On this episode of I Know This Guy, we have the pleasure of speaking with Matt Difebo. Matt has changed the ticket sales game for College Sports and has revolutionized the entire industry. Matt lets us know about his core values for creating and keeping a team together and how he followed through with what was once just a vision. He also gives us some tips on which sports look like they could be the next big thing.
Date: September 17, 2020
Episode: 24
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Matt Difebo, a Founder and CEO of FanSummit
Subtitle: “Nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm”
Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/ep-24-reaching-the-fansummit-matt-difebo/https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/10-lil-roberts/
In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Matt Difebo, a Founder and CEO of FanSummit.
Matt has changed the ticket sales game for college sports and has revolutionized the entire industry. He talks about his core values for creating and keeping a team together.
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Norman 0:00
Hey there guys and gals, we’ve got a special announcement for you. Since Halloween is upon us, we thought we would do a Halloween contest. Because Halloween is the official holiday of I Know This Guy. All you have to do is click the link in the podcast description, fill out a short survey, and you’ll be entered to win a $50 Amazon gift card to buy all those Halloween snacks for yourself. That’s enough for me and now for the rest of the episode.
Matt 0:35
That’s been a really rewarding part of my career is helping so many people move on and grow into other positions. But I take great pride and I take great lengths and efforts to hire the absolute best people that I can find.
Norman 0:59
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know This Guy, the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I noticed. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know This Guy wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, my kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell’s a bell?
Hayden 1:35
Alright, so dad, who do we have lineup for the podcast today?
Norman 1:38
Okay, so you remember Barry Kates? Yeah. Pretty interesting guy. Anyways, his recommendation is Matt Difebo and he runs an organization called Fan Summit.
Hayden 1:55
Very cool. What’s that all about?
Norman 1:57
Well, he had a vision to change something in sports that was never done before and he made it happen. So I think not only are we going to have a great backstory, but just wait till you see how the vision evolved.
Hayden 2:17
Very cool. I can’t remember the last time I had a vision.
Norman 2:20
Me neither. I just have a beard. Yeah.
Hayden 2:27
That’s my vision. Yeah. Every week.
Norman 2:30
Yep. The vision of my beard. Yeah.
Hayden 2:33
Well, maybe we can learn something from this guy.
Norman 2:37
Maybe you can have a better vision than my beard.
Hayden 2:40
I can only hope one day.
Norman 2:42
Well, let’s get into it.
Norman 2:45
Alright, Matt, welcome to the podcast.
Matt 2:48
Hey, Norman, thank you very much. Looking forward to this. I appreciate the opportunity to participate.
Norman 2:54
Well, when Barry was talking to us the other day, he was mentioning that you are the most interesting person he knows. So I can’t wait to talk to you.
Matt 3:04
Well, that’s coming from someone who I have grown to have a lot of respect for. So I don’t know what it means by that. I hope I can live up to that standard. But I’ll certainly be an open book and happy to share all the details.
Norman 3:18
Thanks. By the way, Barry was a great guest we had him on. I’ve never met him before. I knew the person who recommended him for the podcast and he blew me away with some of the stuff that he’s doing. So, when we ended up talking with him for a while, and just listening to some of the stuff and then looking into what you’re doing similar but different. I really can’t wait to start talking about this.
Matt 3:43
Yeah, I’m pretty excited about it. I have a lot of good things going on. But I’m pretty excited about and knowing Barry’s background, a little bit. I don’t know all the details, but he’s a pretty impressive guy. I’m grateful that he and I kind of paired up and we’re going down a certain path together.
Norman 4:00
One of the nice things about doing this type of podcast is that I get to meet guys like you so well, thank you. Alright, so why don’t we just get into your backstory a little bit and let’s find out what makes Matt, Matt.
Matt 4:17
I’m originally from Berwick, Pennsylvania, a very small rural town in Northeastern PA. Didn’t have a lot of means growing up. But certainly had a great set of parents who just recently celebrated their 53rd wedding anniversary. Yeah, so they’re still back in my hometown in PA. Coming from a small town, I just had the ambition and that was just intrinsic and a lot of ways growing up and just kind of what I grew into and I wanted to explore what was out there. So what actually took me away from my small town upbringing is I wanted to go to a good University, the best that I could go to at that point and I want it to be in the South, the path led me to the University of Florida, proud Florida Gator alumni and then from there really, that’s where really where it kind of grew into myself started to have some ambitions and in career motivation, and just this internal, growth of what I wanted to do, career wise and with life, and so that leaving small town of Pennsylvania and coming to Florida and having an experience like that just kind of led from one thing to another into my my career, which has mostly been in the sports world, working for some teams, professional, Major League, Baseball, NBA teams, college athletic departments and that’s really kind of where I grew into my career.
Norman 5:50
So let’s go back to the earlier days, and I love listening to entrepreneurs answer this. Was there anything back in the day that you knew that you were going to become an entrepreneur?
Matt 6:07
Oh, boy, I remember certain kinds of key milestones or happenings events, maybe in my life. My parents worked really hard. Neither one were college educated, but they worked hard to provide for us. My father was a contractor, he worked in carpentry and, and just worked hard. I mean, he was a hardworking man and I just watched how hard he worked and and what he did and my mom had her own little catering business in a small town, it was a lot of word of mouth type thing, but it was enough to kind of sustain and grow and they still do that to this day and I just knew that I already had the work ethic, they definitely instilled that in me, I give them a lot of credit to it. But I just had bigger ambitions, I just wanted to see what the world had to offer and I think that’s part of the motivation to kind of, at a young age go off to college on its own, maybe that’s not unique to a lot of people. But for my situation, it was unique. Neither of my parents had that college experience. So I was kind of blazing a trail that was really unfamiliar to us and I was doing it in large part on my own and I just wanted to go out and start to achieve. So that was definitely a transitional part of my life and then in school, I never really took academics very seriously, in high school. I was all about baseball and in sports, and that’s just kind of what I lived and breathed. But when I finally did get into the University of Florida, I became so studious, very academic, I just poured my heart into learning and I got this thirst for just wanting more and to learn and to grow and it was just such a fun time in my life. At the time, I thought, oh my god, this is hard and paying for everything myself, it’s, I’m a poor college student, when is it ever going to give, but again, it was the work ethic combined with the ambition to kind of want more into want to achieve. So during that whole transitional period, I learned a lot along the way and not to get too long winded here. But then some of the early stages of my career is when the vision, the ambition to really become an entrepreneur really started to set in and so it was kind of phased in kind of morphed into an entrepreneurial spirit envision. There wasn’t one thing that happened but it was a series of just growth opportunities.
Norman 8:55
I don’t know if this, you might. One of the biggest differences. So I live in Toronto, Canada. I’ve lived in Florida, but I live in Toronto. Do you know what the one of the biggest differences between Canadians and Americans are? College sports. I can go out. We can have the top teams playing each other at either High School. Okay, you got the kids parents come out. So there’s no bleachers, you sit on the sidelines. Then when you go to college, Alright, there might be some people in the stands. Nothing. Nothing like 100,000 people in the stands cheering on a team. I’ve always found that absolutely incredible. My parents live in a small, used to live in a small town in Maine called Poland Spring where the water comes from. They had a regional High school that had bigger stands in the high school than we have in our universities. It’s crazy.
