Amy Maxwell - Ticketing

This week we sit down with Amy Maxwell, the trailblazing force behind Ticket Tomato, for an in-depth conversation that's as ripe and juicy as the company's namesake. Amy's personal crusade for a better way of event ticketing has reshaped the landscape for festival-goers and event organizers alike, bringing affordable and accessible ticketing solutions to the forefront. Throughout our talk, she shares the triumphs and trials of her transition from event coordination to leading a mini revolution in the ticketing world, offering a glimpse into the creative synergy between her work with musicians and programmers that fuels her vision.

This episode isn't just about buying and selling tickets—it's a narrative on the transformative power of technology in event management and the human connections that keep it grounded. Amy takes us back to the days of pioneering palm pilots for ticket scanning, reflecting on the deep trust between her and festival founders that laid the groundwork for success. We pull back the curtain on the intricate dance of tackling ticket fraud and cyber threats, where Amy's expertise shines in devising strategic defenses and maintaining the crucial element of live customer service amidst an automated industry. For anyone who's ever tapped their foot to a festival beat or scanned a QR code, this conversation is a testament to the innovative spirit that keeps the music playing.

As we wrap up, the spotlight shines on the unsung heroes of the ticketing saga—collaboration and education. Amy champions the cause of small event organizers, illuminating how Ticket Tomato empowers them to master promotion and ticket management, no matter the size of their stage. Peering into the crystal ball of industry trends, she advocates for transparent pricing and the paramount importance of customer satisfaction. So tune in as Amy's stories of resilience and her dedication to crafting temporary communities will inspire you long after the final encore.

Follow OHTD on Facebook!
Follow OHTD on IG!

Jon Stone's consulting practice

Episode Transcript

Amy (00:00):
This is Amy Maxwell and you're listening to One Hour To
Doors.

Jon (00:09):
This is One Hour Two Doors, a podcast about the business
and soul of the festivals andevents industry.
I am your host, Jon Stone.
Every episode of One Hour ToDoors explores the people,
issues, insights and trendsimpacting the enterprise of
bringing people and communitiestogether in common cause.

(00:30):
Our guest today is Amy Maxwell.
Amy is the founder andpresident of Ticket Tomato, an
online ticketing company thatalso provides promotion, box
office management and get thisreal customer service.
Based in Portland, Oregon,ticket Tomato has steadily grown

(00:50):
to serve events throughout thePacific Northwest.
During a time when otherindependent ticketing firms have
been struggling Within theevents industry, amy and her
team have earned a reputation asthe antidote for the challenges
often associated with the giantcorporate ticketing agencies.
Welcome to the show, amy.

Amy (01:10):
Thank you for having me.

Jon (01:12):
My pleasure.
I know you're in Portland.
Are you originally from thePortland area?

Amy (01:16):
I'm originally from Vancouver, Washington, so I'm a
Washington girl at heart andwent to school in Bellingham and
, you know, loved the PacificNorthwest West Coast and after
college transplanted to Portland.
So growing up I spent a lot oftime in Portland because that

(01:36):
was where a lot of events andfun things were happening.
So I'm kind of, I'd say, dual.

Jon (01:45):
Dual citizenship.

Amy (01:46):
Yeah, dual citizenship, residency, something like that,
yeah.

Jon (01:51):
I only know you through the Ticket Tomato context, but what
was your career backgroundprior to Ticket Tomato?

Amy (01:58):
This actually plays into how Ticket Tomato got started.
Very early on was an eventcoordinator and worked at
Nordstrom and did the corporatething and, you know, loved my
job and everything but hadalways had a passion to be in
music, entertainment, movies,you know, all of that fun stuff.

(02:19):
I always kind of gravitatedtowards it and I met my
ex-husband, who is a musicianthrough my work at Nordstrom and
I quickly left to work with himto help him build a music
production company and so Iintegrated into the industry
through music and took my eventbackground and my degree in PR

(02:44):
and marketing and used it tobecome a manager, road manager,
producer, you know.
So I got to kind of mesh mylove for arts and entertainment,
music and nonprofits and all ofthat type of stuff in the music
world and so I did that for inthe music world and so I did

(03:11):
that for 18 years total.
And yeah, and Ticket Tomatoactually was born out of the
fact that in around 2007, I wasproducing quite a few events and
partnering with vineyards andother venues, clubs and
different things, and theoutlets that were available were
very few and far between andexpensive.
So you know, using Ticketmasterwas expensive and so not all of

(03:35):
our clients could use thatentity.
And the dot-com thing hadhappened.
And you know, the two of uswere talking and I said, you
know, I think there's somethingto this there.
I think the dot com bubble wasjust ahead of its time and so we
decided together and reallywith his urging to, hey, why

(03:59):
don't we explore this and let'sbuild something for our
production company website, andI was like okay, and so we
started doing that.
And as soon as we started doingthat and it was crazy because
it was at a time when nobodyreally knew about programmers
and like that environment and Iremember the first group that we

(04:20):
went to was the sterile officewith all these guys on with
headphones on and they're attheir computers, you know, doing
their thing.
And I was like, wow, this islike being in a studio with
musicians and engineers, butjust a whole other industry.
And it's interesting becausethe programmers have very

(04:41):
similar characteristics tomusicians they're quirky,
they're unpredictable, they'reemotional, they work odd hours,
I mean.
So I fit in great because Iworked with musicians all the
time.
So I just kind of transitionedthat and we started building the
platform and then a lot of ourfriends started coming to us

(05:02):
saying hey, we heard you'redoing this, can we use it?
And so at about that time Isaid you know, we should turn
this into a standalone DBA ofour production company, because
other people want to use it.
If it's just on our website,then other people can't use it.
And so that's what we did.
And we had a name in thebeginning that I really didn't

(05:24):
care for.
It was Tickets Oregon, becauseI'm like it's the internet, like
it can go way beyond Oregon,and I felt like it was branding
us too close.
And so at the same time,there's a band called Pink
Martini and they are they were,you know, still are Thomas is a
friend of mine and theirbusiness manager came to us and

(05:45):
said hey, we were, you know,still are, thomas is a friend of
mine and their business managercame to us and said hey, we
heard what you're doing, youknow, can we use it?
And so then we got this idea ofwell, why don't we brand it to
whatever project you're using,you guys can use it on your
website, It'll be our engine,it'll work through all of our
stuff.
And they thought that that wasgreat.
So they were releasing Hang On,little Tomato.

(06:07):
And so we built this platformand the skin and everything for
it and they were all excitedabout it.
And then they started toapproach venues and entities
about using it and got shut downreal quick because the other
larger entity was, you know, acompany that was doing a lot of

(06:28):
their shows and it wasn't goingto fly, and so we shelved the
skins and that whole platformand we're like, well, maybe
we'll do something with it Alittle bit later.
I was talking to the marketingfirm that did all of our designs
and graphics and everything,and I was sharing with them
about how I really wasstruggling with the name and I

(06:50):
just felt like we needed tochange it.
And they said, well, you know,we still have that Ticket,
tomato scan and platform.
What if we pull that out, do alittle quick focus group and see
if it flies?
And so we did.
We did this really kind ofinformal focus group and it was
funny because everybody, whenthey heard the name, they
giggled and when they said whatit reminded them of was summer

(07:14):
concerts, festivals, picnics,family fun, outdoor, and I'm
like that's what we're all about.
And so we basically took it andthat's how the name changed and
we kind of went from there andit stuck.
And it's fascinating because Iwas in a new area this last
weekend and we were sharing withpeople hey, this is going to

(07:36):
show up on your credit cardstatement as Ticket Tomato.
And as soon as you say that,all these people, they would
just giggle and they'd be like,oh my God, that's so funny.
Thanks for telling me.
I'm never going to forget thatbecause it has it's this quirky
name that makes sense, but itkind of doesn't.
So that's how it was born.
In 2016, my ex-husband and Iparted ways and he has the music

(08:01):
production company and I havethe ticketing company, so it
became its own standalonebusiness in 2016.
And so I've been able to, youknow, kind of move forward with
it and kind of build it in adirection that I hadn't been
able to before, because it waspart of a conglomerate of things

(08:23):
that we were doing.

Jon (08:25):
That's a great story.
I mean, with the benefit ofhindsight, we can look back on
that.
In my opinion, you dideverything right and the timing
was right too 2007,.
The timing was just perfect.
If you would have tried thatidea five years earlier,
probably wouldn't have worked.
If you would have tried it fiveyears later might have missed

(08:46):
the boat.

Amy (08:47):
But you got that started at exactly the right time.

Jon (08:52):
Say more.
You said focus group.
Say more about how did you runthe focus group.
Did you hire a firm or did youjust do it yourself?

