short years later.
[00:10:32] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Yeah. The funny part about that was that it was actually the athletic directors because they didn’t have events, they actually had time to pick up the phone and had a conversation about us.
And so we knew that it was going to come back, we knew that people were going to play games again, and they were willing to have a three hour conversation with how we’re going to help them run their facility, run their events, make their events better. So it was actually a blessing to be able to, to spend that dedicated time.
And if they weren’t being pulled in 10, 20 different directions. Now, they’re getting pulled back [00:11:00] and that’s why we want to make sure that we help them save time and resources and money and provide those technological solutions so that they can do the thing that they are supposed to be doing. Which is offering opportunities for our young people and our student-athletes.
So that’s our goal right now, as a team. Take that time, just crunch monotonous things off of the athletic director’s plate so that they could focus on those priorities.
[00:11:22] AJ Maestas: Right, and I do want to get into the future of things, because I think there’s a lot of real options associated. Having a direct to consumer relationship having this database of these attendees and ticket buyers and whatever.
But before I do, I just know that people listening are going to love you the way I do. If they hear your full life story. Do you mind giving me the quick hitter, like hit those peaks and valleys for us.
[00:11:41] Lorien Parry Luehrs: So I started as an equestrian so born in Pittsburgh, grew up in Hudson, Ohio. So explore from there, graduated in 2000.
Really thought I was going on a trajectory to become an Olympic athlete and very similar to a lot of people that are in sports marketing or sports business. You’re in the sports [00:12:00] worlds first and then figured out how to be a supporter of athletics. What is that next thing? Because we couldn’t reach the goals that we had as an athlete.
So in college, I went to Radford University down in Virginia. I was a Highlander, and then was really…
[00:12:15] AJ Maestas: You’re still competing?
[00:12:17] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Still competing nationally. I was on the road to the Olympics. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I was, I was competing in Atlanta. I was going at Virginia by kind of traveling nationally.
It was a pretty good gig. Cause I went to school Tuesdays and Thursdays and then traveled all weekend. But knew that I was just not going to get there. So I had a conversation in my junior year with my father when we were looking at, you know I’m not going to make money out of this state. It’s more of a hobby.
It’s more of a passion side project rather than a career. And it’s like, what do I love about it? What do I like about being on the equestrian team, about being a secretary of the organization or a club? And we were talking about it. It was really everything around the events and being able to sell [00:13:00] sponsorships, being able to plan the events, being able to put a feeling and a heartbeat around what the event is going into.
That’s right around the time Jerry Maguire came out. And so it was like, I could do that, I could be like the guy right outside the picture. Right. They didn’t really actually have this concern. It was actually even the OU sports marketing program just started. There wasn’t really any path at that time that we could actually just go and like, oh, I’m going to get my master’s in sports marketing.
And then I’m going to have this great path on what I was going to do. I had to make a lot of it up. And so it really made me hone in on what I wanted to do and had a conversation with my advisor and athletic director at Radford. And I was like, what do you need help with? And he was like, well, I need somebody that can go door to door, and get coupons for our promotions.
I need somebody that can it run the kind of LED ribbon at the, it wasn’t even a board or a scoreboard it was a ribbon, at the basketball games. And I need somebody to make my walk up music for baseball games, that sounds awesome. I’ll do those things. [00:14:00] In the meantime that I helped with Big South track conferences and just started kind of putting together what we had on a sports side.
And with that kind of kick off of that internship, my dad took me to a Cavs game it was the first year that LeBron was playing, it was one of those like fantastic date nights. With your dad where you’re . Just talking sports and every girl, sports marketing person, you get to this, you know, you go and you have dinner or you could just have a glass of wine with your dad, and then you go to the game.
I think LeBron dropped 40 that night. And we went around to every promotion we walked in, did the Ohio Lottery drop, and we made our signs with the then Sports Time Ohio, Time Warner cable stuff. We went to, you know, get your Chalupa because they got a hundred points from Taco Bell. And it was such a fun thing because you really are looking at everything outside of the game itself. And that’s what sports are. Sports business is all about. It’s that experience of going to those games.
And so I kind of had that conversation. And then my junior senior year was spent diving into events, decided to come [00:15:00] back to Ohio after that and had lots of conversations with my dad, watching the Masters on a Sunday, just talking about how sports business can go, you know, looking at different transactions, looking at where commercials are going, where, people are building humungous stadiums.
