Bill Fagan

November 9, 2021

  Back to the Talent Tide Podcast

Description

In this episode, Chris talks with Bill Fagan about the process of spotting and training leaders.  They discuss topics surrounding the importance of great leadership and encouraging leadership opportunities within the company.

As The Aspire Group’s first employee, Bill started the first Fan Relationship Management Center (FRMC) at Georgia Tech in 2009. Bill has risen to the position of CEO at Aspire where he has overseen the hiring of over 1200 employees.  He currently oversees all 37 FRMC’s across the USA. Generating over $1B in new and incremental partner revenues serving iconic sports properties such as the NFL, LA Chargers, Leicester City FC, San Francisco Giants and the University of Kansas. Prior to joining Aspire, Bill was a Sales Manager with the Charlotte Bobcats (NBA) and was the ‘NBA Rookie of the Year in Sales’ with the Phoenix Suns. In between NBA stops, he spent a year in the Canadian Hockey League with the Moncton Wildcats (QMJHL) as their Director of Sales & Service. Bill cut his teeth in the sport industry with the Orange Bowl Committee and the Miami Dolphins (NFL).  Bill currently serves as a founding member of the University of Miami’s Sport Industry Leadership Council (SILC) and on the Board for the Emory University Marketing Analytics Center (MAC). Bill was named to SportsBusiness Journal’s “Forty Under 40” Class of 2017.  Bill earned his BA in Business Administration from the University of Miami.  completed his MBA studies at Emory’s Goizueta Business School and was recognized to Poets & QuantsBest and Brightest” across the top 20 Executive MBA Programs in the United States.

Transcript

Bill: 

Whether we’re promoting somebody from within, or we’re going external to bring a leader and a manager, or director, man, we look for the same characteristics.

Chris: 

And I have an opinion that I believe that most people on average, they, they want to be managed, right like people, people want leadership

Bill: 

it has to start with leaders, hiring great leaders, identify great leaders, you train them up, you love them up professionally, they will then in turn, identify great talent.

Chris: 

The talent tide podcast is sponsored by endevis. endevis is a full service recruiting firm, offering a broad range of solution from professional contracting to retain and contingency search to recruitment outsourcing endevis prides itself on its core values of being bold, accountable, help first, passionate and results driven to ensure the talent we bring to our partner matches their core values and overall mission. For more information, please visit endevis.com that is e n d e v i s.com. Hello, and welcome to the talent tide podcast, the show that ensure you have the information you need to adapt and evolve your workplace culture as you ride the wave of change in talent management. I’m your host, Chris Nichols. And today we’re chatting with a special friend of mine, Bill Fagan of the Aspire group, and we’re going to have a conversation about training and development, startup life, and just how to take a company from the grassroots organization to 12 years later hired 1200 people etc. So I’m really excited about having bill on. Welcome to the show, Bill.

Bill: 

Chris, thanks for having me and love what you’ve done with the podcast and big fan.

Chris: 

Yeah, thank you, Bill. I appreciate it. First and foremost, I wouldn’t be here without people like Bill. My first company out of grad school was the Aspire group, which is Bill was actually the very first employee at the Aspire group. He started the fan relationship management center, the very first fan relationship management center at Georgia Tech all the way back in 2009. Today, he is the CEO of aspire, he has overseen the hiring of over 1200 employees. He currently oversees all 37 fr MCs across the United States, generating over $1 billion in new and incremental partner revenue serving iconic sports properties such as the NFL, the Los Angeles chargers, San Francisco Giants University of Kansas, among many others. Prior to joining Aspire Bill was a sales manager of the Charlotte Bobcats. He was the NBA Rookie of the Year and sales with the Phoenix Suns. He spent time in Canada with the Canadian hockey league. The guy’s been everywhere. He’s lived all across the United States. And most recently, he completed his MBA studies at Emory University in Atlanta, and was named to the best and brightest poets and quaints, 20, top 20, Executive MBA programs United States bill, is there anything that you haven’t done in the last 15 years? Been on this podcast? Well, we’re changing that today. So one of the reasons I was I was so excited to have you on is because throughout my career, I’ve constantly come back to my time at Aspire and what it’s meant to me professionally. And whenever I advise companies, I’ll be honest, I take a lot of what I learned at the Aspire group and share it with with companies about how to train and develop and how to hire. So it started from scratch, though, a long time ago with you and a couple of other folks. So can you tell me what it’s been like for you to be the first hire at an organization and to ascend to where you are? And kind of a short, I guess three to five minute spiel if you don’t mind?