Amy (08:59):
We did it ourselves with the marketing firm that we
worked with and, like I said, itwas informal and we just kind
of got some people together andthrew some questions out.
And some of them were friendsand some of them were colleagues
of theirs.
It wasn't anything reallyserious because at that time it

(09:22):
was like, well, let's just throwit against the wall like
spaghetti and see if it sticks,and that was kind of how we did
it with all of it, like buildingit and everything.
A lot of it came from mybackground as the event producer
, the person that would executestuff on the ground, the person

(09:46):
that would execute stuff on theground.
That is one thing that hasalways been a big factor with us
is that we really like to takeinto consideration the whole
aspect of what ticketing is.
As you mentioned about us isthat we provide box office
management stuff on site, andthat is such an important role
in executing an event.

(10:07):
It's an important revenuestream and all these different
things, and so we've reallybuilt it based off of the things
that I've needed and then now,years later, we're doing things
that our clients need.
So people will come to me andthey'll say, hey, can you guys
do this and I'm like well, tellme a little more why you need

(10:27):
that and they'll, you know,share with me what their
perspective is.
I'll take a look at it and I'mlike you know what?
This is great.
A lot of people could use this.
Let's build it.
So I'll literally buildsomething based off of a
conversation that I've had witha client or maybe a need that
they have to have, and that'sanother thing that makes us so

(10:47):
different is that we have theability to kind of be more flex
and turn on a dime, whereas witha larger corporation that can't
happen.
Making something happen likethat for a client would take a
lot longer and it would betougher, or maybe they wouldn't
even consider doing it.
So the best ideas we get arefrom our clients and actually

(11:09):
being on the ground at eventstoo, so we'll see things happen.
And the people who work with methe crew on site or whatever
always are communicating with me.
My girls in the office arealways taking notes and sharing
things with me like, hey, whatif we did this?
And I want it to be reallycollaborative, because I don't

(11:29):
want to be the smartest personin the room and I don't have all
the answers.

Jon (11:33):
I was going to ask you who your original target market was
or what your idea about that was, but it sounds to me like
you're saying your originaltarget market was yourself and
what your needs were.

Amy (11:47):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
But there's a but there.
Music and music festivals andconcerts and all that stuff
because that's been such a hugepart of my life, I tend to favor
those events a little more.
I tend to put myself out therefor those events a little more.
Just because that's my tribeBlues, jazz, r&b, soul, funk,

(12:13):
americana, bluegrass, all of itI love it.
I've been really really luckyto have some amazing creative
people in my life over the yearsand so, yeah, I have a real
soft spot for the music side ofthings and that's really what
propelled us.
We have done quite a few musicfestivals throughout the years.

(12:36):
We've been working withWinthrop Rhythm and Blues
Festival for 10 years andthere's others.
We actually just re-signed onwith the Mount Hood Jazz
Festival.
They brought it back last yearand you know they have a new
music director out at thecollege and so they're kind of
reinventing it as aneducation-based festival.

(12:58):
And, yeah, and back in the dayI was at the festival with the
artists.
I had different artistsperforming and I was on the
board for a while when it was inkind of its heyday.
So I tend to lean more towardsmusic.

Jon (13:14):
I can imagine in the early years there were a lot of
challenges just in competingwith the ticketing giants in
terms of getting access toclients and so forth.
What other kind of hurdles didyou experience particularly in
the early years?
Any technology hurdles orthings like that?

Amy (13:32):
Oh yeah, I mean, there was stuff that just wasn't tried and
true.
Our first client was WaterfrontBlues Festival.
Oh really, yeah, Peter Dammanand Clay Fuller gave us the
opportunity and they had beenusing Tickets West and it wasn't

(13:53):
working for them in the senseof the way that the platform at
that time was set up, was itwasn't in real time.
And, and this is the irony ofit is that when I was on the
board of the Mount Hood JazzFestival, I was put in charge of
ticketing because I was theonly person that could read
ticketing reports and I alsoknew how to set up the ingress,

(14:13):
egress for the ticket booth andkind of it just came naturally
to me.
And so Peter came to me and he'she said, you know, we literally
were building it.
And he's like, can you havethis ready by April?
And I said, excuse me, and I'mlike, why?
And he's like we want to use itfor Blues Fest.
And I'm like, seriously, and weticketed their specialty passes

(14:38):
.
That was the first thing, butit was our very first gig and I
remember looking at him goingcan we do a baby gig?
And he's like, oh no, there'sno reason for that.
And I'm like, are you serious?
And so we did the event and weliterally processed $150,000 in

(14:59):
specialty passes.

Jon (15:01):
So, for the edification of the listeners, Portland Blues
Festival is an urban outdoorfestival that takes place in a
park, and what that means isthat all of your ticketing, your
admission system, everythinghas to be built from scratch in
a remote environment, andespecially in this time.
What was your first year withBlues Fest?

Amy (15:23):
2007.

Jon (15:24):
So 2007,?
That from a technology, aconnectivity perspective.
That was a feat.
It was that was not easy atthat time to do something.
So that's why I say I'mintrigued.
That was a very bold move foryou to say, yeah, we'll do that.
I mean, you could have fallendown pretty hard.

Amy (15:44):
Oh, I was white knuckling it the whole entire time.

Jon (15:48):
And.

Amy (15:49):
I, I had our programmers on speed dial and it was.
We were down at the waterfrontpark and overseeing everything
and I'm like, oh, please, justwork, please just work, Right,
you know.
And and then it was likeproblem solving.
It was like beforehand okay,how are we going to scan all of
these people in?

(16:09):
How are we going to check them?
And now there's wirelessscanners and there's stuff that
we do on iPhones and there's,you know, all of this technology
that was not there.

Jon (16:20):
None of that existed when you were doing it.
No, no.

Amy (16:23):
Yeah, it was like super scrappy, like where I was
looking for the next best thing,and it was Patrick, my
ex-husband and I, both togetherand he also in credit to him
he's also very much a techjunkie with the recording and
all that other stuff.
So I remember our firstscanners were these little palm

(16:44):
pilots, you know.
So they had the little stylusand everything and they worked
great.
But it was like and everybody'slooking at them, they're like
what are these?
And like how do we use them?
And like you have to train thevolunteers.
I mean, I look back on it nowand I'm like how in the world
did we make that happen?
But it worked.

(17:04):
And so we continued working, youknow, with Blues Fest for a
number of years and really thatfestival and Clay and Peter are
what helped us build the companyand a lot of the technology was
based off of what we were doingfor that festival.
And then we started acquiringother festivals and, you know,

(17:26):
meeting different people andstuff, and it just kind of had
its evolution.
But I really do credit Clay andPeter for us being what we are
today and I really appreciatedtheir mentorship and then also
them believing in me andtrusting myself and my
ex-husband and the people thatworked with us at the time,

(17:48):
because that was a lot ofresponsibility to put off on us,
and so there had to be a goodamount of trust and
collaboration and communication,and I really enjoyed partnering
with them both over the years.

Jon (18:02):
Yeah, understood, I'm just.
This little tidbit ofbackground information here has
just entirely changed myperception of you.
Now I know that you are a bigtime risk taker and I think
that's awesome.
That's just badass.
I can't.
Having gone through theevolution of the ticketing world
myself around that same timeframe, I get it.

(18:25):
It's like wow, that's badass.

Amy (18:29):
And it worked.
Yeah, it did work.

Jon (18:31):
That's the icing on the cake is like it actually worked
Wow.

Amy (18:33):
Yeah, and the other aspect of it too, which I'm really
proud of, is that we have notinfused venture capital into the
company.
You know, you look at some ofthese other companies and I've
watched them come on the sceneand they've had massive amounts
of venture capital that has beeninfused in it and they all come

(18:55):
and go.
Yeah, and they.
You know, and I've seen therise and fall of you know
different companies.
You know brown paper ticketswas right behind us, we were
kind of in line at the same time.
And you know differentcompanies.
You know brown paper ticketswas right behind us, we were
kind of in line at the same timeand, you know, always friendly
competition and of course theywere based in Washington and
stuff like that watched whatthey did and they had a huge

(19:16):
fall during COVID and are barelyhanging on and were bought by
eventscom and there was somestuff that happened that you
know was kind of devastating andyeah, so it's, it's, you know,
kind of watching all of thathappen.
So part of the reason why I havenot taken on the VC capital is

(19:37):
because I've wanted to maintainthe integrity of the company and
to be able to do the thingsthat are important.
And, just like you said aboutus, that we actually have live
people that answer the phones.
And the thing that cracks me upis I don't know if you've
noticed, but there are a lot ofmajor companies now that are

(19:59):
advertising that they have livepeople that answers the phones
and, like during Superbowl, thatthey have live people that
answers the phones and likeduring the Superbowl Discover
card is one of them.
That was their whole commercialand you know, and I just have
maintained that the whole entiretime, and whereas a lot of
other companies have wanted tomove towards live chats and bots

(20:21):
and email and they'd pull awayfrom that person to person
contact, and I'm just like howcan you do that in this, Because
there's so much gray area inevents and no platform can cover
the gray area, and that's wherethe people are.