They started building AT&T center and stuff like that back then. And so like getting these huge transactions. A family friend introduced me to the world of naming rights and premium seating. And so then we started doing municipal marketing and things like that. And that’s where we met was, you know, we brought Navigate in to do that kind of third-party evaluation and then I’d sell suites.
And then after 2008, that company closed. And that’s when I got a job at Home Team Marketing, which doesn’t exist anymore, but they were the kind of premier high school level ticketing. But where you and I I started talking was when I was like trying to figure out how to make the municipal government education model of finding value of things that were tangible. What [00:16:00] is that feeling? That heartbeat, that ROI that you look at a sign but if you look at a sign with someone wins or you’re, you’re watching your kid play or something like that, it’s an even more impactful to see that sponsorship or that advertising, and I just became obsessed with it.
And so looking at just how to activate sponsorships with governing bodies with state associations, with high schools, with community events, amateur athletics events, and kind of built it from scratch. At that point I moved to Chicago, picked up and moved to Chicago from there. And there’s a little glass ceiling in Cleveland, but it’s getting better.
But wanted to make more, I knew I was destined for more.. And so was right exactly where I needed to go. When Home Team Marketing closed a lot of state associations came to me as a consultant. I was actually in the WISE, Women in Sports & Entertainment organization and Rita Battocchio are the people I honor so were helping me realize that I can be a woman in sports.
And executive in sports and they’re like, [00:17:00] yes, go open your own agency. Just go, kind of kicked me out the door. And I did that and I ran it for five years and became a fantastic, you know, kind of stepping stone on how to run a company. I had the stepping stone on how to work in high school sports, and then I was in Chicago.
So I knew more national and international sides of the world, and then decided to pick up and move to Columbus. That’s where I met Nate Hale and Wes Haines, the founders of the technology and we met and he was like, well, you know, I have this platform but I don’t know how to scale it at a national level.
And I was like, well, I don’t have a platform, but I know how to scale at a national with high schools. And so in October of 2019, we came together with Ryan Hart who’s our Chairman and CEO and that’s how HomeTown was born. So it was it’s funny, then my story is kind of weaving and bobbing, but actually gave me the three pieces that I need to do what I’m doing now with the humble confidence, to be able to be a leader of people, and to be an executive that kind of rolled with this fast-growing mindset, and now all I [00:18:00] want to do is pay it forward, and thank all the people, yourself and women at WISE and all the other mentors that I have for their support. I’m doing great things with our team to be able to pay that forward.
[00:19:02] AJ Maestas: With the trajectory you’re on you’ll have plenty of resources, time, treasure, and talent to share with the world. For now, keep heading toward this ultimate victory. There’s so much about your story. You lost a partner at one point in your life while transitioning to another city. You’re a state champion, you’ve been a champion athletically, you know, starting a business that you’ve been a part of businesses that have failed too.
Right. You’ve seen. And I take, there’s a bunch of lessons that have come from what doesn’t go right. And, I remember at one time, several of these things are happening at the same time and you broke your leg in one of your accidents, at your equestrian competitions. And you met your now husband and there was this one year where it’s like you know, you lived, you lived like a lifetime in one year if I remember correctly. So you don’t have to expound on that.
[00:19:54] Lorien Parry Luehrs: We all do that. Right. We have the rose colored glasses side of it, but then [00:20:00] everyone has the adversity. And I think it’s how you look at those things as either mistakes or opportunities or people entering or leaving your life or learning what not to do from somebody.
And I talk a lot about it right now with our teams and just in the, in the worlds that I’m in is I’m very much in a safe place when it comes to disrupting an industry. It’s interesting to see if there’s attrition off the cash box, as I say, or, you know, there’s people that do not want transparency because, this has been an industry that has gone kind of kicking and screaming into the future because they were very comfortable with the way things were working. And, so continuing to elevate that bar, raise that awareness. Continuing to use all of the stage for the hardships or the things that I had been through as lessons to be learned from this situation.
So, yes, I detached my foot from my leg falling off a horse and now have a 14 [00:21:00] screws and three metal . Plates in my leg. That was kind of a moment of like sit down and wait, the universe is is bringing you something brave. And then, you know, being able to understand where there’s, you know resources or mentors, or just, you know, great business people that can elevate it, lift you up and they want to pay it forward and they want to help grow but on the other side, there’s people that don’t there’s people that want to see you as an easy target because you’re a woman.
