Festival Pass Founder Ed Vincent Joins Us On The Steve Jobs Inspired Join Up Dots Podcast
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Introducing Festival Pass Founder Ed Vincent
Festival Pass founder Ed Vincent is our guest today joining us on the Steve Jobs inspired Join Up Dots podcast.
He is an entrepreneur with over twenty years of business, technology, and management experience having founded and exited several companies in that time including helping to launch film festivals in multiple locations and creating the concept for a Maxim branded hotel in the Caribbean.
Most recently, he led a data platform and consultancy in the entertainment space with clients including A&E Networks, AMC Networks, Screenvision, MovieTickets.com and was brought into MoviePass as an interim head of data.
These experiences gave him the insight needed to make festivalPass a reality.
As he says “Hi, I’m Ed, founder of the world’s first festival and live events subscription service providing access to music, film, food and wine, and tech and innovation Festival Pass.
Enjoy hundreds of festivals locally and globally for one monthly fee.
FestivalPass is a story about community and creating experiences that changes you.
We as humans need connection; it’s in our DNA — as strong as the need for food, water, and warmth.
How The Dots Joined Up For Ed
We are bringing our members the only place to make accessing, discovering, and attending festivals spanning industries the most user-friendly, frictionless, and affordable member experience possible.
We strive every day to secure new event partners and think about what our customers want from a mobile app that complements their lived experiences.
I have learned what works and what doesn’t work in this space and look forward to inspiring people to lead active and engaging lives every day by participating in live community events both locally and globally.
Great stuff, but its ok to think “this is a good idea” and another to make it happen, so how did it happen?
How did he create a network of festivals who believed in him, before he had actually anything to offer them?
And where have been the struggles that has made Leisurepass a reality?
Well lets find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr. Ed Vincent.
Show Highlights
During the show we discussed such deep weighty subjects with Ed Vincent such as:
Ed shares how there are 1,000’s of festivals across the world and how his team seek out the events every week.
We discuss the early stages of building his business before he even had a business – similarly to Airbnb’s business model
and lastly……
Why its such a value driven idea as there is no additional transaction fee for attending events….a true win win for all of us
How To Connect With Festival Pass Ed Vincent
Return To The Top Of Festival Pass Ed Vincent
If you enjoyed this episode with Ed Vincent, why not check out other inspirational chat with Matt Sweetwood, Origin Clear, Mort Fertel and the amazing Udo Erasmus
You can also check our extensive podcast archive by clicking here – enjoy
Full Transcription Of Festival Pass Founder Interview
David Ralph [0:01]
Once upon a time, there was a guy with a dream, a dream to quit his job, support himself online and have a kickoff live. Little did he know that dream would lead him into a world of struggle, burnout and debt, until he found the magic ingredient and no struggles became a thing of the past. I of course, was that person. And now My dream is to make things happen for you. Welcome to Join Up Dots.
Intro [0:27]
When we’re young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be. But somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here’s your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph.
David Ralph [0:52]
Yes, hello there. Good morning, everybody. Good morning to you all and thank you for being here on another episode of join us Join Up Dots the motivation or business coaching podcast that hopefully will inspire, entertain and inform you as well. Well, today’s guests that we’ve got on the show is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of business technology and management experience having founded and exited several companies in that time, including helping to launch film festivals in multiple locations, and creating the concept for a maximum branded Hotel in the Caribbean. Now, most recently, he led a data platform and consultancy in the entertainment space with clients including a&e networks, AMC Networks, screen vision, movie tickets calm and he was brought into movie pass as an interim head of data now, a lot of people out there kind of thing. What should I do? What should I do for a job? More often than not, you’re actually building your job as you go. And these experiences that our guests gave him new insight needed to make a new company and festival paths became a reality. He says, I am The founder of the world’s first festival and live events subscription service, providing access to music, film, food and wine, and tech and innovation. festival pass. Enjoy hundreds of festivals locally and globally for one monthly fee. Now, festival pass is a story about community and creating experiences that changes you. We as humans need connection is in our DNA as strong as the need for food, water and warmth. Now we’re bringing our members the only place to make accessing discovering and attending festivals, spanning industries the most user friendly, frictionless and affordable member experience possible. We strive every day to secure new event partners, and think about what our customers want from a mobile app that complements their live experiences. I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work in this space. And I now look forward to inspiring people to lead active and engaging lives every day by participating in live community events both locally and globally. Now this is great stuff. But it’s okay to think this is a good idea. And then now but to make it happen, so how did it happen? How did he create a network of festivals who believed in him before he’d actually anything really to offer them? And where have been the struggles that has made this a reality? Well, let’s find out as we bring them to the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr. Ed Vincent. Good morning Ed, how are you?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [3:29]
Good morning, David. I’m great. How are you?
