Morgan Katz is the Founder and CEO of Ticketnology, a SaaS company specializing in optimizing event ticket management and maximizing ROI for businesses through its software platform, Ticket Booth. Under her leadership, the company has achieved a 96% renewal rate with its customers, demonstrating its effectiveness in streamlining ticket management and enhancing client ROI. Morgan has a keen eye for innovation and a knack for finding creative solutions to complex ticketing challenges. Her expertise spans many areas, including ticketing platforms, event management systems, and customer experience optimization.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [1:48] Morgan Katz shares the perks of growing up in an entrepreneurial family
- [3:35] What Morgan learned while working in minor-league baseball
- [6:00] The challenges of managing large-scale, diverse events
- [7:04] How to balance local autonomy and corporate goals while scaling operations
- [9:22] Addressing corporate season ticket underutilization and the need for innovative solutions
- [11:22] How Ticketnology’s platform improves ticket management and increases ROI for businesses
- [17:47] Morgan talks about the early days of Ticketnology
- [19:00] Challenges of being a non-technical founder in the tech space
- [20:48] Lessons learned from a failed event registration software project
- [23:56] The impact of economic contraction on ticketing budgets
In this episode…
Corporate season tickets are often underutilized, with nearly half going unused each year, leading to wasted opportunities and reduced ROI for businesses. Many organizations struggle to distribute and track tickets effectively, often relying on inefficient methods like email and spreadsheets. How can companies overcome these inefficiencies to maximize ticket usage and enhance the overall event experience?
Morgan Katz, a seasoned professional in the world of ticketing and event technology, has addressed this issue with a centralized platform, Ticket Booth, that simplifies ticket management and improves ROI. Morgan emphasizes the importance of creating clear policies and procedures for ticket distribution, approval timelines, and utilization strategies to reduce waste and improve efficiency. By implementing these systems, businesses can increase ticket usage, foster better client relationships, and maximize the return on their investment while reducing manual overhead.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Morgan Katz, Founder and CEO of Ticketnology, about how her SaaS platform optimizes event ticket management for businesses. Morgan shares her journey from managing live events to launching a tech company during the pandemic, the challenges of being a non-technical founder, and how she learned from the failure of an event registration product.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “I never understood a traditional nine-to-five or sitting at a desk; entrepreneurship was always in my blood.”
- “Growing up around entrepreneurs meant every day was filled with big wins, losses, and endless creativity.”
- “47% of corporate season tickets go unused; it’s about connecting the dots better.”
- “We aim to help businesses increase ROI by efficiently managing tickets and reducing waste.”
- “I dove in and decided to build software right when we were coming out of intermission.”
Action Steps:
- Implement a centralized ticket management system: By consolidating all tickets into one platform, businesses can streamline the process and enhance visibility, reducing the chances of tickets going unused. This addresses the common challenge of managing multiple platforms and helps in optimizing ticket ROI.
- Establish clear policies for ticket usage: Define specific guidelines and timelines for requesting and approving ticket use within the organization. This creates structure, minimizes confusion, and ensures tickets are distributed effectively, tackling the issue of unused tickets.
- Focus on internal engagement and communication: Regularly communicate the benefits and availability of tickets to employees to increase awareness and engagement. This helps in building a culture where employees are more proactive in utilizing tickets, addressing the disconnect often found in corporate settings.
- Explore resale and donation options: Implement systems that allow easy resale or donation of unused tickets. This not only reduces waste but also maximizes the potential value of tickets.
- Leverage feedback for continuous Improvement: Gather and analyze feedback from employees and stakeholders on the ticketing process to refine and enhance the system. This ongoing evaluation allows for adjustments that can improve user experience and ticket utility, overcoming the initial launch challenges.
Sponsor: Rise25
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Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to start a business and thrive in an industry that you know and love. My guest today is Morgan Katz. I’ll tell you more about her in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:12
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:29
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the show. And you know, every week I talk to interesting CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies.
We’ve had Netflix, Kinkos, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, and so many more. Check out the archives. Lots of great episodes for you to check out. And of course, this episode is brought to you by our company, Rise25, where he helped B2B businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcasts and content marketing. And you can learn more about what we do at Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
All right. And my guest here today is Morgan Katz. She is the Founder and CEO of Ticketnology. It’s a SaaS company that specializes in maximizing ticket event ticket value and minimizing misuse for businesses. And they have a technology, a software called ticket Booth that offers businesses a centralized platform for managing their event tickets and optimizing their ROI.
