Paul Ratner 5:44
Yeah, I actually think like I answer this question somewhat differently is I think about who I hire. The two characteristics I look for the most when I’m hiring somebody is number one, do they care? And do they work hard? And my question sets, when I’m interviewing somebody are usually focused on those two things. And I can tell you from the other side of it is when you go talk to somebody, and have lunch with them, and you talk to them about their business, or whatever other things they’re interested in, you can pick up pretty quickly whether they care, or they’re there to clock in and clock out. And I think if you’re going to be really successful in sales, in sports, or any industry, you have to be passionate about it, you have to care about it. If you don’t care, the other side of the table, they’re gonna be able to see through it. And it’s just, it’s really hard to be successful if you don’t.
Chad Franzen 6:35
So you you worked and you’ve worked in sports for, you know, much more than a decade, I believe you worked for the Golden State Warriors twice, and then for so adding the two together for about 15 years, a little bit more than 15 years, you also worked for the PGA. How did you get started with the Warriors? And did you do so as just a desire to work and out of a desire to work in sports? Or did you want to get into sales?
Paul Ratner 6:58
This is actually a pretty good story. So I wanted to work in sports first and foremost. So I got some advice when I was in college, right. I majored in radio and television, and the advice I got was, you need to pick a lane, right? How you’re gonna get into sports, there’s a lot of people that want a very small amount of jobs, you’re gonna have to work your way through it and figure out how you’re going to get there. And I think this was like my sophomore year, and then the summer in my junior year of college, I was just like, Okay, I’m gonna focus by getting in any way I can. I don’t care if it’s TV or the business side, I knew the business side would be easier because there’s more jobs. So I started taking business classes. And I said, I’m gonna go try to get in with a team any way I could. So the first thing I did, I love basketball. That’s the sport I played. I just called the Warriors one 800 Number. And I said, I want to work for free. Who do I talk to? And my mindset in doing that was everybody calls in and says, Do you have any internships available? In most cases, some people want to negotiate like, do I get paid? How do I get course credit or those types of things? For me, it became I want to shock them immediately. I want to tell them very clearly that I want to be there, and I’m willing to do it for free. And today, like California labor laws, right, like nobody can do that. No, it’s not even it’s not legal. And I think probably even what I was doing was probably, it was fine, because I ended up getting course credit. But I think teams would just never do that nowadays. But I eventually got to the right person. And I didn’t know what his job was. They just transferred me to somebody that hired the interns and he told me to send my resume in. And I harassed him. And by harassed him, I had diligent follow up. I was persistent. And I think he automatically pegged me for a sales role when I when I did that. And that landed me the internship.
Chad Franzen 8:56
So you, you had an internship where you worked for free for a course credit. Yeah,
Paul Ratner 9:00
I did it for six months, actually. So I actually ended up doing course, credit in two different programs in my time there, but because I was more than one class worth of work, but I kind of got a little more ballsy. If you say, or the other term, I would just say I, you know, said I should try and get paid at this point. I’ve been here six months, I’ve been working 2030 hours a week, I need to get paid. So I just went and told them that and then he said he didn’t have any money for me. So I ended up blocking them and that was about six months into it. And then this time, they traded for Baron Davis while I was gone, and I called them excited about them trading for Baron Davis because I loved watching him play. I loved him as a player. And I told him the what a great move for you guys. And he told me to come in. And then he hired me part time when I was when I was still in college. So I kind of worked my way up from there. What role?
Chad Franzen 10:00
What role was that? Sorry.
Paul Ratner 10:02
I was they call it a ticket sales representative. So short term in the sports industry, they call it a TSR. Where the role is basically going in, I got paid hourly and commission. And I would go in a room that had no windows one computer. 10 people, we had sheets of paper of people that bought tickets. So two years plus ago. So they were they were the bottom of the barrel leads. But yet names and phone numbers and email was just starting to become more prominent around this time. People started doing that a little more. So I bought my own computer. And because they only had one computer in the room, and I was tracking my leads, calling people and you make 120 140 calls a day. You hear people say that, but like I was, I was legit doing it. Wow.
Chad Franzen 10:52
So what was your what? out of 100? And Waze, you made 120 cars on a day? What did you expect to have anything come out? Like what was the percentage of calls that you expected to have? You know, something develop out of?
Paul Ratner 11:06
Gosh, it’s a great question. I probably say I would hope out of 140 120 calls in a day that I would hope that I got one to two warm leads that day.
Chad Franzen 11:19
Wow. Wow. So what was the key to your? Like, what kind of mindset did you have to have going in each day? And how did you end up kind of I know, you had several jobs during your time with the Warriors, how did you end up getting to the next step? You know, that sounds like a pretty kind of tedious situation?