Matt 10:03
It is crazy. You’re right. I’ve seen it with my own eyes too and along the way, I’ve hired some people from Canada that have come to the US to go to college and then pursue a career and I have heard similar stories and anecdotes like that and then you can just see it. I mean, they’re especially here in the Southeast, and especially where I went to school at the University of Florida and the SEC, where college football is a religion. I mean, it is just a passionate fan base and there’s nothing like it and when you’re in that energy in that environment, there’s just nothing like it. It is fun.
Norman 10:45
I love sports. I watch any of the major sports and I include rugby there because I think that’s my favorite but I’ll watch the Superbowl, I’ll watch an NFL, I’ll watch the NBA teams. But, it’s so hard. My dad is right into all the college sports and it’s so hard for me to sit there just because I’m brainwashed. Oh, okay, Nebraska is playing whoever and I hate saying this. Don’t send me hate mail. Anybody out there? But I go who cares? It’s college. Ah, but that’s my dumb ass Canadian upbringing.
Matt 11:27
About if they were talking hockey, maybe it’s a little different story, but.
Norman 11:30
But still like, okay, Maine Black Bears. Okay. You go to a Maine Black Bear, which, a division of a university team, my brother went to University of Bangor, University of Maine Bangor and, when the bears were playing, it was sold out. I mean, you can go to a high school or university hockey game, it’s like COVID happened 20 years ago. There’s just either you could throw stones between people, but not in US hockey and yeah. So anyway, I just thought I’d put that in there. Because it’s so different hearing that you were in Florida, with the Gators, and you just see the enthusiasm and the excitement of the crowd. But I could never understand it and again, that’s just a complete cultural thing. So please, no hate mail. No bad comments. I don’t mean anything bad.
Matt 12:24
Well, I built a career off of that, that fervor for the college athletics and so I definitely see it from an inside perspective. Well, first, it was as a fan and now as a business and an entrepreneur. I built a career off of that around the country working with different universities, and I see the differences from different conferences or different regions of the country to Metropolitan areas from the West coast schools to the East coast or the Southeast. I mean, it. There are variations of fans and in college, spirit and support. But it exists throughout this country and you’re right. It’s just not comparable to Canada or any other country really, for that matter, at the collegiate level.
Norman 13:15
So at that level, and I know you’re heavily involved there, but at that level, are there any areas of the country that have more enthusiasm, more excitement than other areas?
Matt 13:31
Yeah, there’s no question. I see it clear as day, certainly in the Southeast. Football is king. College Football just got such a huge following. You see that in other parts of the country with football, Ohio State has an incredible fan base. Michigan, certain schools in the Midwest and the Northeast Penn State, and so on. By and large, the hot spot of college football is in the Southeast. College basketball is a little bit different. It’s more on the East Coast a little bit and on North Carolina is a hotbed for college basketball, the Midwest, Indiana. Area areas of the Midwest are big out West, there’s their spots too, but so I’ve kind of seen the breakdown that way just separating football from basketball, but speaking football, which generates the most revenue and it has the larger I would say fan bases, bigger stadiums and so on. It’s definitely the Southeast.
Norman 14:35
Now, I’m curious about the actual fan base. I can see I can 100% understand alumni. But the average person living in and around let’s say we go to Ohio. Is it all about the marketing? How do you get that type of brand awareness and just loyalty?
Matt 14:58
Well, I think, there’s a history. Universities have been around for 100 plus years, in a lot of cases, it’s more of a community feel there’s so many universities around the country, but the larger state schools obviously have the bigger alumni bases and longer standing traditions and maybe more success in the past to point towards and I think that’s just a, what’s happened over time is to create that kind of loyalty and affinity to those type of schools. Now, lately, in the last, I’d say 20 years or so, there’s some schools that were kind of new to the scene, they’ve done things a little more innovative. So they kind of break away from the tradition year after year after year, and they get a little more innovative and kind of appealing to the younger crowd, so to speak, the University of Oregon is a great example of that. They’ve just become so trendy, they started off, a new uniform, every game and the younger crowd loved it and it’s really caught on and other schools started to adopt that and there’s different ways to market certainly in the 21st century. It’s a lot of digital and mobile type methods to marketing, whereas in the past, it was just based on tradition, largely, and you hope your team won and it will draw even more people into the stance.
Norman 16:34
So you talked about sort of the top sports out there. Do you see any sport coming up? Like I talked about rugby, I don’t think it’ll ever well, I can’t say ever, but I would love to see it, get that type of support that you can see with some of the the football crowd, but do you see any of the sports, any sports coming up and getting more notoriety over the next few years?
Matt 17:01
TV has a lot to do with that, and kind of just the accessibility to market and brand football is what it is. They keep innovating and trying to hold the traditions, true to the game, but innovating enough to keep it fresh. But, doing what I do, and in a consulting role with so many schools around the country, I see areas where Lacrosse has been emerging to a degree but it’s still got a long way to go. But it’s definitely a sport that’s not football, or basketball that has emerged a little bit, certainly in the Mid Atlantic area where it’s just people love it and other parts throughout the country like Denver and so on. Soccer seems to be on this upward trajectory, a little bit in the college level, but more so on the professional sports side and just nationwide, so that might carry over to the college level. Certain areas, college hockey might be their sport. You mentioned the University of Maine, their schools like that, where hockey is important. But football and men’s basketball, especially with the tournament has just had such a huge following over the years that it’s going to be a long time before anything comes close to overtaking those. I’ll tell you one of the fun college sports that I love to watch. It’s a fast game, but it’s exciting. It is a softball, college softball for women. There’s high energy, there’s scoring, so it’s not one to nothing or belong for our game. It’s a two hour game with a lot of energy, a lot of excitement and they’re getting more and more coverage on TV and people that watch that the ratings are going up nowhere close to football or basketball. But it’s an emerging part of the industry that I think is going to continue to grow and have audience appeal.
Norman 19:05
Well, it is great when you are able to turn on the channel and see something different sometimes. So, it’d be nice if some of these and I’ll say it again, Rugby could be more televised. Alright. So you know what, I got you off track. I want to go back to your college days. So you got a job? What job did you get into and how did that bring you to the next level in your career?
Matt 19:32
Yeah, it was that little bit of a crossroads and again, just going back in time a little bit. There’s still the unknown, right. Looking back, I can explain that a lot clearer and speak to it a different way. But at the time, I just got my master’s degree from Florida. I just got accepted to a PhD program and I was going to do a joint law degree. I was going to do a PhD jindee and that was another four or five years of school. I still had to go through the application and acceptance process for the law degree. But I already had been accepted to the PhD, I just didn’t start the program and then I just took a pause for a moment and I’m like, I just want to get some real world experience and I want to see what’s out there in the industry and then maybe come back in and pursue the academic part again and I started applying to any job really that I could find and most of the job postings in the in the industry at the time, or entry level, ticket sales positions, telemarketing, basically. So I did a phone interview with a number of different teams, but the one that hired me, that was local, was Tampa Bay. At the time, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays now, the Tampa Bay Rays and I accepted that job, it was only paid like $200 a week. So it was very entry level and they could do that because a lot of people want to work in sports, and they don’t have to pay a lot, or they certainly did at that time. But when I was on the phone with them, and accepted the job, I wanted to see if there was an opportunity for something greater than what I had just accepted. To put myself through college, I worked a number of part time jobs, both in in the athletic department at school, but then outside to kind of pay my bills, I was working for a telemarketing company and I started off in sales, I excelled and got promoted to supervisor and then management position and then other Management Director level positions as a college student and it was actually that experience, that kind of lended itself towards getting an immediate promotion when I took that job with Tampa Bay to manage their sales team. So I didn’t have to take that entry level position, they immediately put me in a management position, essentially overseeing the sales team that I was originally hired as part of and so that was a big lesson in life there and a lot of ways to, just kind of pursue and just kind of go for it, so to speak and and then I took a lot of what I learned in that call center environment, which was much different than the sports world. But a lot of fundamental things that people used to be successful. In the telemarketing world, I just applied and my role was announced as a manager with the Tampa Bay Rays and the team at the time Norm was horrible. They were playing in a bad building. They were losing 100 games a year, there was a full time sales staff that had been there for a few years, they were as negative as the day as long. It was just a negative culture. It was just, it was not good. It was tough, it was challenging. But I had my sales, my entry level sales team outperforming the full time sales staff, we had a better attitude or our performance was better and that started to show. We started to outsell the full time people that had all the best leads and it had a book of business and that just shed a lot of light on to me and the success that we had as a team and then I got promoted within and that had other opportunities around the industry.