David Ralph [3:31]
I’m very well, very well copy of a sore throat. It is that time of year when we’re coming into the warmer bits. But we’ve still got the sucky bits. How are you doing? Are you? Are you fit? Are you? Are you worn out by attending all these festivals all the time?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [3:47]
Not necessarily. So luckily, I get to go to as many as I like but at the same time, I don’t have to go to all
David Ralph [3:53]
now let’s get straight into this because I looked at this first of all, and we have festivals in the United Kingdom. Some of them huge, some of them tiny. But more often than not, I always find out about them after they’ve happened. When somebody says to me, I had a brilliant weekend this weekend, we went to x y Zed. So how do you keep up with all of them so that you can make it count and your your app isn’t behind the times?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [4:19]
Sure. So that’s a that’s a great, great question. So obviously, once we’re targeting this market, and currently, we’ve launched here in the US, we will, in the coming years, be launching throughout Europe and elsewhere throughout the world. But there there is an issue in that capacity for the consumer market. So everybody hears about the big ones like in your world, probably Glastonbury and, and others. And here in the States people hear of you know, Coachella and summerfest. And some of the big ones that are that are here, but there are hundreds and thousands if not thousands of festivals across the board in The genres that we talked about, it’s really hard for consumers to fully discover and realise even once they’re right there in their home city. So that’s one of our, you know, value propositions is really aggregating all that data, having it all within one place to go view, and, and aspire to attend and then giving them the opportunity to do so. So it’s our team’s job to go out and seek that information.
David Ralph [5:24]
So how do they do it? It’s okay. You know, I was talking to somebody through Airbnb the other day, and I was saying to him, I don’t know how they got Airbnb off the ground, because you’ve got to have the properties before you’ve got the company. And if you haven’t got the company, you haven’t got the properties. You know, how did you start this going? Was it just in your own town and you spread out in wider and wider circles?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [5:49]
Sure. So it’s a great question. And Airbnb is a perfect analogy, because it’s a marketplace and it’s exactly what festival passes its marketplace and there’s two sides to every marketplace. So we need the consumers and we need the inventory. And of course, you need the inventory before you get the consumers. So, just like Airbnb, you know, in the beginning, we started out to look at the market and say, Okay, well, this makes a lot of sense because out of the it’s a $200 billion industry globally. And there’s, there’s hundreds of thousands of events. But when we look at what we need to get started, there’s, there’s a collection of companies that that have a certain set of events. So one of the things we did initially that really got me excited and gave me I would say the encouragement to really push forward was I have some friends who are part of the the largest radio network here in the US, you know, multibillion dollar large company and they alone through all of their local radio stations and sponsorships are actually part of over 20,000 events just here in the US. Then there’s a couple others that are the big guys out there. Some of which were working with others that were not yet and will be in the future. But you probably heard of the some of the big names the live nations aegs of the world where they have thousands of festivals that they produce indoor. So that’s, that’s the beginning kind of had a start. But the reality of it is, is what makes this so special is the 80% of the market that aren’t owned by the big guys. There’s there’s a bunch of people out there that are festival producers, and they might produce five festivals or six or seven events, but they also there are some out there that produce 50 or 100. You know, we’re working with a group based out of Miami and they have dozens upon dozens events throughout the US doing just culinary festivals. So they do you know wine, wine, wine and food events. They do whiskey tastings, they do pig roast, they do a lot of things like that. And when when you get one person does 100 events, it starts adding up quickly
David Ralph [7:58]
because what I love about this Through Join Up Dots, I’ve become more and more anti social media because it breaks down but ability of true life interaction and connectivity and getting out. And you know, we all come back from weekends and we go, Oh, it was a brilliant weekend, we slept in a tent, we was out in a field, we brushed our teeth with a twig. It was amazing. And you don’t get that by that sort of fake interaction with social media. But of course you need to social media to grow your business as well. So what is the site that excites you most that live interaction, or the ability to get your business in front of as many people as possible through social media?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [8:40]
Yeah, it can’t be one or the other. It’s a combination of both. So what I love is, I love that the result is, you know, thousands, hopefully millions of people because of us getting together and having that interaction and and what while we have been targeting as well as many people We’ll talk about often is millennials throughout the world, rather spend their time on the money and time on experience. And since then they do hard goods, most of their discretionary income goes to attending these kinds of experiences. It’s also for more people even outside of the millennial set. So you gave a great example of the folks that are, you know, brushing their teeth with a twig out and attend. We have just as many, you know, 200 plus dollar events where people are hanging out with a celebrity chef, you know, at a high end wine tasting. So there are multiple products for multiple people at multiple times. So what
David Ralph [9:38]