Jon (20:37):
Important is to kind of shift through all of that
Exactly, but that's become sucha difficult concept.
It's such an old concept.
The good news is, I think, it'sbecoming new again.

Amy (20:47):
Again yeah.

Jon (20:48):
Yeah, people are discovering.
People are inventing livecustomer service, as if they've
just invented fire or somethinglike that.

Amy (20:58):
That's totally true.

Jon (21:00):
I volunteer with a nonprofit that works with young
people 14 to 25 years old, andit always cracks me up.
The younger people areexpressing their frustration
with can't get a return email ornon-responsive text or whatever
, and I'll say, would you evertry picking up the phone?

(21:20):
And they're like what?
No, why would I do that, butwhen I push them hard enough and
they actually do, surprise,surprise, like magical things
happen when you just pick up thephone and talk with somebody.
But there's such an aversion,and not even amongst young
people, I mean amongst oursociety as a whole.
We've grown to all but shun theidea of the telephone call.

Amy (21:47):
So here's an interesting little tidbit of information.
During COVID, we were facedwith a number of refunds and
things that we had to do, likewe were shifting and changing
constantly, and after aboutthree months, we kind of knew
like, okay, this is not going toget over anytime soon and so we

(22:09):
need to have a plan B.
Well, the way that processinghas been set up, and especially
online, is that you have 180days to do a refund to people,
like where you go in and youpush a button and it sends the
refund and does everythingautomatically.
Well, all of a sudden, we go totry to push the buttons and the

(22:34):
buttons aren't being pushed,and we had to set up a virtual
terminal.
We had to physically call andemail every single person for
their refunds, and it took us ayear and a half to do all of the
refunds.
Yeah, however, in the process,what that enabled us to do is to

(22:56):
talk and reach out to thepeople and say to them hey,
would you be interested indonating this back to such and
such festival Because it's goingto help them?
You know, stay afloat.
Or they're going to donate somemoney to the musicians who lost
their gig, or you know whatever.
So, like with Winthrop Rhythmand Blues Festival I believe it

(23:17):
was $25,000 that we got returnedto go to the festival because
we physically spoke to thepeople on the phone and we could
explain to them.
You know what was happening,and so it was.
It was fascinating.
We had no other option but tocall people and to do it because

(23:37):
of the way that the processingwas set up.

Jon (23:40):
I want to share with you my greatest ticketing story
because I think, it'll lead tosome more discussion on your end
, and this revolves around theBumbershoot Festival and this
goes back through 2004.
It was always been a gatedticketed event.
But our tickets up through 2004, I believe, they didn't have a

(24:04):
barcode or anything like that.
It was just a regular oldticket serial number and that
was it, and they were printed onsecurity paper from a bonded
ticketing house and whatnot.
So they had.
They were kind of you know,state of the art as far as a
physical ticket goes at the time, but no barcode, simply because
nobody had ever thought that tobe important.

(24:25):
And even if it were, bumbershoottakes place at a 110-acre
campus and all the connectivitywould have to be brought in on a
temporary basis.
I think we had five gates atthe time and it just would have
been.
It would have cost a fortuneand taken forever, so we didn't
do it.
But hey, you know, everythingwas the festival was successful
anyway, so nobody thought aboutit.

(24:47):
I had gone down in 2004 tovisit Utah Arts Festival in Salt
Lake City, which is a fantasticfestival.
If anybody ever gets the chance, you should go to Utah Arts
Festival.
But they were showing me and itwas similar to Bumbershoot but
it was a smaller scale.
But that was the first time Iremember seeing a barcode on a

(25:08):
ticket and like a scan to enteran event kind of a thing.
They've showed me that not onlywas the scanning really
efficient as far as gettingpeople in, but they got some
meaningful data from thosetickets.
And I think the thing, as aproduction guy at the time, what
really caught my attention wasthey could tell how many people

(25:29):
were on grounds at any one timebecause the computers were
tracking ins, minus, outs, so onand so forth.
And for the BumbershootFestival, that was huge because
it was on a big day, we'd get50,000 people, and so crowd
management, public safety, thatwas huge because it was on a big
day, we'd get 50,000 people,and so crowd management, public
safety, that was important.
So all of a sudden I'm like,wow, through ticketing we can

(25:52):
get this real-time or nearreal-time attendance data.
That's cool.
And so I talked the team intoputting a barcode on the ticket.
I think it was 2004, 2005 thatwe did that.
And so first day of thefestival, first year with the
barcode tickets, and I'mstanding out at one of the main
gates, worried that this thing'snot going to work, because we

(26:12):
had to.
It took us a week to stringcable through trees and over
buildings and it was just acompletely patched together DIY
kind of system, but it's like,crossed our fingers and this
should work.
Hopefully it won't rain andshort everything out, and so the
gates opened.
At 11 o'clock, people startedcoming in and the system was
working Big Palm Pilot things,just like you said.

Amy (26:34):
Yeah.

Jon (26:36):
And then there were all of a sudden there was a problem.
There were all of a suddenthere was a problem.
There was like a series oftickets all of a sudden were
rejecting like duplicate ticketor already entered or something
like that.
And so we were there, the teamwas there, the tech guys were
there looking at us like eh,don't know, but yeah, come on in
, come on in, just keep it going.
And then the problem went away.

(26:57):
So we figured, eh, it must besome kind of little glitch, it
must be some kind of littleglitch.
And then about 15 minutes wentby and all of a sudden here
comes these strings ofrejections again.
That didn't make any sense,lasted for about five minutes
and then everything went back tonormal.
And this kept happening likeabout every 15 minutes and we

(27:17):
were all scratching our headstrying to figure out what
exactly was going on here.
And we were all scratching ourheads trying to figure out what
exactly was going on here andthen I noticed that right across
the street from the gate was ametro bus stop and we had at
that time we had shuttle busesrunning from a park and ride
coming to drop off outside thatgate, and that's when I noticed

(27:37):
that it was the people gettingdropped off of the shuttles
every 15 minutes.
That's where the rejectionswere coming from.
And so it's like, okay, this isreally weird, but this is some
kind of clue, let's look alittle closer at this.
And so the next bus would comeand the people would get off and
it's like reject, reject,reject.
And we're looking at it like Isay these were security tickets.
I mean, clearly they were realtickets.

(27:58):
We kept thinking there must besomething wrong in the database
or something like that.
And then at one point we justasked somebody and we're like
where did you get this ticket?
Like what outlet did you getthis ticket from?
And they said we got it at theadvance ticket sale booth at the
park and ride at the mall.
And that's when I was going tosay the light bulb went off.

(28:24):
But it was more like a horrificlightning strike because we
didn't have an advanced ticketsale booth at the park and ride.

Amy (28:31):
Didn't exist, and so we kept asking people.

Jon (28:34):
It's like where'd you get this ticket?
Oh, we got it at the advancedticket sale booth at the park
and ride.
Very quickly we had a staffmember go out with a Seattle
police officer plainclothes,went up to the park and ride and
, sure enough, there was aillegitimate counterfeit ticket
booth.
It had all the Bumper Festivalbranding on it, the staff were

(28:55):
wearing festival shirts and theywere half-priced tickets.
So that was what they said buyhere at the park and ride, save
50%.
What?

Amy (29:04):
a bargain right.
Why wouldn't you pick those up?

Jon (29:08):
And they were all fake.
And that's when we noticed theyall had the same barcode.
Barcode so they had gotten ahold of one legitimate ticket
and copied them.
And the kicker was, what wasreally throwing us off still at
that time was that it appearedto be the legitimate security
stock.
This is a separate issue, but wefound out eventually through
the investigation that ourticket stock was shipped via DHL

(29:32):
.
The printer was in Georgia orsomething like that.
There was a crew, a DHL crewthat was routinely breaking into
and pulling out a brick oflarge ticket orders for large
festivals, thinking that nobodywould notice and we didn't
notice.
And so that's how they weredoing this.