Norman 23:30
That’s interesting that you say that, because you see this with franchises. You see this with just regular companies and it’s about the attitude and I always call it a performance based culture. So you can tell the companies I can go to, do you know Tim Hortons? Yes. Okay, Tim Hortons is very well known, it’s got a huge brand loyalty. But I can go into a Tim Hortons restaurant throughout Canada and it’s the attitude. They’re not overselling, they’re friendly. They just have the perfect training and you just know that if I go in there, not only do I get consistency or good quality coffee Kayden might argue that, but it’s a consistency. Yet, I can go to some other place that might even have better quality coffee, but yet, it’s almost like I’m paying them to serve me and I better be happy doing it and what you’ve just said about that attitude, turning that attitude, making it more of a, I don’t know if you’d call it corporate culture, because you had the other side of the Tampa Bay team being negative and then you’ve got your team being positive it. Can you imagine what you can do in almost any circumstance that you can take this horrible running company, I’m not talking about Tampa Bay, but turn it around just because you have the right attitude in the company. That’s the beauty of, just having a guy, a consultant come in, or somebody that has the right attitude, taking a look at something and saying, look, you got to get rid of this person, got to get rid of that person. They’re all negative, it’s causing cancer and now let’s start fresh.
Matt 25:17
Yeah, it’s really where I started to fine tune my leadership skills and again, it was actually a takeaway from my telemarketing experience that the job that I had in college just to pay my bills that actually turned into a training ground for sales and management and performing. The difference between the two is the telemarketing job, then we were just hiring anybody off the street, even though it was a college town, there’s a lot of educated, motivated, people that had ambition. We had so many seats to fill in so many programs around. I mean, it was just cycling through people that would just need a job and it was really trying to work with those folks, to get them to perform to meet what we owed and we’re obligated to our clients. But also to just keep a good environment, I really learned how important culture was and when I went to Tampa Bay. Now I’m in an industry, that’s sports, right? It’s fun, it’s exciting. It’s people love sports, it’s a different type of telemarketing, if you will, at the time and immediately when I noticed that divide, I came up with my rule number one for my sales team and that was no negativity. I understand people have bad days, and especially when you’re trying to sell a team that’s losing 12 games in a row or they want to fire the manager or the owner had a bad reputation, or the team just stinks. It’s just there’s a lot of negativity around it. But it still is sports and so we didn’t dwell on the negativity and so when we were calling people, for a team that was losing 100 games a year, we were saying things like we love the race and we were just feeding off of the positivity and people responded to that and then it led to me to have another opportunity and with another sports team. Because we were so successful in such a short amount of time in such a challenging environment. I had an opportunity to go work in Seattle, with an NBA team, they have since moved to Oklahoma City, but the Seattle SuperSonics was a mediocre team at the time, same thing I had to hire as a sales department from scratch, there was already a full time sales department that was negative. They were kind of lazy and work ethic and not working as hard and then comes this new group of I hired 10 people initially, nine of those first 10 people on my staff got promoted to replace people that were on the full time staff and that got the attention from David Stern was a commissioner at the time from the league office to extol our success in the culture we were building to be able to share that around the league and that’s one thing the NBA did and does to the state really well. They share best practices, they work together as a league to build that and it was the same model, the same techniques, building the same positive culture. But I got to tell you, Norm there’s also another kind of secret ingredient and it’s not super secret, everybody that’s succeeded in business probably tells you this. I would take a lot of time to hire the right people I wanted, they may have not had the most experience because a lot of this was entry level. But I wanted an attitude. I wanted work ethic and I wanted people that came in and that they were motivated career wise to grow and if they did that, if I can get that through the interview process and hire them and they came in and performed and I’m gonna roll up my sleeves, pour my heart and soul into helping them grow and that’s been a really rewarding part of my career. It’s helping so many people move on and grow into other positions. But I take great pride and I take great lengths and efforts to hire the absolute best people that I can find.
Norman 29:24
Yeah, that’s probably in a business is probably the biggest waste of time and money with wrong hires. Okay, so being on that side of the business, telemarketing and I’ve had some telemarketers work with me. I’ve also got some friends that own some telemarketing companies and it baffles me how you can keep somebody positive in that type of environment when you’ve got so many angry people at the other end slamming the phones down. How did you keep them positive?
Matt 30:01
Yeah, when I get those calls, too, sometimes I’m one of those angry people. In the sports world, it’s a little different. I would say there’s such an affinity. A lot of people want to get into sports because it’s very seductive, right? I mean, it’s your favorite teams, your favorite players, there’s 24/7 coverage on so many networks, it’s just a fun thing to be involved in. So part of the motivation is hiring people that want to pursue that as a career, it’s almost hiring self motivated people. The other thing is training. Really, really demonstrating to the people that we’re hiring, that we’re investing in them through training, and giving them the tools to be successful, and then incentivizing them to be successful. Mostly, that’s monetarily through commissions and bonuses, and so on. But then the opportunity for advancement and promotion. So I think it’s a combination of a lot of those things. But you’re right, the day to day grind. Like any sales position, you do have to find ways to motivate your your staff, and it’s not always money, it’s sometimes just a mutual respect, respecting the job that they have to do, and doing everything that you can do to help support them to be successful and not kind of rule from a ivory tower approach. But you’re right there with them and this goes back to some of the early things that I mentioned on the podcast, my upbringing, the things that were intrinsic in me, the work ethic that I saw in my parents and how I was raised. When you’re in a hiring position, and you have that in you, you know it when you see it, a lot of cases. So if you get that part, right of at least hiring somebody with those qualities, I don’t want to say the rest is easy, but it’s a lot easier when you’re working with that type of individual.
Norman 31:57
One of the things that we did, and this is just by fluke, buddy kind of work, we created this fun room. A lot of people have pool tables and stuff like that. This was strictly comedies, stand up comedians, funny YouTube videos and if you were having a bad day or a bad mood, you had to go into the boardroom and you could watch these great, funny comedians and by the time he came out, 15-20 minutes later, you had a completely different attitude.
