Episode 069 - Brian Fitzgibbons on Reaching the Active Affluent

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Let's go welcome everybody to the out-of-home insider show, a podcast like no other hosted by the one and only Tim Rowe.

You ready to have some knowledge dropped on you when to be entertained because nothing's more valuable than food for your brain. So sit back, relax. We're about to dive in as the best industry podcast is the bathroom again.

It's the shit, man. I love the office. I love. The screen and the bat. Oh, that was cool. It just did like this, the logos, like, yeah, this is actually some of your, uh, recommendation to focus on the X. You know, we made that a little bigger. I love it, man. And it's kinda like, it's kinda got this like sport feel, which I'm sure you were going for, but it feels like exactly X games.

Ish. Totally, totally awesome. And I liked the sticker at the bottom. Kind of make it look like a billboard or something with the, uh, yeah, it's funny B um, I, we went around and started putting those stickers on and it's one of those, uh, you know, small things that you overlook, uh, at a certain point. And, um, I think you talked to him, uh, Kenny, Kenny, Raul, uh, at interstate outdoor.

Um, haven't yet, we're getting Kenny now, now we're coming for you. Can we gotta have ya? Yeah. Um, so Ken's a great friend of mine has been a, uh, a tremendous mentor, um, getting into this space and, um, he just said, Hey, you know what, why don't you have, you know, like a sticker on the bottom of every screen?

Right? Like, it seems so obvious. And then it was like, oh, that's a good. Wait when he mentioned it to me, I said, you know, we're going to make it look exactly like, um, you know, we looked at probably 20 and 20 different, um, you know, those little bottom icons on a billboard and sure. You know, we mocked this up, spread it out and, um, then started putting the stickers everywhere.

I dig it well, before there were ever stickers on screens, someone came up with a wild idea to start venue X. Like maybe we just start at the beginning with like a proper introduction and, uh, and how you got into the space. Absolutely. Um, so it's, it's interesting. Um, you know, I'm a big fan of the podcasts and.

I've listened to. I think I've listened to every episode. It's always interesting for me to hear and other people's stories to, uh, to say, you know, they fell into this out-of-home space and, um, we're, we're no different. Um, we certainly didn't plan on this, um, you know, 10 years ago, this wasn't a plan. I am 20.

I started coaching lacrosse, um, back in 2010 and, uh, uh, camp grew into clinic, grew a new club team. And, um, I ended up working full time, uh, with a buddy of mine, you know, quit my job. And, um, a buddy of mine had, uh, a bigger camp clinic club series going and, um, I joined him. And we grew that out, uh, ended up merging with a couple other, uh, clubs in the state.

And, um, our lacrosse club grew really excited in the sport space. I played lacrosse in college at Bowden college and, um, played a little bit after and coached after. And, uh, We grew, we grew the club and we ended up, uh, two of my partners bought a sports facilities. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So, um, we're in the Plymouth sports complex, uh, 45 minutes south of the city and the Cohasset sports complex.

And we realized very quickly, uh, this audience is massive, that comes in and out of there. And I am talking pretty pandemic. Um, you know, you've got, um, very. Affluent higher than average household income coming to these venues multiple times a week. You know, whether it's for soccer, practice hockey.

Lacrosse basketball, volleyball, you name it. Um, and we were selling ads on the walls, banner ads, um, proper printed banners. Yeah. Um, you know, huge, uh, some, some big, some small varying pricing. We knew there was a market there. And, uh, we started exploring some options on how, how do we, how do we without, you know, selling out and making it look like NASCAR?

Time, how do we, how do we take this? Tremendous audience we have. And I think at our peak, um, before we were acquired, uh, we had somewhere around 1200 athletes in our program. Wow. And that was just through, that was through the camps. Yeah. These were club teams. Okay. So, you know, year round, uh, train a couple of times a week, go to tournaments.