Bill: 

Yeah, Chris. And imitation they say is the sincerest form of flattery. So we will send you the invoice later. Things you continue to borrow. But it’s been a wonderful ride. You know, the image on your on your podcast is the tidal wave and we’ve had a lot more ups and then downs over the past baker’s dozen of years, and prior to Aspire, I worked in pro sports, as you mentioned, and it’s very different environment from the perspective of very structured, everything is pretty well established household brands. That you’re you’re working for one individual team too Typically, and when I had the opportunity to learn what Aspire was doing, and being the first step something which was first ever outsource ticket sales provider in all of college athletics, and looking at it from an entrepreneurial lens and say, If I could figure out with with the great leaders that I was joining Dr. Bernie Molen and Bill Duffy at the time, the co founders that this could be repeated. And that the issues, the challenges that Georgia Tech faced in terms of attendance for their athletic events, and getting new fans in the stadium was not unique to that one institution. This is a global challenge of, you know, how do you fill every seat in every venue for every live entertainment experience. And so, but first, we had to get the first one right. And, and that’s that that number one thing was hiring the right people. And so I was attracted to the business because of the leadership. And because the opportunity to do something that never been done before. And our intention was to grow it over time, as long as it would continue continue to work. And we grew within the first year, we added a second, a third and a fourth location, where we’re supporting ticket sales for three professional teams. And then after that, it was hockey stick growth, where, you know, the publications in our industry started recognizing what we were doing. And outsourcing actually can work if you have the right partner and and we found out our little niche within this industry. And as the landscape has evolved, one thing that’s remained the same is everybody continually needs to drive revenue, because expenses are going up. And if we can provide the support the staffing to do that, and our expertise and focus, then that’s what we continue to do. And so it’s been fun as the company’s grown, I’ve grown with the company. And as opposed to just managing one individual location, now obviously overseeing the day to day business as a whole. The role changes significantly, and then the we do a whole lot more than just selling tickets. So we work in strategy, we work in data analytics, we work in digital marketing, we work in, we call it relationship management. So it’s fan relationships, that we also do corporate relationships. And then last but not least, is training and development. And those kind of five pillars of our business. Underneath it all is Performance Analytics. So we measure everything we do for our partners, and in each one of those verticals, to say, How it is actually performing what’s working, what’s not working, and then put it up there in dashboard and say, how do we keep doing more of what’s working, whether that’s in talent management, and our people in hiring, or if it’s in our actual sales performance, or if it’s in training and development of the things we do there. So I’ll pause there just to kind of set the framework of some of the areas we’re involved in.

Chris: 

Absolutely. And, you know, people listening are from various different job functions in organizations, they are in various industries as well. And so I think, for me and sharing with our audience, the initial thought is, ah, this guy works in sports. But that’s not comparable to my manufacturing industry. It’s not comparable to my health care company. But what is the same across businesses are some core competencies, and it’s the ability to measure what you do. And it’s the ability to hire, train and develop people. Because if you can do those, those three things, well, you’re going to be successful. And I think that’s what I admire so much about what Dr. Bernie Mullen has achieved and Bill Duffy and then with with your assistance, and now your ascension to CEO, that’s what I admire most about the Aspire group is that you from the very beginning, have have set the bar high and have always tried to go above and beyond the bar. So can you talk about what it was like at the beginning to start building out your plans around training and development, where your where your, your your mindsets were and how that shifted over the years as the organization has evolved?