Paul Ratner 11:35
Yeah. The really the call process, right? Your goal yet to know, every goal that you want it in every moment. So if you called somebody and answered, the goal is to get them to put their take their wall down and engage with you. So then you could figure out like, is there an opportunity to actually offer them something that they may want to purchase? So step one, if they didn’t pick up the phone, and you left a voicemail, you had to know the goal is to get them to call you back. I still tell people this to this day, they email cold email people send in LinkedIn messages, leave you voicemails send text messages, the goal is to get them to call you back. And I think people forget about that. They they try to sell the voicemail or sell their product before they even have anyone on the other side talking. You have to think about the method of communication when you talk about sales at all times. If you’re the one talking the whole time. It’s not communication. So the key to it is to make sure that they’re engaging on the other side. I think when you think about that 120 140 calls, that is the hardest part for somebody to grasp. And I think once that clicks, the other part, I think it’s much easier, which is having gent generic general conversation, right? Just be a human? Sure.
Chad Franzen 12:58
So they get them to call you back? Do you just say, Hey, call them to chat. We have some sale, we have some tickets for you when like, what was the best way to do it?
Paul Ratner 13:08
Yeah, you’d want to go into it and do a little research. Actually, at that time, when you’re making 140 calls a day, you wouldn’t do that. Today, I would try and do a little more research. So to backtrack on those days where I didn’t do research, all I would have is a name, a phone number and a seat location. Yeah. And like, once LinkedIn started getting more prominent, I would start looking up who they were and what their job was. You just want to have a one line teaser in there of some sort. Right? Like, for example, if I called Chad, I said, Hey, Chad, Paul Ratner with Marble Bridge Funding Group running a podcast tomorrow talking about Rise25. Like, you’d be like, Why is he talking about me? Why is he talking about Rise25. So the idea was just to try and get a response. And, you know, you don’t lie, you don’t say anything that you’re not doing? You want to be authentic, you want to be honest. So that’s the key to it. So I think that’s that’s kind of how I approach those voicemails. And when I just had information about what game they went to where their seats were right, like I might say, hey, so and so who you saw last year is coming tomorrow, or next week? that would that would be some of the information I would say or if we had discounts or something that you know, maybe they’d be interested in.
Chad Franzen 14:29
So there’s a lot of people who kind of take a you know, entry level jobs with sports teams, and then they, you know, burn out and they move on, they move on to something else. What was your key to moving up from the no window room where you have to make 120 calls? To you know, obviously a very, very good role with the team.
Paul Ratner 14:45
Yeah, be the best in the room. Even if you weren’t, like, try to be care to be passionate about it. That was that was my goal was to always compete. and makes sure that I was trying to be the best at my job in the room. And I think that’s something that people like about hiring people that played sports in the sales roles, right? They’re competitive naturally, I am probably one of the most competitive people you’ll ever meet. If I have free time, I want to compete in something, I will play cards, I will play video games, I will play a board game, I will go shoot hoops in the backyard. I love eating. So I think that that was kind of my, my thought process behind it and how I was approaching it. And I think I proved myself in my internship, right with the right people, that I understood our business that I knew how to succeed, I knew how to help the company generate more money. So I think they believe that and then when I was able to prove it in a short period of time, it allowed me to move up. So they did hire me part time. And I when I graduated from college, I actually got hired full time that like that day. And then I was out of hourly on a salary. In that moment, I, I same thing at the same thought process of trying to be the best that I could be. And I’ll tell you like being a dad of two boys now like that culture, that environment, I wouldn’t be able to hack it now. Right? Like I it’s a I don’t want to say it’s a young person’s game, but it can mentally be mentally draining. Sure, I
Chad Franzen 16:27
bet. What was there was there a difference in the product when you’re selling the product, obviously, when you were there, when when they were before Baron Davis and even with Baron Davis would be different than when they had you know, the current edition, Steph Curry, and these guys, was there a big difference in your abilities that I mean, in your, in the way your abilities may have looked, even though the product was so much different? It’s funny.
Paul Ratner 16:51
I’d like to admit, that’s what I thought was my best asset there is that I was steady. I did pretty well in whatever environment we were in. I always tried to just ignore where the team was right, like control what you can control. I was selling a product that was very public that was in the newspaper that everybody was talking about, everyone had an opinion. And I always tried to focus on what I could control, which was the asset, we were selling the product, solving people’s problems, which whether they won or lost on the court, right, like how they utilize the ticket to go to the game, the result was the same. They just might have enjoyed it more when you were winning. So like I the questions, what you were trying to do was all the same. And I always kept it that way. I always tried to keep it steady. I had some colleagues that would work with me and always just tell me to keep it even keel. And that was actually a very good learning lesson from one of my colleagues that was there and in the industry longer than me. He, he he had a good mindset with that stuff. And I knew I needed to have it because I went through a lot of ups and downs with the team there. And my most recent stint there I wrote a lot a lot of highs, obviously, that’s just made it more fun.