See you as the weakest part of a C-Suite because you’re the only woman. It happens to all of us in every aspect of, of sports right now where there’s only 20% of C-suite executives are women in sports. And I’m working with a lot of people and a lot of fantastic women to continue to elevate that, and grow that within the industry.
And I’m proud to be one of those 20%. And, and I want to elevate other people, but I realized that individuals, men, that can support and be okay with [00:22:00] that makes the story grow and it gives you more confidence and more opportunities to do that. And, you know, it’s stories of just having people that have left being able to grow within Chicago.
Being kicked out of her building, you know, being thrown out for doing too good. All of those types of stories are, you know, just make me who I am, and make me as sassy and tenacious, because I want to be.
[00:22:25] AJ Maestas: I think you always were. There’s no doubt that you have built on your grit and there’s no doubt that we’re talking about a little resilience and grit to succeed as an entrepreneur, when your business can go to zero and then, you know, 24 months later, skyrocketing on to the ultimate victory, I mean, it’s meaningful. So glad that you shared all that. There’s a book I read this last year, the Hard Thing About Hard Things, it tells some of the hard stories of those moments, in business where you have to lay people off. Whether it be for performance or pivot and strategy. You know, I’ve had to do these things, you know, and there’s another one, by the way, I was just reminded of this morning called The [00:23:00] Obstacle is the Way. It’s a nice, it’s like a modern dive into some of the better practices that we all were stoics, 2,500 years ago.
[00:23:10] Lorien Parry Luehrs: It’s easy to be a thought leader, like 2,500 years old. You just like you’re sitting and you’re Zen and you’re like, wait, there’s so much going on. And it’s good, if we’re talking about books. Brené Brown junkie. Dare to Lead and her newest book, Atlas at the Heart is really great. I bet there’s a women executives out there that haven’t read that book.
It’s very much a way to connect with your feelings and being able to expand your vocabulary, when it comes to feelings, but applying those feelings and being able to bring awareness to mental health, bring awareness to just the struggles that we’re in and the struggles that are happening in the world.
And bringing light to that, you know, the biggest thing that she says that is fear, and that is shame, the biggest combatitive of that is sunlight. And [00:24:00] so keeping that dialogue open being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Being a world where, you know, conversations are happening is such an exciting time to be part of this industry because that’s happening.
We’re seeing that Renaissance across the board at the high school space at the collegiate space, women are killing it across the board. So I’m just excited to be a part of it. And to continue to share my story is to, like I said, pay it forward to the next generation of women.
[00:24:28] AJ Maestas: Well, there’s tens of millions of people who’ve seen Brené Brown’s Ted Talk on vulnerability, so I’m probably not sharing anything new. But one of the things I think is important to share is there’s power in the vulnerability, there’s power in that whole hero’s journey. I mean, it’s just realistic that you don’t reach the top of the mountain without adversity. Yeah. In fact, it’s almost a guarantee.
Yes, of course. What you do in that moment. I’m super grateful for you sharing that. I know we’ve talked about this before, just over lunches and dinners, but a friend of mine bought, an [00:25:00] entrepreneur, a mutual friend of ours, this poster sort of framed picture that shows what success looks like.
And it has, this like heading straight to the northeast corner arrow of what it looks like from the outside. And then it has this thing that looks like someone, threw spaghetti on it, you know, to sort of say what it really is. So many highs and lows and this winding rollercoaster. It just looks easy from the outside.
Like, you know, it’s Lorien, overnight success, 15 years in the making.
[00:25:29] Lorien Parry Luehrs: And my mountain was not a straight line. It was not a you know, climbing a rock and just a step stool. It was, you know, I had to scale and I jumped down and I had to start over again. And, and I think that that’s a, a big component of growing as an executive, some people say it’d be the best part about having a team of passionate peoples is staying in front of trying to stay in front of them. And so, you know, becoming a student to the continued education, to be able to have conversations like these. And just having that openness [00:26:00] to be humble, you know, be true to your values, be authentic.
Our values at HomeTown that we had worked with a professional to build as a root our authenticity, trust, grit, and innovation. And innovation isn’t NASA . Innovation is problem-solving and being someone who can further the needle for that person. But in might actually be like stop using $5 bills. Use an app to do your transaction.