And she’s worked in the event space for a long time. So really well versed in that. And we’re going to talk about her background with Live Nation and some other areas as well. And Morgan, pleasure to have you here today. And I love interviewing people that grew up in families where everyone was an entrepreneur, which was the case for you, because I didn’t experience that at all. What was that like for you growing up in a family where you had lots of entrepreneurs around you?
Morgan Katz: 01:49
Yeah, absolutely. John, first off, thanks for having me. Excited to be here today. So it was what I knew. I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal to have these almost big roller coaster moments in the family, of big wins and big losses, and working from home at all hours and times of day. But it also was just this opportunity to be creative and see what was always available and out there. It was never necessary to be an accountant. You need to be a doctor. It was an open field for us to grow up in.
John Corcoran: 02:17
Yeah. That’s cool. And so they were more open for you to explore what you were interested in. Then it sounds like.
Morgan Katz: 02:24
Yeah, absolutely. I think it was very much that I didn’t know what I wanted to do growing up. I never started out as I’m always going to be this or I’m always going to be that. And I just kind of was able to piece together and events isn’t maybe the most traditional industry. While it’s a huge industry, it’s maybe not the most traditional. And so I was able to really experience that. I wanted to do that, that I was good at it and still thrive and excel.
John Corcoran: 02:48
Yeah. And so you kind of have joked that you have never had a job without a walkie talkie. So I guess you you just gravitated toward jobs where, you know, you have to have a walkie talkie, you’re moving around on the floor, that kind of that dynamic, fluid element of an event, whether it’s a live event, a sporting event, a party, something like that.
Morgan Katz: 03:11
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it goes back to always working as an entrepreneur, a kid growing up in that family. I never understood a traditional 9 to 5 or sitting at a desk. And so from being a camp counselor, a lifeguard, running events, it’s just literally always continued that I’ve had a job with the walkie talkie. And so it’s just a good tagline, but it’s actually a really true part of my story and journey.
John Corcoran: 03:35
And you worked for some smaller baseball teams. I am kind of fascinated by, like, small town baseball teams. We’ve got one near me that I take my kids to every year. It’s got a ballpark that seats a maximum of 800 people, although I’ve never seen it full. And it’s super fun. And so what was that like?
Morgan Katz: 03:55
Yeah, that was a great experience working in minor league baseball. There’s so many hats you get to wear working for a minor league team, and that was really eye opening on things. It’s also to get people in the stands. You have to be customer forward. You have to have a fan experience forward.
And that was a great tone for the rest of my career and how I wanted to spend the rest of my career working on that fan experience and that customer experience.
John Corcoran: 04:17
There’s a team called the Savannah Bananas, I believe it’s called, which has gotten a lot of attention. They have these crazy gimmicks and dress up just really like over the top. When you think of minor league baseball, how they do all kinds of different things, you know, fan promotions and stuff like that. They’ve just gone way overboard on it. And people love it.
Morgan Katz: 04:39
They do. Yeah, their story is amazing. They literally went from a guy with like $5 showing up to bid on the team and was the only one, and the city was like, what do we do with this? And then building this brand over the last 1012 years that now travels, does plays in stadiums and arenas. It’s incredible.
John Corcoran: 04:58
Yeah. It’s like, I don’t know, a circus coming to town or something like that. I think I live in San Francisco. I think they came through San Francisco last year, but I’ll have to go check it out. So did you do things like that? Did you guys have crazy promotions?
Morgan Katz: 05:10
You know, we did minor league baseball. You get to do a lot more, right? You have mascots dancing on the dugouts. You do different things, like the baby crawling to who’s going to get to home plate first and different things. Which was really fun and exciting.
I’m working on the season ticket holder side. We also tried to do something different. A lot of teams have, you know, Fan Fest before the start of the year. But what’s something that you can do to make it different and unique and even just the way you queue up lines, we really took a lot of time and energy to make sure that that was a great experience for everyone attending and set us apart.
John Corcoran: 05:43
So then going from that to Live Nation, which at the time, I think at some point there was merging with Ticketmaster, becoming the largest event tickets company in the country. It must have been like getting drafted to the big leagues to keep the baseball metaphor.