Chad Franzen 18:09
But is there a is there a difference when it comes to your approach to selling, you know, whatever, whatever it is party sweets or a sports experience, as opposed to other sales, maybe sales, just like you’re doing now?
Paul Ratner 18:20
Yeah, I think when you think about consumer sales and business sales, they’re very different, right? Like consumer sale. You know, Chad wants to buy season tickets, or wants to go to a handful of games, like I’m eliciting your passions, your emotions to justify the purchase. There’s, there’s not really a rational reason for you to say I want to have season tickets that’s going to benefit you monetarily financially in any way. It’s because you enjoy it. It’s purely an emotional by the business sale, which is completely different, which is where I got really good and where I really understood how this business worked and how they can help companies. When I was in sports. That was how I was able to actually leverage rational thinking and rational business decisions, and how you would leverage this business to be able to help your company generate more money, or to generate more sales or more relationships that you wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. That part was I think, the when I took it to the next level, and I actually was able to do that more. So when I went left the Warriors and went to the PGA Tour and came back. I would actually argue the PGA Tour in the NBA in that timeframe. This is like 2010 I would argue that the NBA didn’t really understand b2b sales, at least the team that I worked for, because I think they were very much in the consumer fan mindset, even on the sponsorship side from what I saw Ah, and there were some good people there. But I think it was always just eliciting to the emotions rather than the rational business decision. When I went to the tour, I was on a fast course of stuff that I learned there that I never would have learned on the team side. And no offense to them. I think it was just they never experienced it had a lot to do with how much things cost. You know, the stuff when I was first at the lawyers was pretty cheap in comparison to what it became, and to what what things cost in the golf industry.
Chad Franzen 20:33
So would you say you learned more? Or would you say what you took what you learned at the PGA Tour, back to the warriors, and that was a key to your success. And your second stint?
Paul Ratner 20:43
Oh, 100%. Yeah, 100%, I learned more there than than I would have ever learned at the Warriors about selling to companies. And I’ll give a lot of credit to the people that I worked with over the PGA Tour. My boss at that time, Tom Clark, you know, he had phenomenal relationships in a short period of time, when he moved from Florida to the San Francisco Bay Area. And I learned a lot by watching how he did things. And then how that company did things, and the notes to the to the culture that I was working in, right. Like it was a very different culture. And I’m sure it’s a very different culture today than it was in 2010. But I, I’ve learned way more there than I did in my first six years at the Warriors.
Chad Franzen 21:37
So when you came back to the Warriors, did they look at you like you were some sort of revolutionary like you had these new successful ideas? Or did they just say, Oh, you don’t you’re still doing your thing?
Paul Ratner 21:48
It was interesting when I came back, right, because when I, when I went back to the Warriors, they had a new ownership group. Right. So I was there under the previous ownership group. And I think part of my thought process was, I started in the industry saying, hey, I want to get in any way I can. And then I started having my own opinions and my own moral code and my own ethos of what I cared about in my work and my life. And I just, it wasn’t the environment I wanted to be in anymore. It was just part of the reason why I left. I ended up leaving the PGA tour because I was traveling a lot. And I, my wife and I were about to have kids. So I wanted to find something local. And I got advice from a lot of people about how much it had changed over there. So they were interested in having me come back. So I had some conversations, and I believed that it had changed. I was actually initially hired in a management role where I was going to be a seller and a manager, check. I’ll give you my opinion on that later. And then when I started selling, when I first came on, I was I was off to the races. And they were just kind of like, why don’t you just keep doing that. And I was fine with it. Because I knew I was going to do really well. monetarily and for the company. And the goal was to go there and be a part of the new arena. Right? Because when I went back there, they they announced they were building a new arena in San Francisco. So I knew that’s what I was there for. And that’s an experience like just people rarely get to get in sports. Not many people get to be a part of selling a new a new stadium in a top five market. Yeah. How was that? Unreal. It’s such a fast paced environment, you’ll know in the first six months when you start selling when you go to market, if you’re going to make it or not. And that’s a nerve wracking thing. If you’re going to make the goal that you want in the reality of it, the hardest thing to figure out is what’s the right pricing, like understanding what’s the right price for the market, something brand new that adds additional amenities and figure out how to plan that out. I wasn’t as much a part of that planning process. I was a few of the things as I was actively actively selling it. But I think this community in this in the Bay Area was was salivating over that because a lot of pro sports stadiums are now built around communities that have restaurants and places to go where we were and they played 47 seasons there and Oakland was literally on a blank canvas in a parking lot. Great public transportation and a ton of parking. But I think a majority of people would love to say, hey, I can go outside and continue engaging with my friends. My clients are doing something else rather than going out and there’s literally nothing to do. In addition to that just the way traffic works in the Bay Area. It’s actually much harder to get to Oakland after work than it is to go to Stanford. and Cisco because most people drive in more people driving to San Francisco for work than they do to Oakland. So it was a reverse commute, in getting in and out to go to events. And I can tell you from experience actually, it’s, it’s easier. I live closer to Oakland. And it’s easier for me to go to San Francisco, which sounds crazy, but it just spin faster both ways.