Matt 32:31
I like to employ those types of tactics as well. Again, it’s not always monetarily, I think, if one example from my Seattle days, Seattle has a has a reputation for dreary, rainy gray kind of day and so we’re in the middle of I want to say it’s January, February, we’re in the middle of the basketball season, the team’s not doing very well, you come into work and if you just look outside, and it’s just one of those kind of days, and I can tell my staff was just they just weren’t there mentally motivational wise and then a little bit later in the day, we got a little break in the action and the sun came out and it was just like in Seattle, that was a big deal in February. Or whenever it wasn’t in March, it was just that time of year and so there was an outdoor golf driving range, about three miles down the road. So I just told everybody get off the phones, pile in the cars, we’re going down there. So we went down there for about two hours, hit golf balls, they had a blast, had fun, just kind of broken up, we came back with a renewed energy and it was a I remember being a very productive day at the end and it’s just things like that, to just kind of keep the staff motivated. Sometimes it’s obviously money is always a reward. But oftentimes, it’s just other motivational tactics or things that you can do to kind of keep it fun, and kind of uplifting.
Norman 39:52
and building a team.
Matt 34:00
No question about it, we were in close quarters in that particular setup and if if one person, one person with the wrong attitude or, whatever, could really impact the entire team and so it was important not just to work with individuals to help them grow on a on an individual basis, but to foster that team environment and that culture of helping out a teammate and being a team and keeping it positive. I was really in tune with that and so for any success I’ve had along the way at the Rays, at the Sonics or other teams I’ve been with, I really can’t take the credit for it. It was really a product of hiring the right people, instilling the right culture and practices and they did the bulk of the work and produced and generated the sales and the revenue, and so on. So it definitely was not just me alone. It was definitely a team effort.
Norman 35:02
You could take that soundbite, you could overlay that over the great quality entrepreneurs or managers that we’ve had on the podcast or off and they’ve all said the exact same thing. It’s about, it’s not them. They were part of the team. It was the players that did it.
Matt 35:20
Yeah, I firmly believe that because it’s, it’s just been true in every case where I’ve had success along the way. It’s just because of the people, you surround yourself with quality people working towards a common goal.
Norman 35:35
So you’re at the Sonics, and you were just talking about David Stern, implementing some of your practices into their best practices. What happened after that?
Matt 35:47
Well, that was a fun time in my life. For the first time in my life, I was making a livable wage, and then living in such a cool city and in a cool town, and the team started to get better. Our basketball team was owned by Howard Schultz, the creator of Starbucks, and the longtime Chairman, CEO of Starbucks and that was fun in and of itself, just being associated with that. Howard’s obviously built an iconic brand and a world class, entrepreneur and marketing person and that combined with the NBA, so I had a really good situation in Seattle. I had opportunities to go be a vice president and other teams, probably three or four other teams, in the immediate future, being recruited to the vice president of sales, which was a big deal for a guy that’s now only two years out of his college career. It was all a pretty fast track for me. I had an opportunity for promotion within and that was exciting and then I got a call one day, I remember I lived in downtown Seattle, I’d walked to work and so on the West coast, it was 7am, 10am on the east coast, I got a call from an athletic director at the University of Central Florida and the Steve Orsini as his name, Steve is such a great guy and I owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude. He gave me a call, he wanted to hire somebody to come in his athletic department and build a ticket sales staff. They were on the verge of building an on campus Stadium, which was a big deal and I went to school right up the road at the University of Florida, two hours up the road and I didn’t know anything about UCF. I just knew it was in Orlando, Florida and I got this call, and he’s telling me, he’s heard my name. He wants to hire somebody from the NBA because the league had a great reputation. My name kept coming up and I remember telling him I’m like, Hey, Steve, I’m probably not your guy. But since you called me, let me do a little research and let’s talk again in about a week and maybe we can explore it further and so we did that. Now, again, at the time, I’m being recruited and courted to take other positions that two years ago, I didn’t even think possible. I didn’t even know really, that that’s where I would have an opportunity to be. So that was pretty flattering and then I got a call from an athletic department for a school that I barely knew anything about and it was just, it was not even something I was really considering. But I was intrigued. So I started to do my research and what I realized what we were doing in the pro sports world, didn’t really exist in the College Athletic world and so I for the first time in my life, Norm, I became a visionary and I realized, and I also stepped out of my comfort zone, I realized I can have, I can be one of 30 VPs in the league and do the same thing everybody else is doing and make some nice coin doing it. Or I can go do something in the industry that’s never been done before, modify our model to work in college athletics and if I did that, then maybe just maybe I can be an entrepreneur, start my own business and then take it around the country and so it was based on that premise on that vision that I did. I left the comforts in the status of a professional sports team and the situation I was in and I went to work. At the time the University of Central Florida football team was the ESPN has this bottom 10 ranking of the worst schools in the country for football. UCF was once number 117 at the time, they were very last there only 117 College division one college football teams in the country at the time. They played in an off campus Stadium, which was an absolute dump. Their team had the longest losing streak in the country. Meanwhile, my alma mater right up the road was winning national championships, every other year. Football, basketball, they were definitely the elite college in the state along with Florida State and Miami and so that’s the direction that I chose. But it was really just based on a vision to be an entrepreneur. So when you asked me earlier in the program, was there a time or a moment? That was the key defining moment when I said, I’m just going to go for it and this is what I’m going to do and I did it.
Norman 40:27
So the epiphany hit you at that point?
Matt 40:30
Yeah and it was a gut feeling. It was based on a belief in myself, and what I saw as an opportunity in the market in the industry. Now it was fraught with challenges. There’s a reason why it wasn’t done in college athletics before. Universities do not operate like a business and I knew that coming in, I didn’t know what I can’t pretend that I had all the answers are you all the challenges, but I knew that it was not going to be easy and I just had the mindset that I was going to come in, and use the same formula, hire the best people I can hire, build the best culture and model that I can do, incentivize those people to sell and we, it was a nine month struggle. At the start, I didn’t have all the resources, it wasn’t the right setup, physically. But boy, when we started to hit our stride, we set the world on fire and it got a lot of attention.
Norman 41:30
Can you help me out? You were talking about the ways that the pros were doing it. You said why can’t we do this in college? So what were the differences?
Matt 41:39
Well, in professional sports, they are not confused on what the goal is, and they want to sell as many tickets as possible for as much revenue as possible and some of these professional sports teams have 70, 70 salespeople, most are in the 30 to 50 range total. These are dedicated salespeople, that’s a lot of salaries, that’s a lot of money and incentives to pay these people, there’s a lot of management salaries and director level salaries. So they invest a lot of marketing dollars. They invest in generating revenue and selling. In the college world, they never have enough money. Athletic departments, by and large, do not make money. So they’re totally reliant on the University to support them, or make up for any gaps or shortcomings. They don’t think sales if a College Athletic Department has any additional money, so to speak revenue, they’re spending it on facilities or hiring coaches, and those types of things. They’re not hiring salespeople. If they do they try to do it with maybe one sales manager, and a team of interns or college students. Well, college students have class schedules and spring break and holiday break and group projects and final exams and they’re just not focused the same way. So it was just, it was a dysfunctional system, to be able to try to build a sales culture and that’s what I came to the college space to do. That was the vision and because I had that vision on the front end, any success we had, I was writing about it. I was speaking at conferences about it. Articles were being written about what we were doing. I was promulgating it anyway I could, because I also knew that that would help lend itself towards me then doing the next phase and that started my own company to take it around the country. But I was in no rush to do that. Because I knew if it was going to work long term, I had to build the success, sustain that success. So it wasn’t just a flash in the pan, and then I told the whole world about it and so it’s very methodical on my part and it took five years from the time I took that position to the time I left to start my own company.