Morgan Katz: 06:01
It was very much so and it went from a baseball field to a baseball field. And it’s the same as having a rock concert, then a country, then a festival for two days. And everything was a different experiment, a different opportunity, which at first was incredibly overwhelming. And like, what did I get myself into? And then it turned into okay.
It kept it unique and fun year after year, event after event in Dallas. We were doing, you know, 400 events a year of different concerts. And so having that variety and that mixture made it fun all the time, no matter the volume we were doing.
John Corcoran: 06:38
How do you think a company like that, which was when you joined it, was still a pretty large company? You said that it had an entrepreneurial, you know, vibe or environment. How does a company of that size have an entrepreneurial atmosphere for its employees without also going off the rails, without, you know, you know, failing to deliver a consistent product? You know, that sort of thing.
Morgan Katz: 07:04
Yeah. I think they really led with the market leading the product. Right. So yes, we sold the same concerts. But a concert in Cincinnati is very different in Dallas in terms of the operations, the volume of ticket sales and everything else.
And so they let those local markets, those local leaders really have an impact on how that event was managed. And so that was the fun part, right? It was being able to take ownership. As long as you hit the KPIs, the revenue needed, things of that nature, how you got there, that path was really open and available. And so it was fun.
It was different. It was creative. And you could do a variety of things to make sure that you got to your end goal. But what worked best in your market? And at the time, that’s what they needed to grow, because they still were trying to figure out the brand connection of the two. And so it was just a really fun time to be a part of that and spend time building what we wanted to in Dallas and being successful there.
John Corcoran: 07:59
And by the end of your experience with Live Nation, you got to a point where it was no longer that environmental entrepreneurial environment. Disney, I guess, had come in and was managing it. I’ve kind of lost track of the corporate history. I guess Disney owns it now. Tell me a little bit what it was like at the end.
Morgan Katz: 08:19
Yeah. So some leaders came in from Disneyland from universal and other things, and they just have a very different culture that came over. And so it changed. And, you know, at that time Live Nation was hitting new strides, new numbers, bigger conversations, bigger artists. Ticketing in general was just bigger.
You know, topics for people in terms of ticket prices, fees, everything else had really started to be a forefront for people in daily conversation. In, so it went from lots of opportunity to this is the way you do it. And that’s a really hard transition that I never was able to fully adjust to and make when I was set in my ways of that entrepreneur side of it and wanting that creative and ownership there.
John Corcoran: 09:01
Let’s talk about, you know, what you felt was missing for businesses that needed to sell event tickets and particularly selling season tickets. What was missing that made you feel that you needed to find a new company that would help to address that pain point?
Morgan Katz: 09:22
Yeah. So back to when I was doing the sales and the ticket sales. It was always, hey, I’ll see you at the game or I’ll see you at the concert. And then I never saw you at the concert. Right.
47% of corporate season tickets go unused is kind of the national number. Oh, wow. It’s a huge number. Yeah. And so people that sign up for the tickets that agree to these contracts are not the people executing.
It becomes someone else’s other duties as assigned. Right. And so there’s this disconnect of why they bought them, how to use them, how important they are, the value. And so it’s startling the percentage of like renewals from year one and two for teams. It’s really low for people. That’s what they are.
John Corcoran: 10:01
Think. I mean I think about it, I haven’t had a lot of corporate experiences, but a friend invited me to a corporate box, the San Francisco Giants, about a year ago, and it probably sat 20 people or 20 people accommodated 20 people. And there were like four of us there, six, something like that. So it makes sense.
Morgan Katz: 10:19
Yeah, it happens all the time. So, you know, how do you connect those dots better? And having someone that understands the ticketing world and the games and everything helps. But also you need a system to put in place policies and procedures, a way to distribute, and then even an opportunity to resell what you’re not using or donate what you’re not using. It’s hard for someone to sell tickets on StubHub, for example.
As a corporation, they have to have a PayPal account to deposit money. And if you don’t have a corporate one, it’s going to someone’s personal cell phone number or whatever. Like there’s all these little hiccups that just get to be so many people don’t do it. It’s not worth the hassle. But if you have a product or a system that can do it for you, then you start to reap the rewards and make sure that you’re capitalizing on your tickets.