Um, a lot of folks might be familiar with like AAU baseball or AAU basketball. There there's no AAU per se for lacrosse, but that's what we were. Inside and fits real quick for anyone not familiar with, with athletics at that level, it takes a certain level of income and time, right? There is a huge time and financial commitment for these families.

You talked a little bit about the audience that venue X reaches. Maybe if you could draw a little bit more color onto that, the specifics of the audience. Um, it sounds like that was kind of a Pedro and developing this. Yeah, it absolutely. I mean, the audience was the number one thing, um, that we knew there are advertisers out there that want to reach these folks that are spending upwards of $10,000 a year on, you know, on average.

Um, maybe not just on lacrosse, but um, hockey club fee, travel uniform. Um, now they're out two hours away from their house. They got to go out to eat after a game, they're going to travel six hours in the car to Pennsylvania for a tournament. They're going to get a hotel. You know, they're going to get flights.

Um, they're going to, they, a lot of them have second homes. They're going to go on vacation. Uh, We, we actually have, um, in the works right now, really interesting, uh, video ad that we're making, following the trail of some of my buddies who are coaches on why they bought it Yeti. Okay. So that's cool. Um, you know, and just saying like, Hey, this.

This guy is at this brink two times a week. He's in this facility over here and they all bought Yeti's because, you know, they, they saw the, uh, their friend came to the cook backyard, took out the Yeti and, um, that friend also goes to the rink, et cetera, et cetera. So, so it happens. We're here with Brian Fiske is one of the founders of venue X, and we're learning all about how venue X reaches an active affluent market all across new England.

Right? Is that. Yeah. So where we're all across new England, not I'll back up and I apologize. I apologize. I skipped around a little bit. We just roll right into it. You know, I, we were coaching, we were growing our club writing was on the wall that we were going to get acquired, um, by a great, uh, great company called three-step sports.

That's, uh, doing some tremendous things in. You with an amateur sports space right now, um, to, in really providing opportunities for a lot of, um, athletes that don't have the financial means, uh, to participate, um, at the same level. So three steps doing some great things in the bad, only in the lacrosse community, but in softball, basketball, football, you name it.

And, uh, Anyways, as that was happening, I was looking at this and I said, Hey, we've sold a lot of banner ads on the walls. We actually had a screen in the Plymouth sports complex that we had a USB thumb drive in and we would use the screen. So if we'd go around, uh, literally go around door to door in area in the community to sell the banner ads.

And if they didn't want to invest in a banner ad, uh, 10 by 10 foot banner on the wall, we would say, Hey, you can get on this loop, um, on this USB drive and it will cost a little, a little bit less for the year. And, um, we started selling those. So we knew that there was a market. And, um, that turned into, um, quite literally, uh, one of my best buddies from elementary school was my business partner, Mike Greenberg.

And, uh, we loaded up, um, Mark's SUV. Uh, we call it the war wagon and we literally drove around, um, hanging up screens for the next call it 14 months. Wow. So it grew pretty quick. Yeah, it grew quick. I mean, we're in. We're at 70% of the sports facilities in new England. Um, so we reach the majority of that sports audience.

I mean, it's that family amateur sports audience and our, our streams are in lobby areas, spectator areas. Uh, some, some venues are huge and be brand new. Beautiful. Some are really small and have been there for a long time. And, and the screen placements are all fairly consistent that this audience is going to spend about little over an hour inside of the venue.

For the most part, you know, incredible. We dwell time is something that we hear about and talk about and brands care about these folks are hanging out there with nothing to do, but watch their kid play sports for, for an hour. Exactly. Exactly. And that was that that's, that was something that, um, You know, at first it was speed over strategy on where we're putting the screens.

And then we started to get some really good, uh, strategic advice from, you know, guys, like I mentioned, Ken rowel, uh, John Carroll at Carroll advertising. Who'd be a great guy for you to talk to. He's got a number of big digital billboards, um, around, uh, the Boston area and, uh, Then we started to really zero in on where do we put these screens to get the most engagement?