[00:26:27] AJ Maestas: Authenticity, trust, grit, and innovation. Those are core.
[00:27:17] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Yeah. Our core values of the company, which it actually turns out are my personal core values. So it just means, I’ve done a lot of learning into the company, but everybody at hometown is a huge proponents of that. And we like to celebrate it and we give out wristbands when someone shows one of those values within a meeting with a client or something like that.
And so it’s been really cool to see them transfer my value s into the company.
[00:27:43] AJ Maestas: I love that. That’s cool. That’s cool. And you need that at this stage. I mean, you just have to right?
[00:27:48] Lorien Parry Luehrs: It’s the only thing that matters like it, growing a company fast doesn’t have anything to do with transactions and tasks.
I mean that, all of this can be tracked in Salesforce. You [00:28:00] can get pinged every time you need to do something. But being able to grow quickly is all about trust, values, culture and getting the right people in the right places. And so, you know, my job continuously grows into only being about the people.
And, and that’s the thing I love about it the most. And that’s what gives me the most rewarding of seeing them succeed. When I see a client get it, or I see an employee that have a great day those are the things that drive me forward. It’s not the numbers. The numbers will come. If you have a,
[00:28:28] AJ Maestas: Man, that is, this is beautiful wisdom.
So grateful that you shared that because that’s right, there’s no chance you can go do it yourself. I could see you trying, and I could see you taking hours to do so, but the amount of people that that work for you today, impossible, they have to go on and do without your oversight.
[00:28:42] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Yeah, and they’re great. We have 180 now, continuing to grow from there. You know, opening up new industries, new pillars and across, you know, if it’s a community fair or it’s a performing arts venue or it’s an organization or tournament, or we work with the Canadian Dodge [00:29:00] Ball League. Yes. It’s amazing. Like, hey, we love all of them. Signed a deal with USA cheer.
And so we’re breaking into the governing body, gets to talk to us about that. And we’re just kind of realizing that all of these, it sounds like so many different industries, but they’re all community related events. They’re all trying to scale, you know, how many, they probably have 15, 20 regions or 15 or 20 events that they have to kind of put together that because they had to do the cash.
They had to give that transaction from the bottom up instead of the top down and now with our system where the transaction goes directly to that governing entity. If it’s a district, a college, a university, whatever it is and then they could actually scale and make decisions, with data. And so you can keep your segments more accountable.
You can keep your departments more accountable, your event managers, you know, if you have a guy that works your booth, at a random event in Florida and you’re in California. And you just want to see what they’ve been doing. They need to [00:30:00] serve your report. All they can see is that event, but you can see what everyone is doing across the country.
So being able to have that scalability and difference of way organizations are funded that’s going to transition, just being able to make smarter decisions. Being able to scale and go into different venues, have more negotiating power with your venues and being able to, you know, what kind of, you know, how many officials you need and how, what kind of event staff that you need, because all of those resources, just across every single other platform are scarce.
And you know, we need to be very, very fiduciary minded when we’re running these events just to continue to make them scale and grow.
[00:30:37] AJ Maestas: Yeah. Makes sense. If you don’t mind me asking just one more serious business question. Where is this going? You know, I’ve seen a lot of M and A activity, right.
And people consolidating their relationship with, and this is maybe the last frontier as we discussed earlier, there are more people attending these events than, than all other forms of ticketed events combined together. So what, what do you think I mean, you have a clear path toward, [00:31:00] you know, winning and capturing a dominant market share of the high school and amateur space, but then what? You know, TV, streaming, direct to consumer, what’s next?
[00:31:08] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Right now, like you were saying, we are focused on being the best digital ticketing company So we are continuing to drive that adoption on that specific goal.
And I was talking to somebody the other day, you are really focused on being that guy. And I was like, well, if I go somewhere else, then ocus on, on that bullet. There’s so much emotion just right there and we figured it out. And so we just need to continue to rinse and repeat. And so we continue to get bigger and bigger market share.
So. Right now short term that is our goal. We have fantastic partners that we’re bringing in to the kind of next level goal is everything that is around the organization or the transactions of an event experience. And so this kind of image of walking into a stadium, you got your ticket and then you go with your hotdog and then you get your merchandise and then you could see it on TV.