Bill: 

Yeah, shirkers, I think they say the enemy of excellence is is good, or good enough. And I think it’s very much is never being complacent. Even when you’re having your best days, whatever that may mean in your own industry. But really, we operate a business. It’s a small business that has at its peak had a little over 200 employees, full time employees and representing, you know, as many as 40 properties at one time. And servicing that kind of pipeline effectively is there’s no playbook for that. And so that’s why that in those early years, it was so important. And, and built off, he would tell me this, constantly, in the first years codify everything you do, meaning take notes document, anytime you have a new training module, or there’s a new system that you’re installing, and if it’s working documented, because we want it to be repeatable, and I think that’s applicable to many areas of business. And so, because there wasn’t that playbook already written, we had to lean on our own personal experiences. And so I had been trained as a sales professional. And so building literally the playbook of how to teach people how to sell how to service build relationships, that was a big part of that those early years is actually codifying it. Same thing when it came to, when we got to the point of being around 100 employees, we realized we needed a dedicated HR function. And so we hired an HR manager for the first time they came in, there were all of the HR tools and performance measurement systems that we have today. They had to build that. And certainly I was helping kind of co-build that alongside them, even though that wasn’t my expertise. And just as in many other areas of the business. And so I think it was always important. And it still remains true today that we try to document everything we do and systematize it so that we can repeat it whatever that challeng is. And so when we’re looking at, when we’re on a call and somebody says we’re we don’t have a marketing plan for how we’re going to drive revenue, we can work with them on building that marketing plan. And then we can also work with them on actually executing it. And I think that’s it’s so goes beyond just the consultative approach, but it’s in hand in hand saying, we’re going to actually help you execute this, and we’ll be on the frontlines with you. And so you can actually bear the fruits of your labor. You know, we, in terms of performance analytics, we measure every activity that all of our sales and service people have in the company. So we call it the root and the fruit on the sales side, which is to say the root is all of the activity. So how many phone calls they’ve made, how many minutes of time they’re on the phone per day, per week, how many referrals their collecting were in a referral based business, all of that activity, how many appointments are going on, all of that route leads to the fruit, which on the ticketing side means selling tickets, and actually driving revenue. And there’s other metrics for other areas. But that root the fruit is we put it up transparently. So everybody in the organization can hold themselves accountable, as much as we’re holding them accountable to those metrics and the various goals, each location. And so when we’re hiring, we’re very transparent to say, you’re going to be held up to this standard. And, you know, our, for our leaders, we leaders is hiring great leaders is the most important job, because our philosophy is that A is higher A’s and B’s higher C’s. And so starts with leadership. And we borrowed from the Disney Institute of Development, which it says that if your end goal is profitability and sustainability, you don’t start there has to start with leaders in hiring great leaders. If you’ve identified great leaders, you train them up, you love them up professionally, they will then in turn, identify great talent. That was good, that was great, individual contributors. Well, if they’re getting the right training, support, etc, and there was a career path for them, they will then provide great service to the customer, whoever that customers in our case, that would be a fan, somebody that’s buying tickets. If that fan or that customers satisfied, they’re going to be raving fans raving customers, that they’re going to buy more probably going to refer us to their friends and family. And that means that the customer, the the client, our client, in this case, the sports property is going to be so satisfied that they that they’re going to continue to renew our relationship and be treated it like a lifetime relationship. And ultimately, that means we’re probably driving revenue for all parties involved, including ourselves, and that’s profitability and sustainability. But it has to come in that order. And if you try to shortcut any of the steps, starting with the leaders, and then the individual contributors, the whole train comes off the tracks. And so we measure that in all of our frequent one on ones our leaders do one on ones with their direct reports every single week. There’s training involved in every single one of those ones. And there’s development involved in Every one of those one on ones, and there’s discussions about their career, not just career within the Aspire our organization, but career pathing, for any number of directions that they may be interested in going, just like yourself, who would have known that you wouldn’t be where you are today, you’re not working in our industry, but you’re doing great, amazing things. And, you know, we, hopefully you felt comfortable in those one on ones with your supervisor at the time, you could talk about that, you could talk about all the various directions that your career could potentially go.