Um, and we started using, um, ad mobilize, uh, and we have ad mobilized deployed at any given time, uh, probably on 10% of our screens. And that started to help us better understand. Not, not only the foot traffic in and out of the venues, but which screens were in good spots and which screens were in bad spots.

Interesting. What, what did you, what did you look for? Because camera technology is something that it comes up in conversation. You're the first person that I've talked to. That's used it in, in the way that you just described. W like, what were the things that you observed by having cameras and stuff? The biggest takeaway and how, how we get back up and see how we get into it is I think like everybody else who's get these screens in a place-based environment.

You know, whether it's a gym or a barbershop or, you know, a nail salon or for us in hockey ranks, um, everybody's super focused on. What do they need to do as a media owner, a screen owner to connect to programmatic revenue. Right? Um, so. You know, we can count the cell phones on a geo-fence or through near-field communication.

That's great. We could have somebody literally sit there and audit that screen, you know, and, and count how many people, how many eyeballs looked at it. Um, but we realized, uh, I think I met, uh, Mike Neil at the DPAA summit. I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure where, where we first met or how we first met, but, um, Mike was great at explaining, uh, Mike Neil from ad mobile.

Of explaining how we can use that data to actually track screen glances, because for us, um, you know, we were certainly aware that there are some of our screens that people are just blowing by to get to the locker room. And we're okay with that because we might have two or three other screen placements around the venue.

Uh, but we wanted to know which screens actually were getting the eyeballs as we were deploying, you know, 25 more screens the next month, 50 more screens. And next month, you know, Make sure we're putting them in the right areas. Um, so how we use that data specifically was to say, um, at first we're thinking, okay, this is.

The next jump that we need to make in order to connect to programmatic. Um, but the real benefit that came out of it was unforeseen, which was a help guide, uh, where we're putting these screens in the future. So we want to replicate, you know, find commonalities that is this screen near a vending machine.

Um, for instance, Yeah, those screens tend to get a lot more, uh, impressions attract on ad mobilize because people are hanging around in there. They can't bring their food or drink into the court or the ice. So they're going to the vending machine, getting their snack, hanging out in the lobby, looking at the screen, uh, So that's just one, one caveat, but the, the real impact that, uh, those ad mobilize units have had for us is helping to guide, uh, where to put these screens in the future.

And what are the commonalities around these good screenplays? It makes a lot of sense. Soon when we think about like Facebook, Facebook's a perfect analog for this. Facebook has different ad placements and Facebook knows the different ad placements, whether that's in the newsfeed or the marketplace, or suggested videos, they know that different placements are going to have different levels of engagement.

And you've used technology to replicate that in the real world. Exactly. And, um, it's, it's amazing, you know, We've had so much free advice given to us, um, by so many people, uh, too many to name on here. And I was prior to coming on here, I was thinking about listing them all out. And, um, but this, this out of home industry is so unique in a lot of ways, because there's not many people you can't pick up the phone and call it.

They're willing to. Take a look at what you're doing and offer their best, uh, advice on this. We've been fortunate to have a number of friends, um, either in the industry or on the periphery, um, of it that, that have given us some really great advice along the way, because I'll tell you mark and I, um, We we certainly to, to build a network and in the majority of hockey, rinks and indoor turfs in new England was we, we were lucky in the sense that we had that pre, uh, built in network because this is a fragmented audience, right?

I mean, most of these ranks are owned by. Um, the individual owners, they're all separate businesses, so it's not just non franchise that you correct in there and it's all done. Like there's a lot of heavy lifting along the way. Yeah. And it, it takes, um, you know, as you know, with a small team, it takes just as long to, um, set up a venue relationship with a single rank as it does with somebody who owns seven ranks.

Uh, In a, in a weird way. It just, you know, the amount of time, uh, put it in there and we're able to scale that pretty quickly. Uh, thankfully I was in the sports space locally for a long enough time that I had enough of those relationships to speed that process up. And then it just turned into. Following the playbook.