kind of casting are we looking at? Because I don’t know what it’s like in the US. But if you come over here, I remember I was talking the other day one of my first concert I went to was queen in Wembley Stadium 1986. And we It was an amazing day. It was Queen because like, and my ticket was 25 pounds. I found it the other day. Now you’d have to pay 150 pounds. Easy per bat. How are you marketing this? And do you still get to see the big guys? Or is it the sort of sub festivals that that make this work for you?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [10:14]
Yeah, great question. And it is it is the big guys as well. So the model that we built, and this is important from a business perspective, you know, we talked, we talked a little bit about the fun consumer side of it. But when I’m connecting the dots, or joining up the dots, as I should say, a lot of my experiences over the past couple decades, brought me to this place, and we can get into a little bit of that because I know that’s part of what you love about the show you have. But one of the simple things is the subscription based business model. There’s many, many people that have kind of tried to do it with an unlimited type of subscription and often failed because there was no growth team unit economics for you. customer. So there was a company that about three or four years back, and I’m not sure if you have it in the UK, but they’re now in 30 countries called classpass. And they’re they’re really a subscription that allows people to go to exercise classes. So Ours is a little more fun than exercising but but from a model perspective, they introduce something which is a credit based system. And if you can think about it, I love you created some analogies back to your childhood, when you would go to the arcade. For those of us who are old enough to know, the idea of credits and tokens aren’t new. They’re just haven’t been used that much. So the idea, you go to an arcade, you put in $10 the machine, you get a bunch of tokens. And then when you go spend those tokens, the pinball machine might be one token, and you know, Pac Man might be two tokens, and then the B racing game might be six. So the idea is you get a certain amount of tokens and you can spend them as you desire that solves for the the question you asked, that solves for the business. backyard. beer tasting is one one token versus the the big guy for the Wembley Stadium and then is, you know, six or 10?
David Ralph [12:08]
Well, okay, so that’s brilliant. So you can basically budget your allocation throughout the year. And you could go right okay, the Rolling Stones are playing Madison Square Garden, that’s gonna cost me 10 credits. I’m going to save that, because on the month before we go to three smaller ones, and you kind of plan out through the year so that you get best bang for your buck, I suppose.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [12:32]
Absolutely. And the best part about it is is you kind of just look at what what do you want to invest in an experiential life. We have plans as low as $9 a month and is as high as $99 a month. And if you just commit to a specific plan, obviously the more you commit the cheaper per credit you pay. So if you are planning to go to a big event at Madison Square Garden, three or four months out, you might as well do the 4979 $99 a month plan because per credit, you’re getting a better deal.
David Ralph [13:00]
I even like 76 I just did the math $99 is 76 quid, right? 76 pounds sterling. Now I was equating the other day of how much I spend. I was saying to my kids, you don’t realise I have to pay you for the TV just so that we can watch it. And then you’ve got Netflix, then you’ve got amazon prime. And then my daughter saying, Oh, we haven’t got a Disney Channel, and I’m saying no, I’m not doing that. And Ben, we’re paying into that. And I go, Well, yeah, but you need the internet for your business like, Oh, yeah, but I’m still paying for it. Now. So it all equates to sort of like 150 quid, and most of the time, I don’t get any value from it. Now 76 quid I think, but that’s that’s a bargain for me and my wife to have things to be able to go and do together and get a nice little hotel for the evening and see some of Benton’s This seems a win to me. I’m actually excited by this Mr. Vincent already. I love it. Thank you. I appreciate I appreciate the support.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [13:57]
So yes, you’re absolutely right. It is A lot of people want to have an experiential life and do things. And when you take away the the desire to say, Hey, I’m only going to do it on a one time transaction. And then after I bought the tickets from one of the big ticketing companies, I got to pay a big ticketing fee. And that just just feel sometimes that hey, you know, that’s too much. But when you just budget so
David Ralph [14:23]
so let me jump into that as well. So there’s no there’s no booking agent on the top because that that really annoys me when you look at a ticket. And then certainly over here at the oh two, which is just up the vote for me in London. They have you know, you’re not dealing with anyone, it’s not like somebody’s job, but you bought a ticket, and then there’s the booking fee on top, and then there’s the postage, and then they even do booking fees on car parks. So you book a car park and then you know, so it works out an absolute fortune. So would this just be this one fee and you’re not adding extra stuff that’s going to take way my credits through the month.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [15:02]
That is correct. So so there are no no transaction fees for booking at all. And our promises it’s always going to be cheaper throughout festival paths than it ever would be to go directly to buy a one off ticket.
David Ralph [15:16]
I’m one over here. I am absolutely one over here. Right. Okay, so before my excitement gets too much, let’s jump back in and hear the words of Jim Carrey. And then we’re going to delve more into Ed Vincent’s journey heres Jim.
Jim Carrey [15:30]
My father could have been a great comedian, but he didn’t believe that that was possible for him. And so he made a conservative choice. Instead, he got a safe job as an accountant. And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from that safe job. And our family had to do whatever we could to survive. I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don’t want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.