(29:53):
They were legitimate,physically legitimate tickets.
They just were fraudulent interms of the barcode.
And they had I think they hadlike 10,000 units or something
there when the police arrestedthem and in that moment I
realized I mean, it was easy tocalculate how much money we had

(30:14):
just lost that morning on thefirst day of show, but we have
no idea how far back in timethat was going and the loss to
the festival over the yearshypothetically could have been
millions of dollars, millions ofdollars, and we had no idea
that was going on.
And so switching to a barcodedticket entry system not only

(30:37):
revealed that, but it fixed that, it changed everything.

Amy (30:40):
Yeah, the impact is profound.
You know the funny thing I heardabout all of this.
I heard about it through thegrapevine and music and
festivals and all of that stuff.
I remember specifically hearingthis very story and I was like
no way that's, that's crazy, youknow, and I was like no way

(31:00):
that's crazy.
But then at the time I was onboards for different festivals
and things and it was an issuefor everybody.
I mean, it was that whole thing.
And counterfeit tickets, I meanscalping has been going on
forever, right Forever.
And a day, right Forever in aday, and you know, somebody on

(31:24):
the inside will pull sometickets and sell them to
somebody on the outside and thenthey're out there selling them.

Jon (31:27):
I mean that's one thing.

Amy (31:30):
But the way that this has all evolved and when you think
about it, right with the papertickets and over the years, and
who knows how long they've beendoing that advanced ticket sale
booth I mean it's reallyinteresting.
Now the fascinating thing ofthis is how it's evolved into

(31:50):
the industry itself.
You know the secondaryticketing sites that are out
there now and stuff is poppingup all over the place.
I mean the fascinating thing tome is ticketing companies are
popping up all over the place.
I mean just the other day I wasmeeting with a client and
they're like hey, have you heardabout this company?
They contacted me and I'm likeNope, there's a new one there.

(32:11):
I think there's thisfascination with it and I think
there's people that want to likeget into the business and and
create something and it's goingto be better than everything
else, and and they also want tostamp out the bad stuff that
goes on, and and they find quitequickly that it's hard to do.
There's so many things that I'mhaving to look at now for

(32:35):
security whether it's thescalping.
So we did a show with Alabamalast summer.
It was a reserve seating dealat the LB day amphitheater and
you know we're every ticket hasa section, a row, a seat, it's
color coded, it's all thesedifferent things.
And I had these people comingup to me and they're like I have

(32:57):
these tickets, I bought it offof a resale site.
And I looked at them and I'mkind of like these tickets.
I bought it off of a resalesite and I looked at them and
I'm kind of like, because theythe barcodes weren't scanning
and everything I'm like, well,these don't look like our
tickets, so that's a problem.
And I looked at them closer andI said do you see that these
have a section in a row but noseat number?
And they go what?

(33:18):
And I said, yeah, I mean, youlook right here.
It says section C, row, youknow Y, but no number.
And I said these are fake.
And sure enough, we did a searchand we had a handful of them
come in and what we ended updoing was we ended up giving
them comp tickets that weren'tused.

(33:39):
So we had, I think, maybe like10 tickets total that this
happened to, but these poorpeople paid triple the price.
And I said please go and chargethis back to your charge card
and let them know what happened.
And I said and then you need togo online and you need to
report this, and you need toreport this to the FBI and you

(34:02):
need to do these certain things.
I said, as long as you agree todo these things, we will just
give you the tickets, becausethat's the way that we're going
to kind of combat, you know, alot of this fraudulent activity,
but yeah, it's crazy the stuffthat is constantly popping up.

Jon (34:20):
I still, to this day, have one of those 2004 counterfeit
tickets.
I keep it just as a reminderand the only clue.
I've torn a corner off of itand even with this little red
security threads that are woveninto the fabric, it's perfectly
legitimate.
The only clue, the only visibleclue, was on the backside.
That year Starbucks was asponsor and so on the back of

(34:42):
the ticket it was a coupon for afree coffee beverage or
something like that, and theprinting for some reason, the
printing on that backside of theStarbucks coupon was a little
blurry.
It wasn't as crisp as it shouldbe.
But who would look at that?
Right, you're going to belooking at the front end of
things as another clue as to howbig of a business what we're

(35:06):
talking about is organized crime.

Amy (35:08):
Oh, absolutely.

Jon (35:09):
This is not a bunch of kids screwing around with.
No, this is big league.
It's a global thing.
And when we figured out thecounterfeit thing and
effectively shut that down atthe gate, you know what happened
next Ping flood attacks, orwhatever they're called.

(35:29):
I don't know if you've ever hadthat, but our servers were
connected to the Internet.
They do these ping floodattacks, a computer hacker trick
, where they would basicallyflood our ticketing servers with
bazillions of incoming thingsin an attempt to take our system

(35:50):
down, knowing that if oursystem was down then we couldn't
detect the counterfeit and wejust let those people in anyway.
And we had to deal with thatfor years, every day.
I mean, we had to build up, asif the expense of the system
wasn't enough already.
We had to bulk up on our ITteam and it was literally a real

(36:11):
time, like war was being waged,trying to take our servers down
to keep this fraud rolling.
It was just incredible.

Amy (36:20):
So those are now called DDoS attacks and we just had one
at the Oregon InternationalAuto Show a couple of weeks ago
and we had our first one a year,a little over a year ago.
Up until that point, never hadanything of that sort.

(36:42):
So really lucky all thingsconsidered, and my team has
always been really great withserver security and all of that
stuff, and so we always had thelatest.
But as stuff has progressed andas this has become more
widespread, so it's not justhappening in ticketing and
entertainment and stuff likethat it's happening to Nike,

(37:05):
it's happening to Starbucks,it's you know, it's.
It's kind of a warfare thatpeople and some of it is you've
got this bored younger personwho's really good with
technology and they decide toOoh, I'm going to go try to take
down Starbucks.
So there's a little bit of thatgoing on.
But there's also the organizedcrime of it.

(37:27):
So a year ago we had it and itwas insane.
It was the.
I never had experiencedanything like it before and we
were scrambling and we got itshut down.
But we realized that theparameters that we had, we
needed to fix it, and so afterthat event we built a firewall,

(37:49):
we instituted a DDoS attacksystem.
So like if we saw somethingcoming in we would flip certain
switches and it would, you know,shut it down, like where people
would have to say that theywere human, like a checkbox and
kind of like a captcha typething.
We moved our servers over toAmazon because there's more

(38:10):
security, more stability andmore depth in the sense of, you
know, we can kind of, if we gethit with something, we can kind
of shift and change more.
It costs us money, but thebandwidth and everything is
there at a greater space.
And so we put all of thesethings into place and as soon as
they came after us, you know,for the Oregon International

(38:34):
Auto Show, we just institutedall of our pieces and of the
puzzle, everything like went uplike we saw it coming in and we
were looking for it because weknew on certain events that like
this could happen.
And before we opened doors, youknow, at nine o'clock, I get a
call hey, we're under attack.

(38:56):
And literally we were.
Our servers were getting hit atover a thousand hits per second
.
We were, our servers weregetting hit at over a thousand
hits per second.

Jon (39:03):
Oh, yeah, yeah, usually, and they're going to do it right
before doors, too, or rightbefore your peak, whenever that
is.

Amy (39:08):
Exactly, yeah.
And so we just immediately andwe just saw it like fall off.
And all day through that daythey kept trying to come back at
us at different points and wewere monitoring it up until you
know late that night and thenthey finally gave up.
But it's crazy what people willdo out there, and people can

(39:31):
hire people to do this to otherpeople.
I mean I'm like, how do youtell somebody, oh, I operate
DDoS attacks?
It's crazy to me because I justcouldn't imagine doing that to
somebody, but it's a very realthing.
And so, with technology andstuff today and with AI coming

(39:54):
out, I mean, I know, when wewere at the WFEA, you know,
before chat GPT came out, myteam was showing me all of this
stuff and I'm like I'm excitedbut I'm frightened because all
the good stuff that they wereshowing me, they were also
showing me some of the bad stuffthat could happen, you know.
So you've got to keep it allbalanced and you have to keep

(40:14):
ahead of it.
And I remember hearing BillGates say something about how we
need to keep this technologymoving forward, because the good
people are going to stay aheadof the bad people and ultimately
we'll get things into placethat will kind of keep it at bay
.
And it's really unfortunatethat we, you know, have to do

(40:34):
that.
But there are reasons and youknow, like you said, organized
crime, where people were makinglots of money off of these
counterfeit tickets.
And it's just unfortunatebecause the whole thing is is
that legitimate people want togo to these events and they want
to have a good time, and it cankind of get ruined or an

(40:55):
organization like Bumper Shootcan get hurt, and so then it's
hard for them to keep movingforward, to keep doing these
things and keeping the eventgoing.
And that's the part that'sreally hard for me because it's
affecting a lot of people out ofselfishness.