Chris: 

There was some self ownership in that too, you know, as I remember back, but the cool thing was that I felt free, and, and okay to say where I wanted to be. And I don’t think a lot of organizations even have a culture that welcomes that kind of conversation. So me graduating college, you backup, a lot of organizations that we talked to today, when they say, young people, they just want to get paid more money, they don’t know, you know, they, they their retention is terrible, they leave after two years. And I look at that and say, we have to ask ourselves why? Like, why do they do that. And a lot of times, it’s because we’re not talking to them as an organization, we don’t know what they want, we don’t know what they value, we assume that we can create a customized solution that fits every generation, every age group, every demographic, rural versus urban locations, and say, This is who we are. And you can do that to a certain degree. But there’s also a bit of personalization that comes into play as well. And that’s where true leaders, in my opinion, are able to stand out. And so from the from the very first time I interviewed, I was comfortable with the idea. And maybe it was even an interview question of where do you Why are you applying for this job? And where do you hope it takes you in the future. And for me, at the time, I wanted to be a college athletic director, I knew I kind of had my own path mapped out. And what was amazing is that the Aspire group had a path mapped out for me as well, that could assist me on my development to get towards where I ultimately wanted to be. Now that path has has changed. But the things that I was able to learn in, during that process have allowed me to see greater opportunities that exist as well. So can you talk about what goes into hiring leaders at the Aspire group? And then identifying what traits exist that you know, will create a leader for the Aspire group as you developed them?

Bill: 