Norman 44:12
Then when you started your own company, were you bringing on multiple colleges at that time?
Matt 44:17
I was Yeah. Because at that point. Now, this is an interesting time period, right? So again, just like I made the leap from the Seattle Sonics to UCF, when I don’t know anybody else in the world that would have done it at the time under those circumstances. When I started my own company, it was in 2008-2009. So the financial situation around the country was tough. I mean, horrible. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was not the time to be starting your own company, or I should say, not the time to be leaving a well paying job with the security of health benefits and just for One case and all that when the rest of the country is getting laid off and the housing market is crashing. But again, it’s an intrinsic belief in entrepreneurs, I’m sure. Another theme that comes up on your podcast is, entrepreneurs take risks, they’re risk takers. I had laid the groundwork for five years to go out and start my company. So I had a little clientele already built up before I completely made the leap. But I couldn’t pursue that the way I wanted to, because I still had obligations at UCF. But I built up a little clientele before I left and then the other thing that was in my favor, was the fact that it was so challenging. Universities were losing state funding. They were losing season ticket holders, they were losing donations, people that donate like boosters, and people that donate to the program. So there was a dire need. I mean, there was a desperate situation in a lot of cases. So here I come, the guy with that’s got the reputation for generating revenue and doing it, the timing could not have been better from an opportunity and entrepreneurial standpoint, because of the slowdown in the market or the conditions of the market and so I had clients immediately that just needed help and again, entrepreneurs are risk takers. But this was a well thought out risk. This was calculated risk, this was something that I just didn’t carelessly just say, Okay, I’m gonna go for it and see what happens. I mean, it was pretty methodical on my part, that’s just I’m a cerebral kind of guy like that.
Norman 46:44
So risk evaluation past. What about scalability? So you’ve got this growth that you’re going to be handling? Crossing the Chasm, a great book called Crossing the Chasm. So all of a sudden, you’ve got more clients coming on, I can understand when you say you have this hiring process, and it takes a bit of time to get 4,5,10,15 people. But what happens? How do you scale that so you can meet the demand of all these new clients?
Matt 47:16
You just kind of buckle up and go for it, you kind of take the leap, right, and then you grow your wings on the way down, so to speak. It sounds kind of crazy. But when I launched my own company, and I started to build my client base, there was such a need for this in college athletics and I had done everything I could to promote the concept that I already had larger companies that were approaching me that or that I was engaged in conversations with to go work for them, or to sell my new concept, my new company to them. So for two years, I launched the company, I had all the HR stuff that I had to figure out all the legal stuff, negotiating contracts, hiring staff, placing staff is very decentralized. It wasn’t like we worked out of a corporate headquarters, my staff was at different campuses around the country. So it was fraught with challenges just like every opportunity I’ve had, but I just did the best I could. I negotiated contracts, that kind of matched, where I wasn’t taking on all the risk myself, schools were willing to do their part to make sure that it didn’t fail and I made sure I had enough built in protections, not for myself, or for any windfall for me, but just to ensure the success of the program and that we had what we needed to so I just kind of it was carefully negotiated, and a case by case basis with each school around the country and then two years later, I ended up selling that company to the largest sports marketing company in the world and then I went to work with them as an executive and I was now using their resources, which made it a lot easier to breathe a little eat and sleep a little easier at night, but it was with their resources that I was able to build it massively around the country.
Norman 49:12
That’s IMG?
Matt 49:13
Yes. Yeah.
Matt 49:15
Well, Congrats.
Matt 49:17
Thank you.
Norman 49:18
Were there any of the colleges that didn’t fit the model and failed?
Matt 49:24
Colleges try to get very clever, if you will. There’s a lot of hesitation there. There’s just risk averse, in a lot of ways. It is why it wasn’t done before or done successfully. When I would negotiate a deal, I would try to go in and negotiate. There were some things that were just non negotiable, if they wanted this thing to be successful. There were schools that tried to get clever and try to do it for as little resources as possible.
Matt 49:59
But by large, I would either negotiate with them to come around to do the fundamental things that we needed to ensure success, or I wouldn’t take those opportunities because I don’t want to be associated with something that’s not going to be successful for things that are beyond my control. So yeah, there were Universities that loved the idea that needed to help. That just wouldn’t do what’s necessary in the early going. So it was an educational process along the way, too and now, I would submit to you Norm, virtually every school either outsources it to companies like I had, or they now do it themselves with a model similar to what we had. So we really did revolutionize the industry and it’s been 10 years in the making and it took about five or six years to really revolutionize that industry. But that vision I had when I left Seattle, it has not come into fruition. It is incredibly gratifying to see for very personal reasons. You have a belief, you have a vision and to look back and see that it’s actually taken hold. Now virtually every school has adopted that model, some variation of it.
Norman 51:19
It’s yours.
Matt 51:20
It took some doing Yeah, yep, exactly. I’m very proud of that.
Norman 51:24
I would be too. Congratulations again on that.
Matt 51:28
Thank you.
Norman 51:29
So what was it like going into IMG, so you’re an entrepreneur, you’re running things your own way you can call the shots and then IMG comes in and acquires you.
Matt 51:41
Their background was in so many other parts of the industry and their college business really was mostly sponsorship, they had done just like they had done with me, they had acquired other companies to build up their college portfolio and the great thing about IMG, it was a phenomenal situation. For me, it was just incredible. They really allowed me to come in and build it. The way that I saw they did not really get in my way at all. I was on an airplane 200 plus days a year, a different College Athletic campus every day. I mean, I was racking up the Marriott reward points on lifetime titanium with Marriott as a result of all that, they really let me go out and build it the way I see fit. Now I had great support within and again, built. A lot of those people that have worked for me before are ones that I had hired, because they are now familiar with my philosophy, my system, my culture and now those folks, just like I said, I love seeing people grow. It was just an opportunity to then elevate other people that have worked for me into a new role and a new thing and we really built it that way. But IMG did not get in my way at all. As far as aggressively growing the business going, not trying to do it through email or phone calls. I was in face. Sometimes I was in three different time zones on the same day with meetings on the East Coast, the Central Time Zone and then ending up in California. I was just on a mission to build my baby.
Norman 53:29
What happened after that you’ve built your baby with IMG, how long did that last and then where did you go?
Matt 53:37
I was five years into it and honestly when I took the role, I kind of thought that it would be about a three year run for me so I built it and then I kind of outgrew what they were willing to pay or whatnot. It ended up being five years and we had generated hundreds of millions of dollars for schools around the country and sold a lot of tickets and had nearly 200 employees for our little ticketing division and we became very one dimensional and about halfway through my time, I realized, we’re nothing more than a telemarketing ticket sales solution. In order for us to grow and really elevate, we have to offer for the schools. We need a lot more sophistication. We need database technology, some analytical technology, pricing, marketing to support our ticket sales initiatives. We can’t just be doing this over the phone, we need a lot more sophistication. So long story short, I took that vision to IMG at the time, but they had also formed a joint venture with their chief competitor, a company called Learfield which ironically enough now owns IMG college. So theision, they love the vision, they thought it was great. But nothing was ever going to get done because there was just too much going on with the bigger picture with both companies and so that’s when I decided to exit. Just kind of catch my breath for a little bit. I really spent a couple years on the beach over here in Ormond Beach, got another entrepreneurial opportunity with a business partner that I still have. But I really started to lay the groundwork for that next vision I had and that’s what I’m doing now with my new company called Fan Summit and that is bringing all those other business intelligence and technologies and offerings under one umbrella and becoming so much more than just a ticket sales division. We really feel now that we have such a robust offering that we can help not just college athletic departments, but minor league teams, professional sports teams really drive revenue in ways that they haven’t been able to before because it’s been so fragmented, and we can bring it together under one umbrella.