Jon (41:11):
Yeah, and it's only going to keep getting worse because as
ticket prices increase, there'sjust more and more money to be
made and it's going to attractmore and more players to try to
steal a piece of that.
Eventually, we got a handle onit, ironically, by switching to
a smaller at the time upstartticketing provider.

(41:32):
We switched to Stranger Ticketsin Seattle.

Amy (41:36):
Oh yeah.

Jon (41:37):
At the time Tim Keck's company, and they were just all
in in trying to.
I think at the time we werelike their first major festival
client, so they wanted to dowell, you know.

Amy (41:51):
People are more tech savvy now and used to buying stuff
online.
And then, even during COVID,people's behaviors have changed
since then, where they you kindof had to do the stuff online.
There was going to events onlineand you know the streaming and
all of that type of stuff, andso zoom how that blossomed after

(42:13):
that, and so it's reallyinteresting because that has
really changed the platform.
It's made things easier from auser perspective.
More people are comfortablewith all of this stuff, but on
the back end you still have todo a lot of like what you were
talking about, where you have toshift and change and build and
protect and all this other stuff, because you never know when

(42:36):
something's going to come at you, and especially a high profile
event.
You know a larger event that'swell known and is out there.
That's where you know peopleare like I want a piece of that
or I want to go after thatbecause it's so big, whereas
with the smaller stuff you knowthey don't, which is why when
you move to a smaller ticketingcompany it was better, it was

(43:02):
better you have a ticketingcompany that can turn on a dime.
You know you don't have to gothrough a whole chain of people
and they're there and they're onsite, you know which is?

Jon (43:08):
They're actually there with you.
Here's another thing about.
I remember about making theswitch to a smaller, you know,
local ticketing company.
With that switch came theaccess to the data.
With that switch came theaccess to the data.
Now, when we were using thebigger corporate ticketing
companies, they held on to thatdata with an iron fist.

(43:29):
They'd give us access.
Yeah, we'd get, like you know,standard ticket reports.
You sold this many of this typeof tickets, but that was about
it, and it wasn't until I hadthe meeting with them and said
folks, it's been great, butwe're going to make a change and
we're going with these localguys and they didn't like that.
They didn't like that at all.

Amy (43:50):
And so they said tell you what.

Jon (43:52):
Stay with us and we'll you know, we'll drop our fees a
little bit and it's like we'regoing to go with the local guys
and it's kind of their lastoffer on the table.
They handed over the full dataset that they'd been collecting
on my festival's tickets and Icouldn't believe what I was
looking at.
It was like the complete storyof who my customers are like in

(44:18):
every way, shape and form thatyou can measure.
That I was astonished.
I had no idea.
I had no idea the kinds of datathey could collect and in the
moment they were I mean, theywere trying to persuade me.
What they did was they reallyticked me off?
It's like I we could have usedthat data all along to make our

(44:45):
festival healthier and happierand to improve our customer
experience.
So I I was like I couldn't evenbelieve that they've been just
holding on to that and notsharing.
So that was, they were tryingto save the deal.
That was actually the strawthat broke the camel's back
right there.
Yeah, no, it's just like screwyou, you know.

(45:07):
And then, through ourpartnership with the local
people, all of a sudden, it'slike, in a sense, suddenly we
really understood who ourcustomers were for the first
time, or at least in a, to alevel that we had never even
imagined possible.

Amy (45:21):
Oh, you know, that's one of the amazing things with having
access to so many differenttypes of, you know, ticketing
platforms and different things.
Now, and it's actually one ofthe pieces that was very
motivating in building.
You know, ticket Tomato washaving a real time dashboard

(45:43):
where everything was in realtime, like somebody would buy a
ticket and it pops up and all oftheir information populates
within the reports.
There's a seat report, whichyou know has all the pieces of
information, and then you couldgo in and we have a zip code
report so you can look at yourtop 10 zip codes but then even

(46:03):
all the other zip codes.
So, you know, there are somefestivals that we've done where,
all of a sudden, I'm looking ata zip code report and I'm like
hey, did you know how manypeople from Japan are coming to
this event?
You know, it's like we had noidea, we had a contingency from
Japan and so all of that stuffis so powerful.
I mean, it's powerful to helpwith grants, it's powerful to

(46:25):
help with how you program thefestival, what type of you know
food and beverage stuff you have.

Jon (46:32):
I mean it's.

Amy (46:34):
It is really yeah.
When you dig into the data youcan get a lot of information.
We understand about privacy sowe're very protective of
people's information.
All of our clients have to signoff.
They can't use that informationlike to personally solicit
unless those people agree thatthey want to receive more

(46:56):
information.
We also do not sell a singlepiece.
I mean I've had people approachme and ask to buy all of our
database and data and I refuse.
Refuse Because I appreciate thepeople who buy from us and I
appreciate the clients that wehave and I want to keep the
information that everybodyreceives.

(47:18):
It pertains to them.
Everybody receives, it pertainsto them.
If they want to go to a PDXJazz Festival show and we have a
database for that and we marketto them, I want them to get
that.
I don't want them to getsomething from a monster truck
show.
You know what I mean.
That's something that we'rereally protective with, but we
work in conjunction with ourclients, whereas with a lot of

(47:40):
larger corporations there's alot of stuff that they hold on
to and use it in different waysand do sell it, because it's a
revenue stream.

Jon (47:50):
Yeah, now, in a lot of ways , the data is more valuable than
the cost of the system in thefirst place.
With the Bumbershoot example,once we finally got a hold of
the complete data picture, itwas fascinating because at that
time I'm talking about thefestival was like 30, 35 years
old and there was all thisliterally multi-generational

(48:14):
wisdom that had been passed downwithin our organization.
Here's who our customers are.
You know, our customers areprimarily coming from these
neighborhoods and these citiesand just all these things.
It was just like we've beendoing this for decades.
We know what we're talkingabout.
But then when the actual datastarted coming in from ticketing
stuff, it's like no, no, a lotof that was inaccurate, to be

(48:38):
kind.
After watching four or five orsix years worth of data for the
same event and granted, this isat a time of enormous growth and
change in the Pacific Northwestregion to begin with, but we
would see we could literallywatch year to year those numbers
start to shift and change.
Our audience was changing noton a year to year basis, but

(49:01):
over three or four or five yearperiod.
Absolutely Not on ayear-to-year basis, but over a
three or four or five-yearperiod, absolutely.
Yeah, just the remorse ofrealizing all the opportunity
lost in the past by not havingthat kind of information.

Amy (49:16):
And having access to it.
You were working with anorganization that was collecting
it and it was there, but youdidn't have the ability to have
access to it.
There, but you didn't have theability to have access to it.
And that's the part that I loveis the collaboration.
Whenever we go back and we doan event, with a reoccurring
event with a client, we cancollaborate on it and discuss it
and talk about it, and we'vegot data to look at.

(49:37):
We just did the Big Horn Showoutdoor adventure show up in
Spokane and they have not had inthe past a real strong online
presence and collaboration witha good ticketing outlet.
Some of it they've done andbuilt on their own through a
Shopify thing and that didn'tquite work.

(49:58):
And it was fascinating becausethroughout the whole process, I
kept talking and meeting withthem and I said now here's how
we can shift people to moreonline business.
Here's what you can expect fornext year.
Here's what you can use thesereports for.
If you want to go after someLTAC grants, you know you you
should use this report for thisand this report for that.

(50:21):
And even just during the timethat we were up there, there was
a lot of collaboration going onand what it created was the
council that puts on this eventbecause it's a big fundraiser
for them.
They're excited for next yearbecause they feel like for the
first time in a long time, thatthey can understand how to grow

(50:42):
the event and how they can alsotighten up things so that people
aren't just walking in andtaking advantage and getting in
for free or they have a hugecontingency of cash that they
take and I'm like there's noreason that this should be
occurring.
You should have a more balancedapproach with this and move

(51:02):
more people to the onlineportion of it.
I think they're going to see atremendous amount of growth even
so much so, like I was pointingout to them, I said with this
data, you can look at how muchmore do you want to market to
Idaho?
Because they can pull peoplefrom Idaho to come to this event

(51:22):
in Spokane.
And they're like we've neverreally considered that and I'm
like, yeah, why are you justworking within this
circumference?
I said do some outreach andyou'll probably find more people
will travel and come spend theweekend in Spokane and, you know
, do different things.
And that's the stuff thatexcites me is when you know you

(51:45):
kind of open up opportunity forpeople and and that's also part
of who we are as a company webelieve in collaboration and
partnership.
We want to have long-termpartners.
We want to grow with our events.
We don't want to just have yoube a number and, oh, we make
money off of you and we sellthese tickets.
We, we actually want to helpyou do better.
So our tagline is we're aticket company that cares,

(52:08):
because we really do care.
We want you to be successful,because if the event's
successful, then we'resuccessful, so it's a win-win
for everybody, which is kind ofan odd thing in ticketing.
I mean a ticket company thatcares.
Usually the ticket companiesare the bad people.