Yeah, great, great question. And that career path, of course, was not there. In year one, you know, we were a startup company. So whether you have that kind of structure in place today, or you’re, you’re in an existing organization that doesn’t have the habit and you want to create it, there’s no bad time to kind of start that. And it was an evolution, it was listening to the staff that say, I don’t know what what my next step is, what is the next step. And you know, for us, we were able to promote some people that were doing really well give them a new title, some new responsibilities, that as we grew, we could add additional responsibilities to those folks on the way. The number one statistic that I’m most proud of, in our company’s history is, is currently the number 70. And the number 70 represents the number of individual contributors that joined us, most of them recent college graduates that are starting their careers. And they’ve gotten promoted 234 Times up to manager level. And they actually get to run their own property. And that rapid acceleration only happens because of training and development in that career path. And now it’s real, we can say, I’m a Sales Consultant of entry level, but there is a real path for me to get to a management position. If that is my desire. It doesn’t mean that’s the only path. But there’s that real path. And that’s just been 12 and a half years. And if I was if I look at most of the sports organizations, within our own industry, and I look how many people get promoted, and a similar path, and as rapidly, it’s not even close. And so there may be one or two in a typical professional organization per year, if you’re lucky. And we’ve been able to do 70 in 12 and a half years and so it’s very real when we’re interviewing and when we’re hiring, that there is that rapid progression and growth. So whether we’re promoting somebody from within, or we’re going external to bring a leader and a manager and or a director and we look for the same characteristics, those traits that you referenced, we call it WHOPPP is the acronym W H O P P P P, the W stands for work ethic, the H for honesty, integrity and character, the openness to learning, P for positive attitude, P for potential for leadership, P for productivity, and P for passion and commitment to our industry and what our trade, if somebody displays those in an interview, and some of those things you can literally see on a resume, others you sort of tease out through conversation, but somebody has whoppp, we’re not looking for any other experience. That’s great. They’re qualified for a really high qualified candidate for an interview. Now, let’s say they get the job offer. Now we’re onboarding them. As we go through the onboarding process, we revealed to them that we’re looking for WHOPPP and you’re going to continue to be evaluated based on those seven characteristics. We believe in it so much, that it’s part of our annual performance reviews, it’s part of our regular performance review is for everybody in the company, everybody, and at the end, and as we add month by month, we actually can change our employee of the month to be the whopper of the month, because it’s voted on by your peers, you have to nominate one of your peers. And then a committee reviews those nominations to see who best displayed whoppp those seven characteristics in that previous month. And there’s a vote and there’s a winner, and we’ll put it on social media, they get a lot of praise. And it’s in our small business, it’s quite prestigious, and it’s very special thing. And because it is peer nominated, and it isn’t endorsed by the leadership. And so those are little things that are contributors to building a culture that rewards not just revenue performance, or, you know, whatever the job objective is, but it’s also rewarding the intangibles. And so we look for that, in leaders pass that once they’re on boarded, whether it’s an entry level position, or it’s at management level position, we have playbooks and guidebooks for every step of the process that can be customized at the local level to a degree, there are some non negotiables, everybody’s going to know what WHOPP is, everybody’s going to know what our core values are. Those are non negotiables. When it comes to the local jobs, specifications, those can vary. And those can be learned quite easily. But you know that that environment where people are, then they know how they’re going to be evaluated from day one. They know what the expectations are, if you do a really good job, there’s an opportunity to get promoted. There’s no quotas related to we only have x number of people we can promote. There’s only X number of positions that we can elevate. No, there, it’s limitless. And working in that environment. If you’re if you have that Ownership mindset, one of the things that we tell everybody on their first day is what’s that chair you’re sitting in we and we don’t literally mean the chair, but yeah, it can. What we’re looking for is we want to empower them to treat that chair, like it’s their own business. Act like an entrepreneur, meaning everything that you do, not just the way you perform in terms of the results. But everything you do, you’re building your brand, and that brand is going to stick with you for life. And we understand that you’re most likely not going to stay with us for the rest of your career. But as the old saying goes, What if you don’t train your people, and they stay? Or what if you train, train them and they go, Oh, you don’t want to keep those untrained people. So we pour a lot of energy into training and development, because we hope that they get promoted internally, and they continue that path. And if they do leave us that they are prepared, they’re representing not only their own brand strongly, but as an Aspire alumni, they are also representing their brand really well, just like you are,

Chris: 

as you were saying on that I fell out of pride inside me welling up because that was like man I can remember, you know, being that young, that young guy that that got to hear all those things. And then I got to see it come to fruition because I did take that career path. But the cool thing was, I could see where as a sales consultant, I could see a path to being a vice president at the Aspire group. And that was on that was in the playbook, right like that was there in front of me. And there were different routes to get to being a VP to right, it wasn’t it wasn’t completely linear. There were opportunities to zig and zag. And that kind of clarity for somebody that was performance oriented, who wanted to grow in their career was so valuable for me. And I have an opinion that I believe that most people on average, they they want to be managed right like people people want leadership, we reach for that we desire it. And so the the opportunities that exists in the Aspire group I think are wonderful, but what I think you will also do really well is that the training and development that exist, immediately prepare someone for leadership. It’s it’s both men Ginger and Pierre lead scenarios. And I know things have changed since I was there. But the idea is, is that there’s an Aspire way to do things. And it’s kind of like a 7525 type mentality of like us. But you get to put your own personal spin on it as well, like you get to be a leader, you get to make small adjustments here and there to make it fit your style. And so the the the original playbook, and then the raise your game series, can you talk about how meaningful that is to the organization? And what it means to your employees to go to go through that? And what, why you think it remains as important today as it was 10 years ago?