And then you have your stadium [00:32:00] operations, you’ve got your premium seats so that you can see what your athlete’s doing, you can have that premium experience. All of those things are, are the fan experience that they need to pay for throughout the event. And so I’m working with companies like From Now On, and HUDL, and BSN, FanFood, all of the ecosystem partners that you can find on our website, and we’re continuing to grow that team.
And using technology, we can actually make that continue to grow exponentially so that we don’t try to just compete against people over and over and over again. It’s actually going to make it go faster. And I can see, you know, we’ll see what happens. There’s a lot of activity in the space of consolidating schedulers, consulting technology websites, registration platforms, things like that. Right now we’re kind of staying in that digital ticketing realm and, and looking for the best across every other industry that we can actually have an integration with use the technology to scale quicker and offer more solutions for our regional clients.
[00:32:57] AJ Maestas: I really appreciate that focus [00:33:00] cause it would be really tempting to try to attack a bunch of different things at the same time that. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It does take that laser focus and, you know, you got win your home turf, you know, your core capability first, but I have a feeling we’ll be recording one of these in two or three years and we’ll be talking about,
[00:33:17] Lorien Parry Luehrs: We’ll see what happens. I’m definitely, you know, continuing to talk and see where things are going. You know, this, the streaming part of it is interesting. I think that there’s a lot of the registration side that’s interesting. The schedules are interesting and we just want to work with people that really, really want to make the lives of our clients easier. And if they have that mission then we’ll continue to elevate the bar when it comes to this space. We’ll see who else comes in. I mean, there’s, there’s like you said, it’s the kind of the final frontier. And we want to just elevate awareness of, you know, the problems and the solutions that can happen.
But you know, a lot of people have tried to enter the space if it comes to merchandise or if it’s media rights or even, you know, sponsorship opportunities or activations, the [00:34:00] logistics that are killing you because you’re trying to do something at 18,000 high schools, like it’s way different than trying to do it with 30 sports teams or professional teams. And so that kind of ground game I brought in the professionals that have done those activations before. And the sponsorship side is a very interesting part because we want to make it as, you know, kind of transactionally savvy and digitally minded as possible.
So you don’t have the days of hanging a banner on a fence and you know, doing a schedule magnet, a giveaway, or giving out rally towels and things like that. Everybody’s on their phone and we’re on there when you’re on the phone for millennial moms and gen Z kids and, continue to educate generations from there.
So there’s a lot that we’re going to be able to do at the sponsorship level. And we’ll just see what happens. I’m very, very sensitive and very mindful of the amount of data, kind of great power comes, great responsibility that we’re getting. And so we want to make sure that we’re doing a lot of market research.
And continue to get the data, to make sure that there’s a access price point that really makes it so that we are [00:35:00] mindful about how, who engages with who with those, that kind of responsibility of, of having that moment. So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens there.
[00:35:07] AJ Maestas: Yeah. I cannot tell you how many times we’ve maybe half a dozen times in the last few years, private equity or strategy consultants that are doing assignments in the space. And they’re trying to figure out why can’t someone scale, why can’t someone grab and hold. And then what do you do with the sensitivity of that data?
Because no doubt. I mean, this is, I mean, I think that this is official. You’re going to win this and there’ll be multiple winners, but you’ll be the winner, right of this space.
But, the amount of times someone has said, what can be done with streaming, what can be done with radio? What can be done with sponsorships? What could be done with ticketing in the high school and beyond space? In the amateur I mean, it’s just, it’s so obviously there, and it’s so damn hard to, to your point, you’re dealing with all these not-for-profit entities in such a splintered and fragmented space.
So I guess this is really a congratulations, a long-winded congratulations, because it’s pretty clear it’s happening, right [00:36:00] now. But wow. I know it wasn’t easy and you know how many people had great plans and great visions and great intent.
[00:36:05] Lorien Parry Luehrs: It’s, it’s, it’s hard because it’s, it’s more a government sale than it and then people give it credit for so you try to do B2B sales with a educational institution and they’re like, no, I don’t make decisions off of profit. I don’t make decisions off of, you know, you need to do an RFP. We need to do in a competitive bid situation. And then they’re like, oh, well, I don’t want to do that anymore.