Jon (52:26):
Yeah, so you and I understand the power of doing
ticketing in a particular way.
Do you think the averagesmaller mid-sized event promoter
, does everybody understand thatnow, or is there still a
learning curve going on?

Amy (52:43):
There's a really big learning curve going on.
Where I see this the most iswhen a lot of mid-sized to
smaller events hand over that toa volunteer and I'm like no, no
, no, no, no, no, no.
You have one person that comesin and kind of manages for a

(53:03):
short period of time, or youhave nothing but volunteers
operating this system andthere's a learning curve and
they don't know how to operateit.
And again, even if you're asmall to midsize, I mean, yeah,
you've got your big festivalswhere the ROI on the ticket
sales is big, but some of thesesmaller festivals or events,

(53:25):
they're solely dependent on theticket sales for most of their
revenue.
And you know, the rest of therevenue that they get from, like
booth sales, like if it's afood and wine event or something
you know goes to putting on theevent itself and the actual
fundraiser is the ticket.
That's how they propel theirnonprofit forward.
It's such an overwhelming pieceand it's a complex piece and

(53:49):
it's it's a piece where I thinkbecause as producers there's so
many other things that you'retrying to work on if you can
offload it on to somebody else,then they choose to do that, but
they're not realizing that,even though these volunteers are
very, they're doing it for theright reasons.

(54:11):
They want to, you know, helpthe organization and all the
other stuff.
They just don't have the righttools with it.
So, like one of the things thatwe're really good at doing is
we'll take an organization andwe'll say so.
We know that you operate off alot of volunteers.
How about you just have one ofus on site?
We bring all the gear up, wetrain your volunteers and then

(54:31):
we'd manage them so that we knowthat they're doing everything
right and if there's questionsabout ingress, egress we can
help them problem solve andstuff like that.
A lot of chambers you know, Ihave an event that I'm going to
tomorrow up in Kirkland and it'sthat very thing.
I go up and I help manage thevolunteers and train everybody

(54:52):
and we've had a really greatrelationship with them and all
of it's become more efficientand effective.
And that's half the reason whywe exist because it's easier for
larger festivals and things toinvest in a ticketing company
and a platform and gear and allthat stuff.
But these smaller events whereyou have 1200 people, 1500

(55:17):
people or 500 people, they don'thave that same ability and so
it's about helping them build afoundation and have access to
things that they normallycouldn't.
I mean, I can't tell you howmany people still, to this day,
smaller events do it by hand, orthey do it solely at the door

(55:39):
and I'm like no, no, no, no,that's not necessary, that's a
lot of work.
And people actually ask me thatthey're like oh well, our
event's too small.
And I said no, no event is toosmall.
We do retreats that are like 20people and we like it.

Jon (55:59):
You saw me just have a physical reaction to that last
statement, me just have aphysical reaction to that last
statement.
This is something that Ilearned through WFEA a long time
ago, when I started presentingtopics at conferences and
seminars and such it seemed likepretty much any time it didn't
really matter what I was talkingabout, but I'd share some
experience that I had, and somany people in the room

(56:22):
two-thirds of the people in theroom would say, yeah, I hear
what you're saying and that'sall great, but that's not really
relevant for us.
You see, we're a smaller eventor we're a rural event.
It's not really.
What you're talking about is bigtime, big city stuff, and that

(56:44):
is such a fallacy and I alwayssay it's like, if there's any
truth to that, it's only truthin this moment, because every
issue that the biggest eventswill ever face is eventually
going to trickle down to thesmallest event, whether you
believe it or not.

(57:04):
It may take 10 years before ittrickles down to your small
event, but it will trickle down.
I've seen that prediction playout countless times and, if
anything, I think that timelineis only speeding up as
technology.
The world's just getting fasterand faster.
But, there's still so much.

(57:25):
It's hard for me to understandthat mindset that, oh, we're too
small to be worried about X, Yor Z.

Amy (57:35):
It is and it's something I see that as my kind of my duty
to help educate, to put thatmyth aside for them and give
them time.
I mean I've had with throughWFEA.
I've had some really greatroundtable discussions.
You know, when I've hosted aroundtable at our conferences,

(57:56):
I've talked to people andthey'll say make comments like
that.
And I'm like no, no, no, Tellme what, what are you doing?
How are you doing it?
Why do you want to do it thatway?
And and let's talk about thisand cause, I want to encourage
them to do it.
I think some of it is based outof fear, because it feels
overwhelming, and they're likeoh no, if I go down this rabbit

(58:19):
hole, it's you know, it's goingto complicate my life.
So I think there's that.
The other thing that I havereally found out is that with a
lot of these smaller to midsizeevents is it's a very small
group of people that are puttingit on and where the
responsibility is on itsshoulders.
So you take a large festivallike Bumper Shoot right.

(58:39):
There's a team of people,there's an operations director,
there's a CEO, there's aproduction coordinator, there's
stage managers.

Jon (58:47):
You've got departments and such yeah exactly.
And then you take like thissmall little festival, that is,
you know, 15, a chamber, event,one or two people, that's it.

Amy (59:00):
Yeah, exactly yeah, that's exactly it.
Plus, they're doing otherthings and so then I try to say,
hey, we're here.
You know, if you need us, wecan plug into you and we can
help you and we can be aresource.
You know, one of the thingsthat I also love about how we
operate is so we do an eventcalled Fashion Next here in

(59:22):
Portland, which is a fashionevent.
That's like Fashion Week, and Iknow Seattle has some fashion
events and stuff and again, it'sa small group of people that
put it on and they're doing alot of different things.
They have a really unique way ofdoing promo codes.
They give all the models andall the boutiques that
participate in the designerspromo codes and they get, you

(59:44):
know, kind of like a littlekickback or credit if people use
them.
They have 125 promo codes thatyou have to enter physically,
enter into the system.
Now, in our system, you can gointo the dashboard and you can
sit there and do it.
I said to them send them to us,we'll do them in between our

(01:00:06):
phone calls and we'll we'll takecare of it, because for you to
sit there and have to enter in125 promo codes, that's going to
take a long time and um and soevery year we do it, we'll, you
know, kind of process it andthat's a way for us to be a
support system to theseorganizers that don't have the

(01:00:27):
same ability as the largerfestivals and teams, and so
that's the kind of stuff thatI'm wanting to kind of educate.
So people who have thesesmaller events reach out and ask
and or partner with somebodylike us, where we have the
ability to help alleviate someof your pain and you know your

(01:00:50):
overall orchestration of theevent, we can team up with you.
I tell people all the time I'mlike, if you're a 20 person
event, we love you just as muchas our 20,000 person event.

Jon (01:01:01):
On your Ticket Tomato website.
You offer social mediapromotion and SEO support.
How effective are you in thatregard?

Amy (01:01:09):
Very effective.
We feel the best way to promoteourselves is to promote our
events and our clients.
We do have some generalizedadvertising that we do, but we
also will boost stuff.
We'll boost posts and ads andthings that we do on our site.
We team up with our clients,like with Winthrop.

(01:01:29):
We have a really greatpartnership and rollout where we
follow their lead with thesocial media.
So like when we launch ticketsfor them, we set up a plan where
they launch their ticket salesat 9am in the morning.
They immediately roll out theirsocial, their e-blast and all
of that, and then we follow itup later in the day.

(01:01:50):
So about midday we startlaunching our social media and
we launch our e-blast, and soit's kind of so like throughout
the entire day.
There's this rolling effect ofpeople getting hit with the
information.
And we do that for twofold,because it keeps the message

(01:02:13):
going out throughout the day,because it's a launch and
there's early bird, you knowtickets and all that stuff.
But the other thing is is wedon't want it all to hit people
right at once, because it's toooverwhelming and if they're
getting you know from too manydifferent sides, and so we craft
it and then throughout thefestival, we have meetings and

(01:02:33):
we connect and they let us knowwhat they're doing.
With social Plus, we also havethe ability in our system to
track pixel codes and the Gaccounts with Google, and so we
take that data and we kind of,you know, take a look at that
and go okay, well, where are weat?
What do we need to do more of?
Again, it's that whole premiseof the more successful our

(01:02:56):
clients are, the more successfulwe are, the partnership of it.
It's very beneficial in amultitude of ways.
You know, we even developed awhite label and we specifically
did that so that we could have astronger SEO and DNS outreach
with a festival.
So, with Winthrop, we put themon our white label this year,

(01:03:19):
and so that label is going tocollectively collect all of the
SEO information every year thatwe do it, whereas before, when
we used to do it, it used tohave its own address, so every
year we'd have to start over andso, yeah, so there's just all
these different things thatwe're trying to see how we can

(01:03:39):
do better and be better and helpour clients better and be
better and help our clients andthen, in turn, they come back to
us in a collaborative realm andwe come up with better ideas of
how to do outreach and promoteto people.
But the promotion piece isreally an important part of what
we do.
There's not a lot of otherticketing platforms out there

(01:04:00):
that actually promote theirclients.