Hayden 56:10
Hey guys and gals. That concludes part one of our interview with Matt Difebo. Make sure to tune in next time for the rest of the interview. Also make sure to enter our contest for the $50 Amazon gift card. Just click on the link in the podcast description, it’ll guide you through the rest of the way. See you next time.
Hayden 0:04
Hey there, guys and gals, this is part two of our interview with Matt Difebo. Make sure to go back and listen to part one, if you haven’t done so already. As always, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and check out our Halloween contest. The link is in the description there. So just click that and you’ll be guided through the rest of the way and now for the rest of the interview.
Norman 0:31
So I’m just kind of really curious, I don’t usually ask this question, but when you left IMG on the exit, were you making more than $200 a week?
Matt 0:40
Yeah, definitely was. Yeah, that’s a fun time in my life for a guy that grew up in Berwick, Pennsylvania. Yep.
Norman 0:51
Awesome. Okay, let’s talk a little bit about what you’re doing right now.
Matt 0:55
I launched FanSummit about, well, right at the start of this pandemic, really is when I, officially to the public put it out there. But I’ve really been running it for about a year and actually tried to do this a couple years ago, with a group of partners and we were close, we’re on the cusp of launching the business, but it kind of morphed into an online gaming company and we got big time people involved, some big time egos, if you will, and everybody had towards the end started to get a little different vision of what we were to become and it just kind of unraveled from there and sometimes that happens. But along the way, I just learned a lot. Once that kind of died down. I just launched FanSummit with the same vision without the sports gaming and online wagering piece, although that is a very cool part of the industry and so that’s what I’m doing now with the fan summit but we’re open for business. Before it was a concept that I was trying to build and put together do a roll up, consolidated type company and now this is now we’re out there, we’re open for business, we have clients and once we get through some of this COVID situation, I think it’s gonna grow pretty rapidly as well.
Norman 2:14
I did a little bit of research here and I saw that you were quoted in sportscareers.com saying that one thing that often gets neglected in sales is constant training and teaching. This is an ongoing, your ongoing philosophy, correct?
Matt 2:29
Yeah, yeah, no question. I think that was the beauty of, I just have this affinity for teaching and I love the academic world. Once I really discovered that in college, it’s always been a part of me, and I see how important it was for me personally, but then also to instill that in other people, but also how it can help grow a company to meet its goals and just grow in general. So that’s a very fundamental part. Now, technology changes and techniques change and situations change, circumstances change, but the teaching, and that maybe even makes the teaching and the training, even more important, because you have to keep up and adapt and grow and so that that is just a fundamental part of anything that I’ll do even in my own world. I’m constantly reading and researching and learning and trying to grow on my own. So I can import that into better business decisions, but also, I can’t do all this on my own. So, I need help and so anybody that’s working with me, or a partner, or an executive, or anybody that’s part of my companies, I want to be able to instill that as well, because the more people you have working towards a common goal with similar philosophy, I think the more successful you’re going to be.
Hayden 4:00
So what traits do you look for the people you’re hiring to do the training for you? Or are you looking for anything in the people you’re bringing on?
Matt 4:09
Yeah, I think there’s some pretty for me, like I said, you know it when you see it kind of thing, a lot of people on resumes or CDs will kind of brag about how good they are, what they’ve done. I’m the type of person that has to see it in action before I believe it necessarily. I want to see evidence, I want to see it in motion. So it’s interesting when I go through a hiring process, or an evaluation process, I will purposely drag it out a little while because I want to see, are they going to respond? Are they going to call when they say they’re going to call? Are they going to get frustrated with the process? Are they going to have a positive attitude? Are they going to demonstrate that they want this position or this job? Or do they just say it and then hope it’s a quick process. I want to see the action behind the words, so to speak. So I don’t drag it out necessarily to play games or anything like that. I don’t mean it that way. But I do want to see some evidence that just in their natural ability, when they’re not sitting for the direct interviews, so to speak, that they’re displaying exactly what they said, and the traits that I see to make them successful. I’m looking for attitude, how they communicate, work ethic, a sincere interest to show that they want it, and not just, they’ll take it because it’s an express thing available kind of thing. So I’m looking for all those things. I don’t know, there’s probably a few other little things that I would add into that. But in a general sense, that’s what I’m looking for.
Hayden 5:45
I feel like typically you think of an interview as being just a short, maybe half hour long window to get to know someone, but you don’t do that with like, friends that you’re looking to hang out more with or people who you hold close to you. You kind of need to see them in different aspects or in different situations to really know.
Matt 6:03
Yeah, I want to see them overcome. I mean, if they’re representing my company, or you’re representing a school, how are they going to represent the brands that we’re representing? Are they going to live up to what they say they can do? I always say, don’t just tell me how good you are, show me. Show me how good you are and that’s what I look for. It’s got to be demonstrated in some way, shape, or form and then I do my research, just like anything else. I’ll talk to references or people. The great thing about this industry is a lot of people know people and so it’s easy to kind of do that. But I rely on that to a certain degree, but I really rely on is how my own interaction is with them and what they demonstrate.
Norman 6:44
Actions over intentions.
Matt 6:46
Yeah, yeah.
Hayden 6:48
Hey there, guys and gals, we’ve got a special announcement for you. Since Halloween is upon us, we thought we would do a Halloween contest. Because Halloween is the official holiday of I Know This Guy. All you have to do is click the link in the podcast description, fill out a short survey, and you’ll be entered to win a $50 Amazon gift card to buy all those Halloween snacks for yourself. That’s enough for me and now for the rest of the episode.
Norman 7:21
With everything you have going on, I’m kind of curious how you balance out your life.
Matt 7:29
It was tough, when I was with IMG and I was traveling as much as I was. It was tough, but I loved what I was doing. I loved building my baby, I wanted that thing to be so successful. But when I exited IMG, I was burnt out. I was really needing a break from airplanes and airports and hotels and rental cars. So I did. I had an opportunity, I just literally got a place on the beach and I still have over there in Orland and just really just kind of recalibrated and worked on this new vision. Part of that approach was okay, when I do this again, I don’t mind traveling and working hard and I do love my reward points on the airlines and the hotels because that gets me to Hawaii once or twice a year and things like that, but to really relax. But I was going to find that balance and I recently got married and in November of 2019 and so now it’s even more important to have that balance in life. So I really enjoyed my time at the beach and just kind of here the home life so to speak, and trying to find the right sequence and prioritization of being an entrepreneur and enjoying life a little bit enjoying the rewards of all the things that I have worked for.
Norman 9:07
Yeah, I understand that you’re also a volunteer with the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization.
Matt 9:12
Yeah, I was really involved in that. In fact, when I first got involved, Jerell my little brother was 11 years old and now he is 25 years old and we still stay in touch and and he’s doing some pretty cool things and he’s here in Florida as well. That’s just been a fun thing that I’ve been involved in and felt that it was important to do to kind of give back so to speak, and have an impact in someone’s life that maybe didn’t have the same opportunities that I have or so many others have. So I really enjoy doing things like that.