So, you know, a lot of people have given up on trying to access the space and, and everybody knows that it exists. You know, everybody sees what’s happening with just, you know, being able to have great players come out of high school and go to college and go into the pros. Now, like there’s a lot of kind of sports illustrated mindset of the sports side of it.
But the business side of it, it’s very much more a nonprofit government institution. I kind of call it B2E selling because. You’re more whipping votes and making sure that people get what they need. Business to education selling is a thing that I’d love to write about sometime and [00:37:00] work with some, colleges to teach how to do, because it’s, you have to be humble on eliminating the excuses or the problem solving be consulted about the sales approach rather than just saying, well, you can make more money. An athletic director doesn’t care about making more money. They care about providing more opportunities for their kids and being able to acknowledge that across the board and being able to have a conversation with them is, is what I work with our sales people all the time on.
And if you don’t do that, then they’re just like, Nope, sorry, done. I gotta go do 15,000 other things. And so we’ve worked really hard on kind of honing that in to be that hand holder, to walk through that full adoption. And we have people that are ready to go and from the beginning, and we have people in, it takes three to five years.
And so we’re planning on that adoption taking a couple of years to, to get under our belt. And the other thing is the high school space turns over every four years. And so your booster club people are going to turn over athletic directors are turning over at 20% right now every year. And so your contact flips [00:38:00] all the time. And so you really have to be proactive. I mean, we started talking about football in February. And so as soon as the football ends, you talk about football again for the next school year. Cause you need to make sure that those contacts are happening and you have a plan in place in case somebody moves on.
And so, and which is not a good thing that they’re turning over, but we’re hoping that us saving them more time, makes them more secure in their jobs and continue to, to be able to grow it. So it’s just about support when it comes to athletic directors and educational basis.
[00:38:28] AJ Maestas: That was so good. That was so good. We’re going to turn . That into a clip that we share with people in the not-for-profit world, because that’s exactly right.
I think so often people go in thinking of finances, the economics ROI, et cetera. And those are not the fears. Those are not the motivating factors and variables for those folks. That was really good. I really appreciate you sharing that because you know, we do a bunch of collegiate work and it can be very frustrating for a lot of people who believe they are bringing an absolute necessary solution to folks, and yet they don’t see action.
[00:38:58] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Technology is the same way, [00:39:00] because you might say like, we have all these bells and whistles, congratulations. And the guy’s like, I’m still trying to figure out how to count the money in cash box. Like, I don’t even know why I need that thing. And so, so asking and feeling what those pain points are, is the only way to sell that space because it is just, they’re not going to get it cause they’re like, you know, I have this, this great AWS servers. And I have this integration with this top technology and I don’t need this. Right. And so then you lost them and then they think you’re talking down to them. It’s not a good look. And so we see it happen all the time when it comes to, to try and to push things forward at the, at the high school space and you gotta meet them where they are, and we’ve got to have a conversation, you’ve got to be willing to help.
and have that humble confidence to help. If you, if you get away from that mindset they see right through it.
[00:39:46] AJ Maestas: It’s going to be so fun to watch you the next 20 years, because there there’s such a need for people who understand what you’re describing in the collegiate and high school space. That is, of course, if you choose to keep working.
[00:39:58] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Well, of course [00:40:00] I’m going to pay it forward forever. And you know, I am so excited about just seeing how this transformation is happening and we’re in such an amazing part of sports right now of how to use technology to get you know, how people consume sports. You know, just thinking about it at the high school level. When you went to a football game, you saw on the marquee, like we’re playing south high school at 7:00 PM and you drove past where like, okay, we, everybody have their $7?
We’re going to go and put it in the family calendar at home that we’re going to the game on Friday night. And everybody, that’s what, that’s what they did on Friday night. But now, because you have so many push notifications on your phone for movies, for concerts, for family events, for travel ball for you, there’s so much demand on people’s time that the high school actually has to get in that mix so that people can remember that.
Oh yeah. The thing I want to do is actually go see our nephew, play a football game on a Friday night, and then, but if they, if they don’t know that it exists and they don’t know how to buy tickets [00:41:00] easily, they’re going to forget about it. And then they’re just going to go to the movies. And so we’re actually not competing just against the like educational sports realm. Educational based athletics is actually competing against just entertainment time which is hard for, you know, just why attendance is going down or why, it’s so important to get that data and see where the trends are going, because people are just forgetting that they exist, but that’s where they want to be.