David Ralph [15:57]
So is this what you love now? Oh, you will dots leading up and it looks like something that seems a natural path. But you’re dealing with data, you’re dealing with the entertainment, you’re dealing with these kind of industries that put you at that Crossroads where you suddenly fault. I’ve got the experience here, I can see how to pull this all together. So is this the thing that you love?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [16:18]
This is this is, you know, I’ve told people and investors and people that I’ve talked to and big media companies that we’ve shared the story with, it’s it’s really all things lead to me doing this at this time. So he absolutely did. Yeah, I can get into the why, but it’s a this is the thing, I want to do it. I’m the perfect person to be doing it. And it’s really into the why then you’ve led
David Ralph [16:45]
me up that path. So tell me the why.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [16:47]
Yeah. So when you look at my past experiences is first of all, I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years, so I understand what it means to build companies and I’ve done it a couple times throughout most of the 2000s for my team 2000 to 2008 I had an experiential marketing agency. And part of what we did was we would activate big brands. We had about 70 people on the team, we’ve activate these big brands across festivals and events and street teams and all the things that were related to it. And I really had a passion for live events. It just was something I just love being at and loved being a part of, we helped launch a few film festivals. And then as you as you said, in our leader, we actually owned wine down in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, and that was a tonne of fun. I really enjoyed it. And it just was something that I really wanted to be a part of going forward. But I also have a love for technology and the internet. So my first company was an e commerce company. Following that agency. I had a software as a service business. So I love building technology. I love the way different business models and technology create efficiencies. I so love live events. So you know, then I spent about five or six years as a partner in a consulting firm I founded, which was providing consumer data insights to all the big television networks and, and movie theatres and movie studios. And then I spent about 18 months internally as a client, a company called movie pass, which, in the UK, I’m not sure you know what that is, but you might have similar business models. It was a you pay a one time fee, go to as many movies in the theatre as you wanted. Oh, yeah. Yep. So that company in the US had a tonne of interesting things. It was like the rise and fall of a very unique company. They really disrupted the entire studio industry, you know, raised in spent $500 million. But one of the things I learned is that, you know, they made a couple key core mistakes along the way. You know, when I was in there, I was able to see all the data and be able to see, you know, the mistakes that were being made. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the power at the time to lead and change those mistakes. But I did the best I could to to help them get better at what they were trying to do. But having that knowledge and knowing the business model that does work, knowing the type of market like live events, which is, you know, a $200 billion, massive industry that has price elasticity on the events, and also has the ability to aggregate, you know, 80% of the market that are decentralised and then looking back to my love of everything I wanted to be as part of events, that that’s kind of like this is the right business for me. And then the last thing on this connected dots concept is I have three children live in New York City. And as life evolves, I really want to explore more of a global kind of global life where as my kids get older, They’re only able to travel more don’t necessarily have to be in a specific office. And I wanted to any business I started today I wanted it to be global in nature. So if there’s any business that is global in nature, it’s a live events business. Life and one last piece in, shut up so you could talk a little more. Through my entrepreneur group, I’ve been part of an entrepreneur group called eo for over 13 years, and spent three years in a, an MBA class at, at MIT. And in the process, you know, my class is a collection of 70 people from all over the world representing over 50 countries and just that, building those relationships and connections with people in countries every everywhere, makes me you know, I want to share that experience and be able to go visit them and and try and do business in all these different countries. And now I have this amazing network, and that now with festival pass, I have a product Call it a canvas to paint on where I can now build it right in the US and then ticket country by country. And in the process Really? I think you said it right is have have an amazing life and let the business serve my dream rather than working really hard just to make money to to live my life. I agree with that
David Ralph [21:18]
totally aired in many shapes and forms. I was reflecting I spent about five weeks in New York City in August. And literally every corner there was something going on. And it just blows my mind. But you can keep up with this or the fact that these you know, every little event, every little taste testing every little bit of being just New York City itself is is a minefield, isn’t it to do this. So let’s talk about New York because that’s on the forefront of my mind. I went to the theatre several times and I used to go to Times Square and I used to queue up to get me tickets on this kind of like big staircase thing. When other times I went straight to the theatre. Now, if I was coming to festival pass, and I was being told that there’s a show on tonight, can I buy my tickets directly? Do I have to queue up? Do I get the discount? How does it work?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [22:13]
All the great question. So So I would say right now it depends. So we do have a collection of theatres that we feed product in from. And a lot of that comes from some of the ticketing partner partner relationships we have. So people are able to go in the festival past search for Broadway as a topic, and find the ones that we have. To date today. We don’t have all of them, hopefully over time as we continue to build direct, strong relationships with each of the theatres. We will but there’s there’s an economic model that we need to meet to make sure that our users are getting the the value they need. So but from your your question is, if you were to go to a show that happened to be on our plane, platform, you would not have to queue up, you would just go to our platform, find the show, see that it costs 20 credits, 30 credits, redeem those credits. And then we automatically generate a barcode right there in the app, or on the website, depending upon what you’re using. And you just take that barcode right to the theatre and run it through the scanner and you’re in. Right.