Bill: 

Yeah, Chris, it’s interesting, because oftentimes, we’re hired to be a partner in sellings, tickets or something. And so the there is this perceived expectation that we want to start selling as quickly as possible, because that’s going to lead to the most results quickest. So in that mentality, you would put, you would put a new employee on the on the phones or selling a day one potentially. That’s we don’t do that, even if we could. Instead, we invest in one to two weeks of training on the front end, depending on how complex what they’re selling is. But most of that training is not on the product knowledge of what they’re selling. The majority of it is the culture. It’s the it’s around the intangibles, it’s around, how do you have a conversation? How do you build a relationship? How do you ask good questions, and all of the other things. And that last 10% is all about what you’re actually doing what you’re selling, representing on that day to day. And so that, and then maybe by the end of the second week, they’re starting some early sales processes. But they’re definitely not being thrown in the deep end, you know, it’s very much a gradual learning process, then they’re often running, but it doesn’t stop. Every single week, there’s training, lead by the local manager, is supported by our central VP of training, who supports all of our employees are the only organization in our industry that has our own in house trainer, and he owns training and development for us. But that doesn’t mean he’s doing all the training. A big part of what he’s doing is training the trainer’s meaning the managers, and empowering them with the right tools to reinforce the messaging and make sure that we’re holding everyone to the same standards across the way. Every month, our employees are required to actually participate in a typically a one to two hour long training session. And that’s called the raise your game executive development program. We created this from scratch. And there are modules that rotate. So it takes about two years to go through the whole program. And if you’re doing on average one a month, and they are now video based, they are applicable, not just our industry, but they are applicable to pretty much every business in the sense that, you know, it’s things like management versus leadership. That’s the title of the session. And we talked through, in your own words, what does management mean to you? What does leadership mean to you? What is the difference? And we talked about how you don’t have to be a manager to be a leader, we have another one called the five personalities of managing. And that talks about that just literally managing and supervising talks about how managing is every direction, it’s managing up to your boss, managing your colleagues, managing your customers, managing your staff, if you have staff, and the fifth personality, which is managing yourself, and how does that what does that mean, in each of those areas. These are life skills, there are not business, strictly business skills that are going to impact today’s performance per se. But these are life skills that they can carry with them for the rest of their life. It’s having gone through an MBA program in the classroom, a lot of these things, they don’t even teach you in an MBA program. These These go beyond that you don’t get prepared in a typical organization to have these things. And so we tell our partners, right up front, hey, we’re going to be off the job for an hour or two every month. But here’s what we’re going to be doing. We’re going to develop this staff to be in your chair one day that may be 10 or 20 years, but we want to prepare them for all of the wide range of skills that they could need and could benefit from when they as they continue to grow their career. And so we spent a lot of time in that area and at the end of the year, what do we do hold a hold accountability, we we make sure that every single one of those employees has received the training model, we monitor what training is working, and what the performance is in each of those areas. And then give one other example in this Training and Development vertical which is we we developed a training called the sales swing Dr. And it talks about the best golfers on the planet. Even the best golfers on the planet have a Golf Swing Coach. And they’re the best at what they do. Even they have a coach. So the message is everybody can continually improve. So we’ve taken that analogy, we’ve moved to 18 modules, like 18 holes of golf, and each one is a different stage in the sales process. And there’s, they’re measured and scored, they do a self evaluation, then the manager will do an evaluation of them. And it’s all built around these short, three, five minutes, which is about the attention span of the average person for a training session these days. So it’s not a full hour or two, it’s very short, short videos are short in interaction with the leader. And then they’re actually getting to evaluate themselves, and the manager evaluates them. And then you score, compare that to the scores. Anywhere where the scores are, don’t match, there’s a room for conversation. And that’s, that’s the fun part, anywhere where the employee is where there’s a low score, regardless of who gave it. That’s room for conversation. So we just, and then that conversation is a training based conversation, how do we get better? How do we work on this together, and over time, what happens is, you refine that those skills, and the swing gets a little smoother and a little smoother, and you’re never gonna be perfect, but there’s continuous improvement. And same with our training, the modules that we had five, five years ago, even are not identical to what we have today. So we’re constantly modifying them to the modern techniques and what we do as an organization.