And so we just kind of tell them how to get there easily.
[00:41:25] AJ Maestas: I know you and I have talked about this ad nauseum, but just for the folks listening that’s right. We are losing share of leisure time in that battle for sport and entertainment, and high schools are extremely ill equipped to keep up with modern times of marketing and staying top of mind, what have you.
Lacey and I intend to every year we intend to go to a high school football game. I think we’ve been twice. We’re going to wrap up with just a couple of fun questions.
What is your favorite place to travel?
[00:41:51] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Southwest. I’m loving it down here. I mean, I just came from San Diego. We’re at the California state AD association, like San Diego, [00:42:00] Scottsdale. That’s where we are right now. And just spending more time in the desert. I’m realizing. I mean, I love the Midwest. I’m a Midwest girl at heart and all of my values are there, but I love the warmth that makesmy metal in my ankle feel better. And I love just being in this area and finding all the really cool nooks and crannies that like Flagstaff and other mountain regions and stuff, and how much the temperature changes and the trees change and the atmosphere and how wild that still is.
I’m having a lot of fun.
[00:42:28] AJ Maestas: Cool. We’re so happy to have you spending more and more time down here and remember the those salt of the earth, beautiful, wonderful Midwest are now here.
[00:42:36] Lorien Parry Luehrs: And that’s why we have to open an office in Scottsdale is, you know, we wanted to be in the Pacific time zone most of the time and mountain time zone.
All of our customer service support office is here in Scottsdale. And so I will be spending a lot more time here. You know, about a third of our company’s here now. And so continuing to address the needs of our customers across the, the west side of the country. So more to come there, definitely, definitely coming at every, you know, as much as I [00:43:00] possibly can.
[00:43:00] AJ Maestas: Especially this time of year.
What are you looking forward to most from a business perspective in the next six months?
[00:43:06] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Football, as everybody is. You know, it’s the start of a new season. It’s a start of a new I love the kind of fresh start that we get to have every single year. You reintroduce yourself to your existing clients, and then you get to see new clients kick things off for the first time.
So really kick off is, is a really thing with football and with the year and just seeing the engagement and seeing how people are excited about going to events again, even more you know, as we’re seeing season over season, people are going back to events. People are going to more sports, there’s a pent up demand to go to those sports.
And, you know, if you have that pent up demand to go to an NFL game, go down the street and go to your local high school game, look in your hometown fan app, and you can probably find a game near your house. And so that’s, that’s the thing that is the coolest part of the year. I love October. I love the leaves changing.
I love, you know, Friday night lights and just being a part of that world. So [00:44:00] that’s probably the most exciting thing we’re seeing as we continue to get more and more and more clients. They all, they all kind of kick off with the kickoff. That’s my favorite part.
[00:44:08] AJ Maestas: And what advice can you offer to a young person who wants to follow in your footsteps?
[00:44:13] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Ask for help. It’s, don’t try to do it on your own. Like you’re not proving anything to anybody, you know, it’s, it’s hard to make it on your own and think that, you know, better. Cause you don’t, and there’s been so many people that have been there before you, you just gotta find the ones that are supportive and you know, you can find me on LinkedIn and you know, I know you’re, you’re such a mentor to people as well.
You just need to ask questions and then you’ll really kind of take the leap with your values. Try something, be okay to fail, learn from it, try again, fail softer, and then try again. And then you succeed. And so we continue to talk about using mistakes as a way to learn and turn to somebody for help rather than a setback, if it’s more of an opportunity.
[00:45:00] And so just remind yourself that. If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it. Hard is what makes it great. Right.
[00:45:07] AJ Maestas: I love that. I love it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you’re a serious competitor, you know, that it’s a lot more learning than it is victories.
[00:45:15] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Use your locker room education. I don’t think people do this enough. They think that sports is different than business, but it’s the same thing. You know, you might need to start back to basics. You might need to, it’s all about practicing. It’s all about . The grind. It’s all about preparation. It’s all about being in the arena.
I mean, it’s all about drowning out the noise. It’s all about competition. All of the things that you learned on your basketball team or on your baseball team, on your football team. That can apply to your business mindset. And there’s so many people that have, Shane Battier and others that have really kind of led the, you know, the rock even like, you know, there’s so many entrepreneurs that have come out of sports.