David Ralph [23:20]
I’m a techie phobe in certain regards. And I don’t have a mobile phone. So I don’t walk around with a cell phone at all. So can I can I print things off? Can I go old school and yet and still get into these places?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [23:34]
Yeah, absolutely. So from a tech perspective, all it really is is a QR code. And the QR code is just a collection of data points that generates a picture. And a picture is just the, you know, effectively the security of the ticket itself. So once it generates within your account on festival pass, you can print it out and
David Ralph [23:52]
take it to the theatre. We’re talking to Ed Vincent, the founder of festival pass, and we’ll be back after these words.
Unknown Speaker [24:00]
You’re ready to make a full time living online. Check out the amazing Join Up Dots business coaching.
Unknown Speaker [24:05]
Hello, my name is Alan. And I’ve just completed the excellent eight week course with David. Before I started working with David, actually, I had no idea at all where to start. I had a lot of ideas about what I probably thought was going to be good business. David was able to help me through that though, to find that passion. Within literally minutes. We had, we had a business idea. And for the last seven weeks, we’ve been building on it and building on it and the position I’m in now, I don’t think I’ve ever got here on my own because of the amount of information that David gives the structure. He’s got the full package here and he explains it in a way that I can understand. His support is phenomenal. I feel like this is the way business is supposed to work. They’ve helped me understand, okay, what were the next logical steps that I should do? How can I get this up and running? So I would really recommend this as an excellent course. Helping you if you have an idea if you have no idea, really teasing that out and some of the practicalities and steps to take to really launch your business, whether as a full time job or as a side hustle. So it was really excellent. I recommend it for anybody thinking about setting up their own business. I don’t think so exaggeration to say, David, to save you years. Thank you, David, for all your amazing help and support which keeps on going. And we certainly couldn’t be where we are today without you. So you’re awesome.
David Ralph [25:30]
So if you would love to become my next success story and have your own life changing online business, following my step by step system, being tuned over many years to take away the effort and expense that others struggle with. Then come across to Join Up dots.com and book a free call with myself. Let’s get you living the easy life as it’s there waiting for you to get it that is Join Up dots.com business coaching. So we’re talking to Ed Vincent next boundary festival pass. And you might sense a little bit excited by this. And so there’s so many questions going in my head. So Seva is is a yearly subscription is a monthly one. And then there’s two questions here. That’s the first one. And imagine that I was going to go to say, New York and I think there’s things in New York, could I get a package for like free mumps and roll my credits up so that when I hit the place, and I’ve got like three months of credits that I can go mad, I feel
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [26:30]
that way. So the first answer, the first question is we are a monthly subscription, that you can cancel at any time. So you can sign up and just go for a month and then cancel. We’re also we have an annual subscription plan as well. So if you do commit for the 12 months ahead of time, you’ll get a discount. So currently, right now, I think we’re only selling the $99 a month plan as a 12 month subscription, but eventually we’ll have other other offers as well. And then to your The question is credited Do rollover. So if you if you signed up today for call it the $49 a month plan and you got yourself 39 credits each month, they’ll just accumulate. So month 139 month to your 78 month 327. And then you can choose to use them as you wish,
David Ralph [27:18]
when you wish. And all these transferable. So say suddenly something occurs with me and I can’t go, can you transfer them to a friend? Or do you lose out on them?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [27:30]
So that there’s two answers to the same question. So, right today, you cannot transfer them to a friend. However, in the relatively near future, when I say your future, three to six months out. We’re going to allow we’re going to introduce a family and friends plan. And what will allow is first everybody has to be a member of festival pass. That’s important from a data perspective and share. I can go down that rabbit hole if you’d like to talk about that as well. So We don’t allow people to buy two tickets for under one plan. And there’s a there’s a real reason for that. But, so when people are allowed to connect family and friends, we’re going to make that available only at certain tiers as an incentive to kind of increase your participation. And at that certain tier, you can connect like a social network with all your friends and your family, and even kids if you happen to have them on the platform as well. And in that process, we then allow people to transfer credits to anybody within their social network within as little as
David Ralph [28:35]
I think for 1000 quid a year based on the fact that you will have a life of experience and fun and more often than not you fritter away 1000 quid on stuff you don’t even know what you’ve had. It once again, it’s a no brainer. Mr. Vinson, I think you’re going to be the richest man on earth.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [28:54]
Well, as you know, wealth is only in experiences and low. Hopefully, I am now It’s not
David Ralph [29:00]
it’s not as well you can you can say that when you ain’t got the money, but when you it works, it works, doesn’t it?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [29:07]
No, no, hopefully I, I do see this as a business that can grow exponentially. And I do look forward to, to helping create creating value for everybody, both both investors, myself and all the consumers that touch it.
