Being able to give back to the industry that I love and get something out of it makes it incredibly valuable.
I’ve made many good friends from the conference, for instance Dan at the Golden State Warriors. Me and Dan are very close, and we stay in constant contact throughout the year despite being a few thousand miles apart. We’re great friends; I know I can drop him a message anytime of day around some of the challenges I face or what I see in the industry and we can have a conversation.
We’ve shared a lot of best practice, and when the Warriors ended up joining Riot’s LCS esports league I was pumped for him and the team.
I look to people like Charlie Shin at the MLS. We've bumped into each other at E3, which is a big video games conference in LA which was weird but made a ton of sense when the League announced the EA Sports deal and consequent eleague.
It’s amazing knowing that I can pick up the phone almost any time of the night or the day and have access to people who really have the ear of their organization.
When we talk about going to North America now as a brand it just opens so many more doors. Because you can pick up the phone, you can have a casual chat with them. When you're over there you know you can go and have dinner and catch up.
So the networking part is the best in the industry of any event, I'm very, very fortunate with the network that I have now. And that's helped my career immensely.
Thank you for sharing that wonderful perspective Tom!
Can you please share two key lessons learned from your career?
A previous boss told me to hire people smarter than yourself. You don’t know what you don’t know but someone else does.
Hiring smart people and letting them do what they're best at.
I have a really good knowledge and understanding of CRM, Marketing Automation Systems, the technical side of marketing software, but I’m not a strategic specialist. That’s why we brought on people like Sophie when I was at the LTA, and now she’s leading Audience strategy for one of the largest and most prestigious sports events in the world. That's a testament to how brilliant she's been. I wouldn't have got to where I am in my career without the people I've hired. So, I would always say hire smarter people than yourself.
The second one; don’t respond to emails immediately, think it through. It’s a huge personal learning; a lot of the time I should perhaps sleep on some of the emails. I've learned to sleep on responding to an email. Draft the email, save it.
If I feel the same way in the morning, aim to have that conversation face to face. Context is key. We're in such a digitally savvy world that we're all quite guilty of just firing a quick response back sometimes and not always fully thinking about it. I've taught myself to slow down and think.
89