And, and just taking the next level, just even using those, like watching in the arena, watching The Last Dance, you can just, there’s so [00:46:00] many documentaries out there that you can really learn howto just win. Or, you know, fail better next time. So I would, I would recommend watching lots of those Netflix documentaries, cause they’re it just kind of shows you that people have been there before.
[00:46:14] AJ Maestas: Yeah. I’d like that you know, they say experience is what you get when you don’t get what you were originally intending. I think that fits with your story really nicely, right? Because you’re not here today without those experiences
[00:46:25] Lorien Parry Luehrs: You got, you’ve got an office that likes what happens when you’re trying to plan something else.
That’s what happens is kind of give up, figure it out and just use those experiences and take advantage of every single opportunity.
[00:46:36] AJ Maestas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Last question. I promise. What is your bucket list sporting event to attend?
[00:46:42] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Ooh. I might have a couple, but okay. Well, number one is going to each triple crown race in the same year, like with a triple crown winner.
That would be like top level, but first and foremost, like [00:47:00] really in one year going Kentucky Derby on to the Belmont. And I think that, you know, with everything that’s kind of happening with horse racing, just elevating that sport. There just needs to be more education on the values of that sport and how important and how much history is involved with it.
I’d love to just see, you know, it’s been going on for, I think 150 years or something like that, 120 years. And so just looking back at that history is amazing. The other one would be. Probably like the Masters or something like, you know, even an international golf event. You know, I’ve been to Firestone, I’ve been to the Memorial.
I’ve been to Harbor Town. I’ve been to the Waste Management Open, which is a huge party, by the way. That thing is crazy. But like I love, I love, love, love, the competition of golf and just, you know, being amongst the, like, you know, the last four holes [00:48:00] and just how you have no control over what anybody else does.
Like there’s no defense in golf, right? You have to just play your own game. And you know, it’s like a legend of Bagger Vance. Moving around you know, it’s a game that can only be played. It can’t be won. And so like, even when you win a tournament, like Tiger Woods and others have really talked about that.
So I just, I love the magic behind those kinds of sporting events. So I think all of my bucket list ones were like those magical moments. So that’s what I love. I could watch any sport and I can watch people playing pickleball and giving it so it’s you know, it’s not.
You know, for entertainment, value it’s for that magic to see those amazing greatness happen.
[00:48:39] AJ Maestas: I love that and I think we can make almost all those things happen for you. Except for the triple crown, that is lightning in a bottle.
[00:48:47] Lorien Parry Luehrs: And we’ve seen it happen three times in our life. It’s it’s happening more and more, but yes. You’re invited all of those. We can just go to all those together.
[00:48:55] AJ Maestas: We’ve worked with Visa for a long time. You know, for years and years, they sponsored [00:49:00] the triple crown, it’s a deal through NBC and all, you know, obviously tracks and and it just wasn’t happening for all of us.
It wasn’t happening.
[00:49:09] Lorien Parry Luehrs: It’s like, it’s like the Brown’s going to the Super Bowl. I mean, that would be just like, you know, it’s not an event that is wanting to be on my bucket list. I just want to see them win. Being a Cleveland fan. That would be the bucket list. Bucket list is the Browns to win the Super Bowl. And who knows we’ll get there.
We might get there. That’s not happened in my lifetime.
[00:49:29] AJ Maestas: We’ll tuck this one away in the archives. And sometime, hopefully in the next hundred years it gets to come out.
[00:49:37] Lorien Parry Luehrs: And we’re making a time capsule at the moment. We’ll see what happens. We’ll check them all off the list if they happen.
[00:49:42] AJ Maestas: Let’s concentrate on the other ones. They feel more feasible.
There’s so much parody in the NFL, but someday. Yes. And boy, will it be special when it does.
Well, again this is AJ Maestas with Navigate joined by Lorien [00:50:00] Parry Luehrs and I just cannot thank you enough for joining us. It’s such a pleasure to pick your brain.
[00:50:07] Lorien Parry Luehrs: Thanks for having me looking forward to more conversations with you.
[00:50:11] AJ Maestas: Me too. We always have a good time. For anybody listening. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us. My email is AJ@NVGT.COM and you can also connect with us on my personal LinkedIn or the Navigate LinkedIn page.
If you have a question for Lorien, I know that it will find its way to her. Yeah. Thank you so much. .