And we, we thankfully had some great coaches and advisors along the way and, uh, telling us where to, how to do things and, you know, giving us their take on it. And sometimes we agreed sometimes we disagreed, but, um, you know, the, the network was built. Um, mark and I, the majority of these, actually every screener, our net.

Um, we've put our hands on, you know, we either literally mounted it into the wall or connected our device on the back of it. Um, there, there are very few out there that we've shifted device to. I think it's, um, in the under 10 out of a hundred. So it's, um, it's been an awesome experience, uh, to, to do that.

And I think we've, we've gained a unique perspective. Um, Being on the road like that and seeing every stream, you know, we've, we were inside of those venues. We get a good understanding of where people are walking and where they're going. We'd meet the venue owner and, um, or the ma the rink manager as the case might be.

And we're focused really on that relationship first with, with our venue owners and our ranks and our turfs, uh, to make sure that they're able to use the screens to, uh, To sell their own programs, you know, so they're, they're doing some really cool things about announcing tryouts earlier on the screens.

Um, you know, when they have, uh, a new team or a new tournament coming into their facility, that's going up on the screens, uh, making everybody aware and they've had a lot of success with that. Um, So it's, it's, it's been a, it's been an awesome journey so far. I'll tell you that. Sure. How many venues and how many screens total, if you had to roll it all up.

It's in total right now, uh, where we went into the pandemic with, uh, just about a hundred venues and a little over 300 screens are right now, wide open and active, um, where just about hovering around 75 venues, um, and a little under 300 screens. So where we're hopeful that all of all of the venues will come back to life back online.

And, and I'll say, I'll take a minute to say. It's, you know, the pandemic has been challenging for everybody. Um, and it's been particularly challenging for, uh, sports venues, especially up here in Massachusetts. Um, they've faced. Really strict regulations, um, from the Massachusetts department of health. Um, and the, the resiliency that our venue partners have shown, uh, to stay open is absolutely tremendous.

I mean, it's, it, it, it's inspiring to us as well. Um, that to stay in the fight, so to speak. These venues were locked down for six months. I mean, literally not allowed to have anybody inside of them. Um, and it's just amazing to me. Um, what these guys and girls have done to bring their pro you know, they brought their programs, virtual, they went out doors.

They, they figure out ways to keep their programs alive. Um, for the athletes that the youth athletes that were in them, and they figured out a way to get their venues back to life, uh, once they were able to open back up and, uh, it's, that's why our focus is with them, uh, to make sure we're solving problems for the venues first.

Um, and then allowing our advertising partners. To access that audience, right? So we want to make sure the venues are taken care of and they understand the system and to use it and, uh, sell their own programs. And then the second piece is. Bringing those advertisers are given the opportunity to speak to that audience.

How is how easy is it? I think it matters right? As brands, as brands evaluate things like data consent and how do we use data? I think that out-of-home continues to become more powerful because frankly, we don't need your data. We have real-world behavior. If you're actually interested in sports and you're an active family and you have disposable income.

Pretty good. Pretty good chance that they're going to be at a, at a venue X location. How easy is it for a rink manager or, you know, a facilities manager to, to operate this? Is it. Much in terms of their side of managing it, do y'all handle most of the back end. What's that? What's that look like in case there's somebody listening, that's interested in bringing their family on board.

That's that's one of the key components. When we, at the outset, we knew that whatever we were asking, uh, These venue, these sports venue owners to do, or these managers to do had to be super simple. Um, and that's not to say that they're not nuanced technologically. It's just that these, these guys and girls wear a lot of hats.

Um, you know, so they're coaching a team at 3:00 PM. They're making a new sheet of ice on the Zamboni at six, you know, they're setting up a registration. At night going home, eating a quick dinner, waking up the next morning, doing the same thing. Um, so we knew that we couldn't have a system, uh, for them to log into or a content management system for them to log into.

That was complicated. You know, that was going to just create a new hour long, a piece of work a week or two hours a week. It had to be. So we've, we've got a very simple, uh, system it's very easy. Um, if a venue had a screen, um, that used to have Comcast on it or has a thumb drive in it right now, um, we can literally get them set up same day, you know?