Jon (01:04:04):
From a 30,000-foot perspective, what are Ticket
Tomato customers actually buying?

Amy (01:04:13):
So it's interesting.
So we have two ways of lookingat it.
We have our clients, whichthey're a customer of sorts, and
then we have our ticketpurchasers.
So there's two different spacesthere.
Within those spaces, we want todo a lot of those things.
So we want to be accessible, wewant to solve problems, we want

(01:04:36):
to be responsive to help them,you know, push out information,
develop what it is they'rewanting to do.
So, from a client perspective,we just brought on a new client
the last month or so, and it's afestival that's going to happen
over four days and it's anexperiential festival.
So it has music, it has foods,it has costumes.

(01:05:00):
It's kind of a Renaissance typefestival, and so everybody
dresses up and things, and thegroup that's organizing it was,
you know, sending us stuff and Iwould take a look at their
information and I would be likeso how did you come up with your
ticket pricing?
Explain this to me.
And so they explained it to meand I said, well, first off, we

(01:05:21):
need to round it up or round itdown so that it's zeroed out.
We don't have a $23.
15 ticket, you know, becausethat's too hard for people to
grasp.
And okay, I get that, you wantto fold in your taxes and the
fees and all of that.
I think that's great, but let'sdo this and then and then also,
these are the amenities thatyou want to showcase.

(01:05:44):
Okay, we've got way too muchinformation on this page.
It's too overwhelming.
So those are the type of thingswhere it becomes collaborative,
and we have a lot of experiencein doing this because we do it
every day.
We can say, hey, this is whatanother one of our clients have
done, and we think that youshould maybe think about adding
this to your playbook.

(01:06:06):
So we have a very hands-onapproach in customer service
aspect with our clients, butthen also with the ticket
purchaser.
I mean, we have issues where,you know, an email service will
change their settings for spamand so all of a sudden and we
haven't quite caught up to ityet, so they're not getting

(01:06:28):
their tickets right.
So they can pick up the phoneand call us and say, hey, I'm
supposed to go to theMcMinnville wine and food
classic.
I don't have my tickets.
I don't know, or maybe Ideleted them, I don't know, but
they're not there.
And so we're like no problem,we got you.
Here's a link, there you go.
And so the fact that people cancall us and solve that problem

(01:06:50):
in a short amount of time, youknow, and nine times out of 10,
they're calling right before theevent, you know, because they
haven't really thought about ituntil now, and and stuff, and so
having access to us isimportant, so, and for us to
service those people and to getthem what it is they need,
because ultimately, they needthis in order to go and attend

(01:07:12):
their events and to have a goodtime, and if they have a
struggle with it, it's going toaffect their overall experience.
So when you read those thingsthat are on our website, we
really try to live up to thatstandard.
When we do box officemanagement and we're on site,
we're the first people that theyinteract with.

(01:07:33):
So if they have a bad reactionto what we're doing, they're
going to go into that event andthey're going to feel like they
stubbed their toe.
We need to be friendly and weneed to try to solve their
problems if they have an issue,so that they can go in and have
a great time and then look backand go wow, that was amazing.
You know, I want to go to thatagain.

Jon (01:07:55):
So if I were to summarize everything you just said, I
would say that your clients andyour customers, for that matter
are buying high touch.

Amy (01:08:05):
Absolutely.

Jon (01:08:06):
Your ticket pricing anecdote reminded me of another
important lesson learned throughticketing.
You can learn a lot about anevent just through ticketing,
but I've worked with eventsnonprofits, you know and
nonprofits are driven to keepthe ticket price as low as
possible for their customers.
Sometimes they'll think aboutthat to a fault, and I've been

(01:08:29):
in so many meetings over theyears where the argument is do
we raise ticket prices this year, $1 or $2?
These are like knockout dragdown arguments that go on for
days.
One thing I've learned is thatwhenever you raise a ticket
price, you're always going toget complaints, but the
intensity of the complaintsisn't any different between $1,

(01:08:52):
$2, or $5.

Amy (01:08:54):
So if you have to raise your ticket price just raise it
five bucks $5, yeah.

Jon (01:08:58):
Yeah, yeah, Rip the bandaid off, take the heat, because
it's going to be the same heatas if you raised only raised at
$1.
So you might as well raise itfive and get on with the show.

Amy (01:09:09):
No, that's absolutely true, and the people that complain
are like it's a very small butmighty group of people and
especially if you're a nonprofit, you know, the first way that
we diffuse that is we tell themlike, if we're on site, we're
like, well, but we appreciateyou coming and paying this
ticket price because it'shelping this organization or

(01:09:30):
this is going to go to supportthis program, and then it kind
of just corrects theirperspective and they're like oh
yeah, you know, and and sothere's little ways that you can
kind of, you know, shift thatfrustration that they might have
.
And I kind of get where they'recoming from.
Prices go up all the time andgot food prices and gas prices

(01:09:51):
and all of that type of stuff,and it vents kind of fold into
that as well.
It's all in how you approach it.
The other thing that I also amadamant about with our clients
is it's about education.
So you want to communicate andmarket a certain way if you are
raising the prices and you wantto be transparent, because being

(01:10:15):
non-transparent and smackingpeople in the face with either
the ticket fees or differentthings is what upsets them.
You know we had an interestingthing where we work with the
Ellensburg music festival andpeople were really struggling
with the ticketing fees and thetaxes and this and that and
everything.
And they the group was talkingto me about it and I said, hey,

(01:10:38):
what about all in pricing?
I go, let's just put it all in,let's roll it all in and let's
just have one price, becausethey've made it very well known
that they're frustrated withthis.
As soon as we went into all inpricing beautiful, hardly any
complaints, you know.
So we back out the ticketingfees, the taxes get backed out,

(01:11:01):
and you know I'm like what doyou want your bottom line to be?
They're like, okay, we want thebottom line to be $65 or $70,
one or the other.
And I'm like, okay, well, let'sdo this for online and let's add
all these pieces in and thenit'll, if we, you know, put it
up to like $75, we're hittingyour $65 mark after the taxes

(01:11:23):
and the processing.
And us, yeah, it's beenincredible how much easier it
has been on site since we'vedone all in pricing.
And I am going to predictsomething that I think the
ticketing industry is going tohave to move to all in pricing.
I think it's going to becomeregulated and it's going to be

(01:11:45):
pressed upon all ticketingcompanies to do that just
because of everything that'shappened as of late.
And you know lawmakers arefrustrated with that, you know
so.

Jon (01:12:01):
From a political perspective.
I'm surprised it hasn't alreadygone in that direction.
I really am, so I think you'reright.

Amy (01:12:11):
And the other thing that I would really like to see
lawmakers kibosh is dynamicpricing, because dynamic pricing
doesn't work in the ticketingworld.
You have such a huge surge atlike the launch of an event or
tickets going on sale.
You know you have peoplewaiting in queues, you have you
know, and so it creates thisfalse demand and then, like it

(01:12:34):
drops and then it kind of hasits thing and then it surges
right before the event if theevent's not sold out.
It's not like a hotel where ithas that dynamic pricing.
That's more fluid.

Jon (01:12:48):
Event ticketing can be completely manipulated.
Oh, absolutely Completelymanipulated.
So, absolutely Completelymanipulated.
So yeah, dynamic pricing isridiculous.
I would imagine you have to beworking pretty intensely,
probably seven days a week, alot of the time.
What is a typical day in thelife of a ticketing CEO look
like for you.