David Ralph [29:21]
So So when this is actually launched, because I’m on your website at the moment, and we’re talking 2020, March 2020, as we’re talking, and it says up and coming, but there’s nothing on there. It looks like a brand new website.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [29:34]
Oh, are you on festival? path.com It’s live.
David Ralph [29:37]
Yes, I am. Oh, it’s got nothing here. I’m looking at it. And it says upcoming recently added and there’s nothing for you. I’m just clicking on.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [29:46]
Interesting. So did you did you go to the festival section? Is that where you’re at? I am. Yes.
David Ralph [29:49]
Best
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [29:51]
travelling happening. And it’s actually a good thing is that because you’re in the UK. It’s probably not showing all the other cities. So what I would happen to tell you When you come onto the site, I’m sitting here in New York down, I immediately see upcoming festivals and that what that shows is all the festivals in certain areas nearby, whether it’s New York, Atlanta, Washington, and it shows a collection of hundreds of different events. And then immediately because I’m logging in from New York, I see near New York and then I’ll see all the New York festivals and then I’ll see all the Atlanta festivals and I’ll see all the Los Angeles festivals. So it is possible and it’s thank you for noting it. It’s possible because you’re in the UK you’re not seeing it
David Ralph [30:33]
so that that would sort of hold holidaymakers vacationers back a bit when they cuz you know, I’d go on to here thinking what I’m going over to New York, let’s get it all planned, but then I wouldn’t be able to see it.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [30:44]
Thank you for being one of our usability testers because because we soon as I ended this column, I’m on the call with my developers asking him Why can’t the guy in
David Ralph [30:54]
UK See it? There you go. There you go. So hopefully that will be a win for you. So if there’s anybody out there For the bold and you’re you go over to festival pass calm festivals and you see it out or you don’t see it can they drop you a line in the future? Can I tell you can I help you test this
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [31:13]
is system salutely. So, again, when when you’re on it, you probably see a little red circle on the bottom right hand side of the screen. That’s just a that’s a chat button. So, pop it up chat. It reaches our customer service team and donor.
David Ralph [31:27]
Brilliant. So that’s what we do, guys, anyone across the world jump over to Bestival parents.com go to the festivals and if you can’t see anything, just click the little chat button and say hey, I’m in St. Lucia or somewhere and I can’t see this and and let’s make this even better. Now. What interests me as well about this is why the industry because I remember years ago, back Pearl Jam, try to do a tour across America, of places that Ticketmaster didn’t own It almost destroyed them financially, because Ticketmaster basically controlled everything because they’re making so much money. And even if you go on other sort of like ticketing agencies, they’re basically all owned by Ticketmaster. Anyways, like one big sword monster, how would they allowed you to sort of
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [32:18]
get in on this? Sure. So, so, you bring up kind of one of the things I was saying earlier, which is generally 80 plus percent of the market is outside of that Ticketmaster kind of world. When I say 80%, I mean it from ownership of the events themselves. Ticket masters ticketmasters, owned by the largest company called Live Nation. So So you are correct in that perspective, that it is a large company. So a couple things is, you know, we’re working with a lot of the rights holders that may take it through Ticketmaster and we’re finding paths in order to be able to engage and work with them and Yeah, capacity. So we have partnerships with lots of other ticketing companies as well. Hopefully in the near future, we’ll also have one with Ticketmaster and just make the economics work for everybody. Right Stuff. Great stuff.
David Ralph [33:13]
So let’s take it back into a personal side to this. So where’s your dream? Then you say that you’ve pensee touring the world and having a business that isn’t restrictive. And I’m very sort of open on the fact that I’ve got that myself. Although I don’t take the business with me. I could do. I could podcast from anywhere. But I always think oh Bogard, leave it behind and go off into sort of explore. Will it be fun sitting on a beach with your laptop? Or will you be thinking, Oh, actually, I’ve got some work to do. And I’d rather go surfing instead. Yeah,
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [33:45]
good question. I mean, I enjoy work. So I just like the idea of not having it not having to be in a physical location. So you know, for me sitting with a laptop in Miami. Having a coffee looking at the Waves rolling makes me happy for me to be able to travel to Bali and meet my UI UX designer, and go over some strategy makes me happy. So that’s the kind of thing that I like doing.