If we can drive out there, but, or we ship it to them, um, and they plug it into the back of the screen, they log in. And if, if you can, what we always say is if you can make a post on Facebook, you can use our content management system, um, that, you know, you're skilled enough technologically to, to use this and understand it.

And, um, that's gone a long way for us. I mean, it's, it's streamlined the training takes 15 minutes. There are never any questions at the end, um, which is great for us. Um, it really good for the venue partners because now they, they have the ability to utilize. They have some intermittent staff there's, uh, some commonalities around these venues that they'll have some younger, recent college grads who work part-time and help out with marketing programs.

The ability for them to be able to change the screens remotely versus having to be there with a computer hooked up to it, or however they were doing it before, uh, really changes things. Um, that's huge. Definitely. And what, what do you see in terms of the brand impact? Right. There's a lot of good things going on here in that we can it's really like that community level thing, maybe something that was only ever available to, you know, Joe's pizza down the street or the local tire shop.

But this is an opportunity for brands to be able to reach that audience on a hyper-local on a hyper-targeted basis with measurement kind of at scale. Do you, do you see brands using it that way? Absolutely. Um, and that's, that is so exciting to us. And that's the number one reason that we did this as basically aggregate a fragmented audience.

Right. And put it in one spot that, you know, if you were, um, w one of our great advertising partners, that convenient MD, uh, there a, um, Urgent care, uh, facilities and they're popping up all over new England right now. And we work hand in hand with them on helping identify a community space sports venues to advertise in.

Uh, and then they'll put up a 40 foot bay. Like a huge, they, they T they do it right. They'll put up a huge banner. They'll go on our screens. They'll have a stand up display with handouts about how, if your kid breaks his arm, he can go get a cast. If your daughter needs a sports physical, they can shoot right in their same day and get an appointment.

Um, and they're, they're all over the venue using the screens and using our measurement to identify where to go, uh, in a radius of their urgent care centers. And. Th the thing that's so exciting about how they're doing that, validated our hypothesis, that this audience is desired by advertisers that want to be in front of the community.

And, um, you know, we were talking about, uh, mark and I were talking about your episode with, uh, Linwood vivids of course. And he's he was talking about his audience saying that these, these are the tastemakers, right? And in a hyper-local sense, these are the tastemakers that I, when he said that it resonated with me so much because.

Like it or not. The hockey coach talks to a lot of people, the lacrosse coach, the parent on the lacrosse team, the soccer team, they buy that Yeti cooler and four other people buy it. You know, he's, these are hyperlocal, tastemakers, and, uh, Brands, you know, especially regional brands is really our sweet spot.

Like a convenient MD that's saturating new England right now, um, is, is perfect for us because we reach so many people over and over again, uh, inside of their geography. Um, and that's, that's one of the things I think, uh, we're so excited about what's going on with one screen and working with, with you guys on some things is.

Kind of bridge that gap between what we're able to do, uh, as a, a screen owner and a network owner, uh, to what that, uh, regional brand needs to get back from a measurement reporting, you know, remarketing perspective, um, where one screen really bridges that for us very well. And we love it. We love it because our brands love it.

Our brands are audience focused. They're typically non-participants, they haven't done out of home before. They're not particularly in love with one format or another. They just want to reach the audience with measurements so that they can optimize for, for outcome. What's next on the roadmap for venue acts.

I think you just, you just added some, uh, some new facilities, some baseball facilities. What's uh, what does it look like over the next 12 months? Uh, partnership, uh, growing with frozen rubs baseball. Um, they're one of the premier baseball training facilities in the country. Uh, They've got 10 locations nationwide.

And, um, we're going to be connecting screens, uh, into those facilities and growing with them. We're real excited about that. Um, where our network's growing in the New York DMA, uh, in the, in the Boston DMA, I'd say, you know, we've, there, there are certainly some places we still want to track down. Um, but, uh, for the most part.