Amy (01:13:09):
So funny.
You should mention seven days aweek.
The last few weeks of thismonth we've had, you know,
events over like the OregonInternational Auto Show, so
working in the office during theweek and then come Thursday on
event site, working through theweekend, back in the office on
Monday.
Same thing with the BighornOutdoor Adventure Show up in

(01:13:32):
Spokane.
You know, wednesday throughSunday, back in the office on
Monday, event seasons like thatfor me.
So June through September, Ipretty much work seven days a
week and I try to fit in momentsin between there for myself or
my family or people important tome, and that's by choice.
You know I have an amazing teamthat works in the office with

(01:13:56):
me and I have to admit that andyou might see this on our
website that there's a lot offemales that work for me and
that's by design, because I wantto expose women to tech and
entertainment.
Sometimes it's harder for womento get opportunities.
I have struggled over the yearsand have very skinned up knees

(01:14:19):
and elbows for kind of provingthat I deserve a seat at the
table.
But because I have really goodpeople and strong teams and
stuff, I don't mind being onevent site or, if I have to,
like, pull away and, you know,do something and leave it in
their discretion.

(01:14:40):
I feel very comfortable with it,but I do and I do enjoy it.
Like I tell people that I thinkus event people are a little
bit gypsy-esque, where we createthese short-term communities
and you go and you live in thecommunity and you're spending,
like you know, 10 to 15 hours aday with these people and you

(01:15:03):
become very close and then youbreak it down and you move on to
the next one.
You maybe see some people onceor twice a year and it feels
normal, and so you just kind ofhop around and do these
different things.
So I don't mind that in my lifeI don't feel like I have to go
to the office and have thisreally structured life kind of

(01:15:23):
having the variation of stuff isexciting to me, so but it is
physically taxing.
I try to do things likeexercise, eat good, get massages
, chiropractic work so that Ican keep going out and doing all
of this stuff because it isphysically demanding.

Jon (01:15:43):
Yeah, your description of temporary communities.
That's very accurate.
That's a great way ofdescribing it.
I mean, not only can I toleratethat, I thrive on that.
I mean, that's what's a largepart of what's kept me in the
game all these years.
It's like that's kind of theway I want to be, through having
to bounce from community tocommunity to community to

(01:16:05):
community in wildly differentcommunities.
It's just giving me an exposureto cultures and ideas that most
people just never get in theirlives.

(01:16:26):
I wouldn't go back and changeit for anything.

Amy (01:16:31):
Oh, I wouldn't either, and I like you, I wouldn't either.
I and I, like you, I thrive onit Meeting people, seeing events
and how certain things arebeing done.
Cultural events, I mean, it'sthe different foods that I've
been exposed to, or artists, orwhatever.
I mean it's, yeah, it's, it'sreally incredible and it is very

(01:16:55):
different and it is a, you know, different perspective.
And you know, my big thing withanything that we do is we want
to partner with good people.
We want to partner with peoplethat are putting on the events
for the right reasons, maybesupporting nonprofits and that's
a very big part of who I am andwho our company is creating

(01:17:18):
something that's like thistemporary adventure for people
and just really doing it for theright reasons.
I mean, I have honestly firedsome clients where I'm like I'm
not going to, I'm not going todo this because it doesn't feel
right and it's not my lane, andthere's some questionable things

(01:17:41):
going on or there's somedysfunctional sorts of
management top-down managementand I'm like, nope, not worth it
.
So something else will pop upand take its place.

Jon (01:17:56):
Where will Ticket Tomato be three years from now?

Amy (01:18:00):
Oh, I hope bigger.
You know we've been rebuildingsince COVID.
I'm just grateful that we madeit through COVID.
I see it with more technology,I see it with bigger
partnerships.
I want to see it thriving.
I want to do as a potentialcareer.
So it's fascinating.

(01:18:41):
So I had a girl that worked forme when she was in high school
and in college and she wanted towork for a sports team that was
a professional sports team.
Work for a sports team that wasa professional sports team.
And when she first startedworking with me she didn't like
being on the radio and she'd belike I'm scared of it and I'm
like, no, you just pull it upand you're like Amy, go for

(01:19:03):
McKenzie, you know, and if I say"what's your 20, that means
where's your location, and likeand I'm teaching her all of this
stuff.
And she was literally terrifiedof the radio by the time she
stopped working for me.
She was just taking that radioand she'd be like Amy, go for
McKenzie.
And she was like all over andit was so awesome to see.

(01:19:23):
Well, she went on and handledthe ticketing for a professional
soccer team on the East Coast.
Yeah, so she was one of theirdirectors of ticketing.
And then she just was recruitedto go to Oregon state
university to be one of theirmanagement people in their
ticketing platform and causethey've been kind of redoing

(01:19:47):
stuff and things and I, you know, each time she'd reach out to
me and she'd say, hey, I want touse you as a reference and I'm
like I'm so proud because youknow, here you are, you know,
doing what your dream was to bein the sports arena, whether
it's college or professionalsports, and she's doing it and

(01:20:07):
kind of based from what shelearned with me, so yeah, so
that's, I want to keep doingstuff like that.

Jon (01:20:15):
So you're talking about something that I'm very
passionate about, and that ismentorship.
But did you have the benefit ofany mentors as you were trying
to figure out the ticketingbusiness, or did you just have
to figure it out on your own?

Amy (01:20:34):
business, or did you just have to figure it out on your
own?
So I had one.
There's a production companyhere, a promotion, a music
production promoter double Tpromotions in Portland.
Yeah, really well-known DavidLichen and I worked with him on
the music side of stuff and myex-husband was on his record
label and all of that type ofstuff and so I had heard through

(01:20:55):
him because he started FastTicks which was an actual direct
competitor to Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster tried to take himout.
He successfully suedTicketmaster and won one and he

(01:21:16):
when I first started you knowkind of going in this direction,
he'd take me out to coffee orlunch and he talked to me about
it and he would share to me youknow kind of his war stories and
stuff like that.
And then I think from afar youknow has kind of watched me and
I would take it, I mean,whatever I could garner from him
or learn from him, both as aproducer as well as the
ticketing side of stuff.
I was really grateful for that.

(01:21:37):
But other than that not reallya whole lot.
The rest of it was kind of hasbeen blazed by myself.

Jon (01:21:45):
I'm going to ask you some completely random questions.
Okay, what is your favoritesound?

Amy (01:21:56):
Wow, that's a really good question.
I think my favorite sound is aguitar.

Jon (01:22:05):
Say more about that.

Amy (01:22:07):
Well, there's nothing like an amazing guitar solo.
I mean, oh my gosh, yeah, andin all different aspects.
So I, you know, whether it'sacoustic or it's electric, it's
funk, it's R&B, it's rock, likeI can appreciate any kind of

(01:22:30):
guitar solo.
I really, and it will stop mein my tracks.
Like I, something like I couldbe at a festival and on the
other end of the festival and Ihear faintly a guitar solo and
it's like amazing, it will stopme in my tracks.

Jon (01:22:47):
Guitar is capable of being an extremely expressive
instrument in the hands of theright person, any genre, any
style but in my experience it'sone of the more expressive
instruments.
I imagine that might be whatyou're latching on to.
You're walking into an icecream shop and you're going to

(01:23:11):
get an ice cream cone with twoscoops.
What are the two flavors?

Amy (01:23:17):
Chocolate and vanilla.

Jon (01:23:20):
Okay, well, you're pretty quick on the draw with that, why
?

Amy (01:23:25):
I just love both of them and I have ever since I was a
kid.
And you can throw all of this,like you know lavender mint,
whatever, whatever, and yeah,those are nice sometimes, but I,
you can never, ever go wrongwith that.
Or even as a kid I used to lovethe swirl cones where it was

(01:23:46):
both of the flavors you knowtogether.
Yeah, I mean it's and I thinkmaybe it's nostalgia.
You know, as a kid, you know,growing up, that yeah, just very
I, I have always been verybasic in my ice cream flavors.

Jon (01:24:01):
So in the chocolate and vanilla scenario, which scoop
goes on top?

Amy (01:24:07):
Chocolate.

Jon (01:24:08):
Got it.
I'm watching the clock.
This might be the longestsession I've actually done to
date, which surprised me.
The last 20 minutes I've beenwatching the clock and thinking
like, well, why is that?
And it's because there justkind of gloss over that with the
chaos of everything else thatwe have to worry about in our

(01:24:29):
lives.
But there's just, there's a lotof, there's a lot of depth in
the field.

Amy (01:24:43):
There really is.

Jon (01:24:44):
Amy, thank you for making the time for a conversation
today.
It's been fun.

Amy (01:24:50):
Yeah, it's been great, I've enjoyed it.
Today it's been fun.
Yeah, it's been great, I'veenjoyed it, and I am just so I
I'm going to have to tell peopleabout that.
You brought up the Bumber shootstory.
I mean the fact that you sharedthe story that I, from afar,
was witnessing just as I wasgetting into this business, is I
mean it?

(01:25:10):
It feels like everything's comefull circle.
It's a small town you know.
All call, One Hour to Doors.