Norman 9:57
It’s one of my favorite organizations. It truly is a win win.
Norman 10:03
How would people get involved with that?
Matt 10:06
The way I did it, and they do some great things in the community, but just contact the local chapter and I remember doing it initially, there were a lot of unknown questions like, how does it work and how do parents feel? What do you do and so I had some friends that did it as well and so I would get advice from friends. But the way I first got involved is I just, it was something important to me, I just, I proactively reached out to the local chapter. I went and visited them here in Central Florida, and set up some meetings to ask all the questions and find out how the process works and then they do a matching process that could, it could take a while because there’s maybe not the demand, or there’s maybe way more kids and there’s demand adults that are participating it and so I just worked closely with the local chapter and went through the process and got matched up and and now it’s been over a decade long thing for me, and it’s been fun.
Norman 11:12
Wow.
Norman 11:15
Well, the screening process to get in, it has to be really strict and like, is it?
Matt 11:20
Well, it is and I would imagine in today’s world, it’s probably even more stringent and careful than then when I did it back in, I think, initially in 2009 or so 2007, somewhere around that time. So I haven’t been through that process in quite some time. But I got to believe in today’s world. They’re very, very careful as they should be.
Norman 11:47
You have one little brother and that will be it. You’re not going on to another person or not. It’s you and your little brother or little sister, correct?
Matt 11:59
Yeah. That is right and Gerald kind of aged out of the program. So we just stayed in touch and we still call it, as part of the program because it was so instrumental for both of us. But when I was traveling as much as I was, it was impossible. I had two houses. I had one in North Carolina, one in Florida and I was traveling so much Norm that I was at home for five years, five consecutive years. I spent less than 40 days a year at either one of those homes. I was traveling like a madman.
Norman 12:35
Titanium.
Matt 12:37
That’s exactly right. Exactly right.
Norman 12:42
All right. So we’re gonna switch over to a different subject. Can you tell us one quote that you live your life by?
Matt 12:50
Yeah, there’s so many that come to mind and I’m a quote kind of guy. I just love it. I’m always looking for that, the positive motivational type quotes and one that has always kind of run through to me is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, it is “Nothing great has ever achieved without enthusiasm” and that’s just how I feel, again, I’m an eternal optimist kind of guy, very positive, try to always remain pretty positive and that’s just one. I found an industry that I love, I found something that I’m pretty, pretty good at and have built up an expertise and a certain reputation for and I’ve just motivated, there’s not a day that I do things in the sports industry, or that I’m involved in that I dread. So I just have this perpetual enthusiasm about the approach. I love what I do. They’re great people in the industry to become friends with and associated with, and that just kind of fuels the fire for me to kind of be in an environment like that and find a career that I kind of get that reward out of.
Norman 14:02
Well, it sure sounds like you found the perfect career and you live this quote, I can tell.
Matt 14:08
No doubt about it. Yeah, no doubt about it. I personify the quote, I feel that way.
Norman 14:15
I want to hear about your biggest adversities. Some people call it failures. Some people call it hurdles. But let’s go back and talk about that.
Matt 14:26
Yeah, it’s really interesting. I love opportunities like this to sit and talk to you and oftentimes, we talk about the highlights, right, and it makes it sound like it was so easy, or it was kind of automatic, the way it happened. But, I kind of say I failed my way to success, so to speak and I think that’s how the great ones do it and not just the great ones, but I think people in life. There’s adversity coming from every direction. Some of it you can see from a mile away, and you kind of predict it and then anticipate it and then some of it, it’s the news that you hear just out of the blue that just kind of rocked your world and sometimes it’s compounded, it’s a little bit of the everyday stuff and then sometimes it’s the rocker world kind of things. The economy downturn, in today’s world, the COVID situation, things that happen in personal life, and so on. So life just comes at you from a number of different angles and when you’re an entrepreneur, and a lot of ways you’re even more susceptible and if you have employees, you have a lot of responsibility that you need to work for, it’s just not you, so to speak. So every step of the way, Norm, there’s been adversity, whether it’s been something as simple as a team not performing or a coach getting fired, or a coach throwing a quarterback throwing an interception that lost the game, there’s that kind of adversity in the work that impacts work and then there’s other stuff that just comes at you. So I’ve always been an optimistic, very eternal optimistic person, I don’t mind. I want the ball in my hand, so to speak and I expect challenges, maybe not always prepared for every one of them. But I’m always determined to bounce up and just take it head on and find a way through it. But to also do it with character integrity, and to do it the right way, and not try to take shortcuts and really learn from lessons in life and just try to get back on track and a lot of times looking back, and I’m sure maybe in your own life or other people I’ve shared this, it is those challenges, and opportunities that propel you to a different kind of focus and a different kind of success and it may seem really bad at the time and it may be really bad at the time. But I am always looking for the positive way out of it and the positive result and that’s just been my approach to life.
Norman 17:14
So has there been any one example that you can give? That was just something that was a kick between the legs, you had to overcome it, and if so, what did you learn from it?
Matt 17:28
Yeah. Well, there’s one early in life that was incredibly impactful and as before, all the college stuff and all the entrepreneurial stuff that we talked about, I’m gonna have some examples of those cases as well. But when I was a junior in high school, against growing up in a small town, we didn’t have much life, it was challenging enough. I’m a 16 year old high school student where I didn’t have a lot of responsibility in the world, but on my way home from school one day, in February, a cold winter day. Driving home from school, some friends, my house was on fire and burnt completely to the ground. Well, yeah, so that was, for a 16 year old in high school, that’s devastating enough. But I remember running up seeing all these fire trucks around my house. It was four o’clock in the afternoon or so. Not knowing if my parents were in there and not seeing my parents and just coming upon that scene watching your home burned down. It was surreal. I can still hear the fire crackling to this day and kind of smelling that smell and then finally, a firefighter came up to me who knew the family put his arm around me and I’m thinking, Oh no. What is he gonna tell me? Where’s my mom? Where’s my dad? Thankfully, he said, Hey, everyone’s okay. Your mom’s over at your grandmother’s house and then I saw my dad, he pointed to where my dad was and I just stood there with my dad watching a home that he built with his own hands burned to the ground and everything they had accumulated in life, pictures, wedding pictures, kids, our photos, we didn’t have iPhones at the time and not everything was in the cloud. I mean, we lost everything, literally everything except for the sweater in the jeans I was wearing that day and it was devastating. So I just watched what that did to my dad and my mom and it was gut wrenching. Just thinking about it right now. But I watch how they persevere. through that. At the time when my brother had just graduated school. So he was out of the house. He was off into the military. I was on the verge of graduating. I had to go through my whole junior and senior year. Living, basically in a trailer type situation, and I watched how that just impacted my parents and how they persevered and still tried to provide for us and get me off to college and so on. So that is one thing that was incredibly impactful at a young age that I just look back on and really have just grown a certain appreciation for not so much material things in life, but experiences and family and just the more meaningful things in life that really, truly matter when it gets right down to it.
Norman 20:36
One of the things that you mentioned, people forget about it nowadays. But I remember as a kid, kind of thinking about this, not even a kid, teenager, and if there was a fire, and trying to grab the pictures, because people nowadays, they got their iPhone. Everything’s in the cloud, like you said, but ah, just, I think of anything, anything else can burn. But let’s grab the pictures.