We're pretty well saturated up here and he's, he's being humble. They own it. They own it. If you're trying to reach that audience period, it's probably in new England. If you're trying to reach that audience specifically in new England, there's only one way to do it and it's venue ex that's. Right. I appreciate that.

Um, so we're, we're focused on, um, really, you know, one of the silver linings of this COVID pandemic has been. Having to come off the road and focus on processes that could have, or how to improve them. Uh, so by my business partner, mark has done some really excellent work to streamline. How could we remotely connect to a venue?

And he's built some training, videos and documents and, uh, streamline that process where we can drop. Devices to folks, um, that we hadn't been doing that before, because for us, the relationship side of things was so important, um, that I mark and I want to be out there in front of the venue owner, literally put up the screen, show them how to, how to do it when, when that option was taken off the table.

Um, mark did some awesome stuff and, you know, building out a way that we can simplify getting. A screen hooked up there and plant a flag. And then when we get there, we get there or shipping them all at one time. And. Uh, I'll tell you it's that we're excited. We've got, um, a couple of things that, um, are in the works that we're super excited about from a new venue perspective.

But, uh, what I'll say is we're, we're starting to plant flags, uh, all over the New York DMA. Um, we're starting to move outside of new England, which is exciting to us and, uh, You know, I think partnerships with folks like you guys at one screen and, um, David Weinfeld, Natta Malone and screen verse. Um, really just seeing everything come together, um, for a place-based media owner, like we are, um, We're starting to get more aggressive now, right.

Coming out of the pandemic. It's like we're out of the corner. We're throwing punches again, where we're hooking up screens on a weekly basis. Um, and our vision is really to go Boston, New York and then kind of take a tactical pause and analyze and think where, um, where the next DMA to hit is. You know, that could be Philadelphia.

I'm not, I'm not positive. What's asked in New York right now, but, um, new York's in our cross hairs. Sure. Well, we're going to have to do a, up to this and talk about all that. When it comes online, what's something that you learned during COVID, uh, that you never thought you would learn? Um, that's a good question.

Um, we, we got creative, uh, during COVID, I mean, We're building landing pages for people that don't have, uh, websites to advertise on our network. Uh, we have done a lot, uh, learn quite a bit, uh, from the guys over at Centro on, um, you know, remarketing and. Trying to provide a solution. What we had to do, uh, Bailey was providing more solutions to the advertisers that than we typically needed to.

Right. Because a lot of the folks that we work with, um, and it's really speaks to the democratization of buying out a home, you know, through a tool, a bicycle like billboards or something like that. Um, There are regional brands that aren't yet big enough for an agency. You know, they don't have the money to, um, spend month to month on an agency, but they understand they've, they've done campaigns with agencies, so they get what they should be buying.

And if they want this audience, they want to buy, let's say, 20 of our facilities, you know, put up banners, go on the screens. They know that they should be remarketing to a location-based audience, but they don't maybe know exactly how to do it themselves. So we had to figure out a way to provide that without bringing an agency.

And that's going to give them a big bill sure. To get, get some deals done. And, um, you know, I think it was, uh, it's not a long-term thing, but it was, you know, something that we had to do to be flexible. And I think it provided us a lot. Uh, really good insights into what the needs wants. Um, demands of the advertiser is like of the brand.

How do they need to see this on the backend? How does this, how does our network relate with a bigger campaign and a. That, that was a huge learning experience. One that we did not expect to, uh, get into prior to COVID, uh, we've done everything from build somebody, a website that they didn't have one, you know, like the quote unquote Joe's pizzas or the web, uh, build them a website so we could send the ad, could send somebody somewhere.

Um, so it's, it's been, uh, a real good test. Uh, two. See how flexible we are. See how, um, agile. It makes sense, is that adapt and overcome attitude. Uh, Brian, thank you for your service, Brian, like myself, once upon a time, we, uh, we spent some time in the Marine Corps. So I guess that's, that's a problem, you know, if, uh, if there's a problem yet we can solve it.