Chris: 

I love that bill. And I know, I know, we’re short on time here today. But what I often see when when we’re advising our clients is that they lack that they lack the ability to train the manager. They have great programs, they think they think big, but it’s the the ability to carry it out downstream from from corporate to individual contributors, and team leaders in manufacturing facilities and in staff managers for our ends. So to kind of to kind of finish this thing up today, what is your best advice to organizations that are would like to be able to either expand their current training and development to maximize its its its usage and its effectiveness? Or to organizations that are looking to implement one?

Bill: 

Great question that, I think, you know, for us, it’s, it’s, it’s, and for those listening, it’s, you’ve got to be authentic. And, and you, it’s got to be real, meaning, if it’s a web based portal that someone is logging into with no interaction, because they’re required to go through a certain type of training, whether it be harassment, or discrimination training for just as a simple example, that can be very mundane, and it can be forced. And understandably, those things can be required in organizations. We do those things, too. But the question is, how do you make the training really engaging, and custom to the audience. And it’s little things like keeping it short and sweet, but having ways to measure it. And so knowing who in your organization can be the cheerleader or owner of that content, it may or may not fit within HR, in our organization, training and development is related to HR, they’re friends, but it’s not its own division. It’s its own individual pillar. And so it’s embedded with everything we do. And if you’re an organization that is not, and doesn’t have the expertise, there’s organizations like ours, and many others that can come in and provide that type of training, provide those kind of the framework that can set you up for sustainability and success in this area. Because a one off training session is like going to a conference retreat. You know, it’s great, while you’re there, could get some nuggets out of it. But then you’re you’re back to the old ways. If you go back when you get back to the office or the virtual office, this has to be sustainable. And so everything that you’re doing is is it intentional? Is it is it repeatable? And who’s gonna own it? And can it be ordered And can it become an organizational strength, so that as you have turnover, God forbid, your trainer was to leave the organization? Do you lose the training? And if you if the answer is yes, that’s very vulnerable for us. Everyone’s a trainer or being trained. And so it’s, it’s part of the culture. And so, I think, considering that as you’re building up the framework is also of value.

Chris: 

I love it. I love that you said the word Then you said that word intentional, because in order to carry out anything in business or in life to to create change, you have to be intentional no matter what, what it is that you are doing. And so thank you for mentioning that word, one of my favorite words in business, and extremely valuable to this conversation as well. So you did you gave me a little bit of opportunity to segue here. If organizations are looking to have a conversation about this, how do they reach out to Bill Fagan, the Aspire group to learn more about how to get better at training and development?

Bill: 

Yeah, my, my inbox is wide open, and social media and Twitter at Bill Fagan. Also our website, the AspireGroupInc.com, there’s is an opportunity to connect with us there. And where we will Well we started in sports, we work with many non sport properties as well, because I find that the challenges are more similar than they are different. And so when it comes to whether it’s forming your own mission, vision and values, or looking at building out your own capabilities, and then communicating those in the messaging and marketing support, that we spent a lot of time in our strategy, analytics and marketing function supporting external organizations in that respect. And so the fun stuff, you know, the fun things on our website are the things for many people that are affiliated with sports and entertainment and such. But the business challenges are, are, are ubiquitous. And that for me as a business person, that’s what I that’s what really fires me up, I’d like to be a sports fan on my spare time. But for the rest of the days, I really just enjoy the business side of it solving problems. People Yeah, solving problems.

Chris: 

That’s that’s what I appreciate so much about the Aspire group and I’ll be honest, if if you have any interaction with me ever, much of who I am from a business person is because of the Aspire group. So if you’re if you have that doubt about ahh their sports company, I can promise you it is the information that they can give you and teach you is far more transferable than just around ticket sales. So reach out to bill in the group at the Aspire group and have a conversation with them about how they can help. That’s a wrap on another episode of the talent tide podcast. Please be sure to like subscribe and rate wherever you watch or listen to us, from Apple to Spotify to YouTube. And remember, success on the other side of fear. Talk to you soon