Matt 21:05
You know what? It happened, it’s 16 years old for me and not 46 years old. As a teenager, it impacted me one way, but just perspective wise, looking back and seeing what my parents went through. They’re really the ones that lost the things in life. I’ve had a chance to grow career and build and stuff like that, but just, it just put life in a different perspective for me, certainly on the material things and yes, it was challenging and then just throughout life, like the situation in 2008, 2009, when I was launching my business, now it’s easy to look back and say that was the best time for me to launch a business. But at the time, it was scary. It was like, did I just do the right thing? You really got to draw from that intrinsic, that inner strength and belief in yourself, and then solve issues and just continue to bounce up, bounce back up, when you get knocked down. There have been times in life when I thought I had a business partner, or somebody that I had known, trusted, respected, where they all of a sudden, they that goes sour, because they’re trying to take your idea or something like that. Those times in life are pretty challenging when you really think you know somebody or trust somebody in it, and it just doesn’t work out that way and that’s just part of life and that’s why, again, I attribute a lot of the any success I’ve had to the perseverance and I have a deep faith and it doesn’t mean I always get it right or I have the answer at the time for everything. But I do believe that there’s a way through each situation and I try to find that out.
Norman 22:56
Right. Yeah, I know, for myself, I’ve had some business partners that have been good and I’ve had the opposite and usually the way that I find out who a person is, is during the struggles, so maybe, you’re going through a tough spell, but it’s usually greed and fear and that will determine if you’ve got a good partner or a bad partner. Yeah.
Matt 23:24
But again, that’s part of life, right? I mean, so many people in business, a lot of people that we look up to, a lot of people maybe that we don’t know about, that have had success, or they’ve all dealt with that, too and it’s just how, what do they say? Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you respond to it.
Norman 23:42
Right? Yeah. So I’m kind of curious, like with the current company, yeah. You’re sports oriented. Yeah. Well, with what’s happening right now with COVID, it’s gonna affect it a little bit.
Matt 23:58
Yeah and in a lot of ways, it’s not apples to apples by any means. It’s a much more exaggerated situation. But, similar to when I launched my company, and in oh nine, and the challenges that were happening with the economy. That was one thing, but now every sports team, I mean, there’s no fans in the stands. It’s slowly coming back. That’s encouraging. But it is slowly coming back. I know situations are dire for a lot of team college athletic departments, all pro pro teams, minor league teams. So I think coming out of this Norm, the opportunities are going to be abundant and I say that with a certain amount of reverence, knowing that I’m not just looking to seize on that opportunity. I truly, really want to show clients and partners, the benefit that we can do to help them kind of recover from all this through good strategy, good planning, good performance and getting results that they need. Because there’ve been a lot of great people, a lot of very talented and good people furloughed, laid off, looking for work. Athletic departments and professional teams that have just come to a screeching halt in a lot of ways with sales and marketing, they’re trying to be creative. But when it does bounce back, I think there’s gonna be a tremendous need globally, not just here domestically in the US. But I think globally, where teams can utilize the innovation that we’re now bringing to the market, the innovation and the strategy that we can employ. So I’m optimistically looking towards that day when things start kind of moving again.
Norman 25:53
So I’m going to swing it to the other side. So we’re gonna go full spectrum here. So we’ve talked about the adversities. But what about your greatest success and I think we might have even touched on it. I mean, we’ve talked about a lot of really great information, a lot of things that you’ve done in your life. But is there something that stands out, your greatest success?
Matt 26:17
Yeah, I try to be pretty humble on things like that. So honestly, the first thing that comes to mind, I’ve been very fortunate, I’ve been very, very blessed and very fortunate and there’s been a lot of success along the way that people would measure in terms of revenue generated and milestones like that. But I truly feel that the greatest success that I’ve been able to have, so far, when I look back at people that I’ve hired, and helped grow, and they go off and become something as a result of maybe, a small part of what I’ve been able to provide or steer them in the mentoring, the training, the opportunity in itself, that is truly what I’m most proud of and that’s what I would, that is what I would call my biggest success is, is the number of people that I think have been impacted and have gone on and now it’s fun to watch them with their big titles. I know their salary ranges that they’re making and growing a family and just growing a career that truly, honestly, is what I think of when I think of success.
Norman 27:38
Somehow I thought you would say something like that.
Norman 27:42
No, just me just everything that I’ve been able to talk to you about over this podcast. You are a great business leader.
Matt 27:53
I’ve had an incredible opportunity to meet some, like I mentioned Howard Schultz earlier in the program. Just to meet opportunity to meet people like that. One of my current business partners is a guy named Ron Rice, Ron is legendary in his own mind. This is a separate business from Fan summit. But Ron created the company called Hawaiian Tropic, he built that company into an iconic brand, he’s legendary in his own right and he and I are just best friends. I see him every day, we spend a lot of time together, we travel the world, we go to the Super Bowls, and Final Fours and it’s just been a fun part of my life and it’s a result of kind of the hard work and people you meet along the way and just surrounding yourself with quality people.
Norman 28:40
So it’s interesting that you say this, because what I found, like just doing this podcast, and just in life in general, I find that just people attract people that are either positive or negative and I don’t know what it is. But if I find that there’s somebody that is against my values, like, first of all, like, I don’t have any attraction to hanging around with them. But I also notice all of their buddies are similar to them. So, I could look at one person I know who his friends are.
Matt 29:16
Yeah, so true. It’s so true and you get really good at picking up on that, especially when you have to hire people when you really kind of are in tune with looking for certain qualities and stuff. But again, like I said before, you kind of know it when you see it, you know who you are, you know what you’re looking for and when you see that in a person and you just easily drawn to them and and yeah, I subscribe to that 100%
Norman 29:46
Well, You’ll never believe it. We’re at the end of the podcast and see you’re no longer on the firing line. But except for one thing. At the end of every podcast, I always pass the torch. I ask a question, Matt, do you know a guy?
Matt 30:06
I know a lot of guys and I’ve been very fortunate and there’s a number of people that come to mind immediately. One that I’ve gotten to know here. Recently I’ve had a lot of engagement with a college professor at the University of North Texas, Bob Heere. He’s got a great background. He’s got some global global perspective and he’s got the academic side, but he’s also a budding entrepreneur in his own right and well connected, and things like that. So Bob is one that immediately comes to mind.
Norman 30:39
Fantastic. Well, I can’t wait to talk to Bob.
Matt 30:43
Yeah. That would be great. I think it’d be a great conversation and I think he’ll have a lot to offer.
Norman 30:48
Fantastic. So, Matt, thank you for being on I Know This Guy. It’s been great. I hope that we get a chance to talk sometime in the near future.
Matt 31:00
I do too. I’ve really enjoyed it. I appreciate the opportunity to participate and I hope people find it beneficial and meaningful. I know I have. Norm it has been great to spend some time here with you today and I thank you very much.
Norman 31:15
Thanks a lot, Matt.
Matt 31:17
Thank you.
Hayden 31:21
That concludes our interview with Matt Difebo. Make sure to tune in next time for an interview with Travis Steffen. Travis is the CEO of GrowFlow. We talk a little bit about his martial arts background, what he’s doing in the Cannabis space now and he also packs the episode full of productivity tips, many of which I’m trying to implement every single day since the interview. So don’t miss it. See you then.