Uh, and, and you put a couple of jar heads on out of home. We might figure a thing or two out absolutely minimum. We have that. You know, the old Marine Corps term violence of action. I mean, we, uh, we, we came like a bat out of hell, uh, driving around on new England, slapping screens up everywhere. And we're, we're looking forward to, as this backseat takes, hold, uh, you know, getting out there and doing the same thing, um, just being, you know, brilliant at the basics, so to speak, um, is something that we pride ourselves.

And, uh, just swinging that ax every day. I mean, where we're hitting the road and, um, getting things done and, and grow in the network. I think that's the key, the key takeaway that we've gotten from, uh, the COVID aside from, okay. Yep. We were agile. We, you know, we, we ran some campaigns, you know, with some great partners like Centro and, you know, We've learned a lot for sure.

And now we say, all right, what is, what is our fundamental, you know, what's the number one thing we need to keep doing. And, and for us, that's growing the network, you know, that's getting more of this audience under our umbrella. Um, and that's, that's what we're really focused on is grow, grow, grow, and, um, be able to provide, uh, an easy connection to that audience through partnerships like ours with one.

Absolutely. If I said former Marines, you know, for the creeks out there once a Marine, always Marine, but you know, they wouldn't let us have beers. The nice things like this, that's still active duty. That's all the distinction is brighter. You, a podcast guy, you a reader. What do you do? Where do you go for motivation, inspiration education, you know?

Oh, H insider's always my first stop. Um, but, uh, um, I'm definitely, you know, a game changer for me was, um, Downloading audible on my phone. So I've always got a book going on audible. Um, I'm a big podcast guy. Uh, you know, I'm, I'm listening from everything from, from your show to, um, Rogan Lex Friedman your name.

Love Lex Friedman. I don't know anything about AI. That's why I listened to Lex Friedman. Um, it's fascinating stuff. And you know, the, the books actually I'm reading it or listening. I say, reading this sound smarter saying I've read 117 deaths this year. Yeah. I only listened to books now, but, um, I'm listening to a great book called atomic habits.

And, um, you know, get getting into that and I've always got one of those going. And, um, I think, I think that that piece is important. You know, I, I like, I like listening to podcasts. Um, you know, one of the things that's really interesting about the O H insiders is hearing things from people that are in the industry like Craig Brenner.

And, uh, I've been fortunate enough to, to meet Craig before. You know that to really hear him take a deep dive on what he's thinking, what decisions he's making, how he sees the industry going. I think it's so important to follow your own industry, but also, you know, hop out and listen to some other things too, that, that, um, you know, might give you an idea too, or at least help you frame things in a different way.

And we're, we're constantly, uh, trying to improve ourselves, um, and our knowledge base. Today, Brian, where to folks connect with you where they learn more about venue ex tell people, uh, what's your Latin lawns. Yeah, I'm on a I'm on LinkedIn, you know, certainly feel free to, uh, send me a connection. Um, I'm open there and, um, then you expedia.com is our website and you can download our media kit and learn, learn a little bit more about the network, uh, on our website.

But, uh, LinkedIn is where you can connect with me personally, for sure. And, um, I'm not, not super active on there, but you know, we try to put out an update every so often on, on what's going on with the venues. And, um, it's, uh, easy, easy to find me on there and easy to, uh, get the venue X media.com. Easy enough.

We'll make sure to link out to everything below Brian. Thanks so much for. Hey, thank you so much. I really, really an honor to be on the show. Absolutely. It's an honor to have you, sir. If you are listening to this and you found it to be helpful, please share with somebody else who could benefit only 30% of you are subscribed.

So make sure to smash that subscribe button down below in the corner and we'll see y'all next time I finally came to my senses. I finally got my hand up on the tinted. And my lenses with the dream and the drive, the possibilities, endless friends that send this all the way to Tokyo. Take a trip down south van in Mexico.

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