David Ralph [34:12]
because me and the wife we’ve already discussed is my last two kids, my son’s just turning 18 off to university and my next one down 15. And I’m saying in a few years time, whenever off hands, what we will do is move into a town for like three months, and then experience it like natives and then go, let’s go somewhere else. Let’s go to Peru for premiums. Let’s go here. Let’s go there. And it’s a real sort of liberation, isn’t it when you realise that you can do that? Because for years, I don’t know about you, I had to go to an office. I had to be a corporate guy. And now you think to yourself, actually, I can do this anywhere I want. It blows me away, but more people don’t think that way. And I still do the daily commute all the time.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [34:57]
Sure. And I think part of it though, That you really just have gotten to a place where remote work is, is a part of people’s lives. So what I’m excited about with festival paths is, you know, I built multiple companies before and I always had a big office and I always tried to, you know, luckily, because I was the founder, I often made the office nearby my house. But outside of that, this is the first company I’ve ever building that truly is a remote company. So kind of what I referred to earlier is all true. I have a UI UX team in Bali. I have a engineer in LA, another engineer in Detroit, another one in Portugal is dead people down in Florida. So it really just expands, it spans the globe. And because of slack and because of other integration tools, where people do work, and then do a quick video of what their work was and then send it off through slack. It just makes it all come together and we don’t actually have to be sitting in the office the other
David Ralph [35:59]
end for people out They’re listening thinking, Oh, my brother does this festival they probably don’t know about. How can I sort of like hand it over to you? How can I share this all of the goings on? If it hasn’t touched your team?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [36:12]
Great question. So, um, you know, not only can they go on and through the customer service chat that I mentioned before, let us know about it there. We built the system. So individuals or sorry, event owners can come in and fill out a form and apply to be on the platform. So kind of just like you You mentioned Airbnb back in the day. Yeah. You know, by now, Airbnb gets most of their inventory by somebody saying, Well, hey, I have a treehouse. I want to put my treehouse up on Airbnb and they go in and all by themselves, they fill it all out, they put the information in the upload the photos, and they’re managing their own section of the website. So we have that capacity here. And people can just go to the partner section and just list who they are, what their festival is. And you know, in the early earlier days, somebody will probably get back to them and help them and assist them in the process. We’re going to make it so seamless, just like Airbnb does, where any event can list here. And on our side, we’ll just have to go through an approval process.
David Ralph [37:16]
Now, the beauty of all these episodes I do on Join Up Dots is I say to people, it’s ideas for you. It’s business ideas. Now somebody in the United near the United Kingdom could start something like this. And it makes no not a blind bit of difference to you is it doesn’t take away any sort of custom if the world is abundant. Do you look at that as something that you’re precious with? Or do you agree with what I’m saying there? But actually, yeah, go ahead, guys. do your own thing. Let’s, let’s share our wins. Let’s make this a global support.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [37:51]
Yes, absolutely. me. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, part of a global entrepreneur group of 14,000 entrepreneurs and I want nothing more than everybody to To take a swing at the bat and and try something and become an entrepreneur. You know, I also realise and I think you mentioned it earlier is a, it’s more than just an idea. You need to have the, the the experience, the grit and the ability to persevere. You know, and I’m sure you share it with all of your listeners is, you know, entrepreneurship is more about perseverance than it is.
David Ralph [38:26]
Yeah, no, absolutely is. It’s about the idea originally. And then it’s about learning. I think I spend more time learning about what I don’t know, to make things easier and become stronger. Because no matter what you started, even if you’ve got the biggest investment, there’s still going to be things like in our conversation when you suddenly think, oh, bloody Oh, the guy in the United Kingdom can’t see this. We’ve got to sort it out. The issues never stop. They just become different issues.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [38:57]
That is correct. Yeah, I agree with everything you just said.
David Ralph [38:59]
Well, I’m done. Do you do it? I’m glad you do. And I’m going to play some words now. And let’s see if you agree with them as well. Here’s Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs [39:06]
Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path. And that will make all the difference.
David Ralph [39:41]
Now with you obviously, we’ve already alluded to the fact that your dots have lined up pretty damn well. But when you look back on it, is there things that you think Yeah, I could have forced that I could have done things slightly differently, or are you absolutely. Now down but now Hang on. It played out quite well. Here.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [40:00]
Well, there are obviously a lot of mistakes that were made along the way. And a lot of outcomes, I think you’ve heard the old expression that what experiences experiences what you get when you don’t get the outcome you’re looking for. Yeah. So So along those lines, I’ve had multiple experiences where the outcomes weren’t exactly the way I wanted them to be. So could I’ve done things different? Sure. But when you have kind of a glass half full attitude, which I tend to have is, and I think that’s powerful for entrepreneurs, is now that I’m sitting here, and I see exactly what I want to be doing for the next five or 10 years of my life. And all the past experiences kind of led me here. And I’m just grateful more than anything else.
David Ralph [40:45]
It’s interesting. You say five or 10 years because I’m looking at this. I’m thinking jump down, jump down. Mr. Benson, this, this would be something that is is going to be going forever.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [40:55]
Well, I hope so. I hope so there’s always there’s always an interesting path, right? So I think every time Every entrepreneurs dream is to build a business without significant outside investment, that creates cash flow that then creates a beautiful life. But it’s scalable to a level where it can get really exciting. And then sometimes people go in and accept capital early from, you know, different investors. And then there’s some kind of requirement for an exit because as investors one out, so I’m trying to, to ride that middle line with this company, whereas I’m trying to take as little capital in the early stages as possible, while at the same time, you know, taking from trusted sources that want nothing more than to support the growth and are willing to be on the ride for a long time. So So the answer is, I would love this to continue to just be going forever. But there may be a point within those five or 10 years that that some market forces will require me to To sell it or be acquired by somebody?
David Ralph [42:03]
And do you have an exit strategy planned at all, I’ve been talking to a load of people about exit strategies. And one of the things that they seem to buy into is is a baby, I can’t I can’t get rid of it. And I always say to them yet it might be the right time to you know, get your money and go off and do something else.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [42:22]
Yeah, it’s a good question. I think I’m too early in that path right now to have a definitive exit path. Really, it’s about for me, spending the next you know, as I said, multiple years, making it successful, making sure it is sustainable, and making sure it can actually give back to some global, larger global perspective. You know, one of the things that excites me more than anything, is to have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of subscribers across the globe, and then use that as a platform to do good. You know, one of the ideas that we will probably implement, you know, call it in a year from now. allowing people that have some credits in their bank that maybe haven’t been able to attend a festival here or there. But can trans transpose those credits into some kind of charitable donation. And you know, towards the end of the year is December, I have 300 credits, why don’t I give 200 credits or 100 credits of that bank to one of the 10 or 20 charities that we support? And with that kind of volume, you know, we could we can effectively drive 10s of millions of dollars to really amazing causes throughout the world.
David Ralph [43:32]
Now, good on you. Good on you. Well, this is the partnership been leading up to but we called a sermon on the mic when we’re going to send you back in time to have a chance discovery of talking to the young Ed Vinson and if you could go into a room and speak to young Ed, what would you tell him? Well, we’re going to find out because I’m going to play the music and when it fades is your time. This is the Sermon on the mic.
Unknown Speaker [44:00]
Here we go
Unknown Speaker [44:01]
with the past
Unknown Speaker [44:06]
man, my
Unknown Speaker [44:09]
man.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [44:18]
Sure so so I think part of it is realising that you know a little bit what we said earlier is realising that there’s really only a few things that drive life and you know, kindness like that double precepts from a book called wonder which was when given the opportunity to be right or be kind choose kind little things like that along the way in life. Only looking back Do you realise how important those things are. You know, as an earlier self, it was all about Hey, be that entrepreneur go out and make millions of dollars and you know, be successful for you. And obviously now having three three children, three daughters, and then living through things in life where challenges happen, whether you have money or not realising that just being grateful and being kind, can power, you know, can power not only a good life but can empower, you know, the ability to succeed in general,
David Ralph [45:15]
powerful stuff. So, Ed, what is the number one best way that our audience can connect with you?
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [45:20]
Sure. So obviously, festival pass calm. As you mentioned, I’m going to make sure that everybody in the UK can see all the events. The second way is on social we’re on Instagram festival underscore pass. We’re on Facebook, just type in festival pass. You know, from a business perspective, I’m on LinkedIn just said Benson. You’ll find me there and any of the regular social chat where I bowling
David Ralph [45:44]
links on the show notes to make it as easy as possible. Ed, thank you so much for bringing us Bestival pass. And thank you so much for spending time with us today. joining up those dots. Please come back again when you’ve got more dots to join up because I do believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our paths It’s the best way to build our futures at Vincent, thank you so much.
Ed Vincent Festival Pass [46:04]
Thanks, David. Appreciate it.
David Ralph [46:08]
festival pass bounder Ed Vinson. So that seems good to me. That seems good. But you can get a load of credits. And then you can go on there and look at things and think oh, yeah, that’s that’s around the corner. I could go to that tonight. And I could do this, I could do that. And get away from the TV get out and about, excites me. And business models like that. Just is a win win, I think because once you get them up and running, in many ways, it’s maintenance. And the more people that subscribe, the more money they get in and then they can build bigger and bigger stuff. So big salutes to Ed Vincent, for everybody out there that are building businesses through Join Up Dots. Keep going. I’m going to connect with you again very, very shortly. You all doing amazing stuff. Anybody else that wants to at least have a chat about it. Come across to Join Up Dots and we will talk things through. But until next time, as I always say, I will be here and hopefully you will be here to look after yourselves. See you again. Bye bye.
Outro [47:10]
David doesn’t want you to become a faded version of the brilliant self you or wants to become. So he’s put together an amazing guide for you called the eight pieces of advice that every successful entrepreneur practices, including the two that changed his life. Head over to Join Up dots.com to download this amazing guide for free and we’ll see you tomorrow on Join Up Dots.