Chad Franzen 25:23
That’s, that’s very interesting. Did you find out, let’s get back here, you said you would elaborate more on doing management and sales?
Paul Ratner 25:33
Yeah, so that the management piece there’s a lot of times in sales where you don’t want to take your best seller off the line, quote, unquote, right and putting them in a management role. So you kind of keep them in it, like give them that management role, maybe so they can keep going. And keep give them some elevation to recognize them in some way. In pro sports, it’s, I don’t know, a team that hasn’t done it that way, they just always do that. I don’t like it. I don’t believe in having someone manage a team gets compensated on what they sell as well. I don’t want to eat my team’s lunch. I’m there to help them grow. And I fully believe in doing that. And I think there’s this history of like hiring your top seller, and putting them in a management position. I can tell you more times than enough, the person that might have been the worst seller, or the middle of the pack was probably the best manager. Oh, really? Yeah. And to me, the best managers are the ones that have not just empathy, but the compassion and understanding of what gets their team going. And helps you get to the finish line. And I’m like a huge LinkedIn fan, not only from their product or management style, and how they run. But I follow a lot from how Jeff Weiner would teach his employees and he even has something where he has something called a Compassion Project, where and I follow what he does, because I had a chance to talk to him about it. And like he’s totally sold me on, right, like, you’ll run through walls for the manager that has genuine compassion for you over just empathy. Get out of your own school a little bit, get out of your own walls, stop fixating on what you need to do, like if you can actually put yourself in their shoes and actually walk in those shoes, not just listen and acknowledge but actually do the extra step. That is how you’re going to create an unbelievable family and team with whoever you work through any any sales role, any position. And following what he shared with me in those in how he thinks about management and managing with compassion. I think that is something I follow completely, because I’ve had a lot of managers that manage by fear, and that it’s the polar opposite of where I ever want to be. And I wasn’t a fan of it.
Chad Franzen 28:10
Is that common? And you often hear coaches hear of coaches to do that. Would you say that that’s common in sports more so than in other areas? Or is it just as just a management style that people use?
Paul Ratner 28:22
It’s a good question. I don’t have enough. I don’t have enough personal data to say that. Yeah, I don’t have enough non sports experience to say that I know enough people in the tech world where I’ve advised companies that are worked with them. And I know that this last way they manage. Look, you got to hold people accountable. I’ll admit to you too, like I’ve managed people where I had a review with them. And I told them to give me feedback on me. And some of them told me to hold them more accountable. They wanted me to push on them a little more, I believe in in holding people accountable. But I also want to be clear of what I know they’re capable of right? Like I don’t want expectations that they don’t have. But in sports, right? Like it’s hard for me to make that kind of a generic comparison. But I think you’re probably more likely to see someone that’s competitive, managed with fear, probably out of stress reaction, right? Like they’re just reacting out of stress and what they need to accomplish in fear might work for a short period of time. And then it creates resentment, which is the reason why I don’t I don’t believe in
Chad Franzen 29:31
a lot of people. As you mentioned, a lot of people try to work in for sports teams or look at people who work for sports teams and think it’s kind of a glamorous, glamorous role or a glamorous opportunity. Would you say that that’s the case right away. I know you said you’re working in a room in a room with no windows. Is it always glamorous?
Paul Ratner 29:49
Definitely not always glamorous. Look, I think here’s the thing, any job you work in a job Right, like you’re, you’re paid to do something that’s that’s work. Some people love work, some people love certain aspects of work, but there’s gonna be a lot of aspects you, you don’t like the glamorous things about working in pro sports, right, the access to the things that you generally have to pay for. That’s pretty glamorous, right to the ability to be able to go to games and go into clubs, that you have to have certain seats access to be able to meet people, the amount of people you get to meet in that industry. I think, though, that to me, is the glamor. Where’s the other side, and I’ll admit to you and everybody, what what gets to me is the people that care about the social scene and where you get to be and what you get access to, and the internal fighting and access and people trying to find a way to get access to something that nobody else gets. Those things kind of they bothered me, they actually ate at me a little bit. And it was not because necessarily I cared about it, but then I would see my team caring about it, and vice versa. And I think it created kind of a tough culture. Because you can’t give everybody access to those things. But then when you had certain people that shouldn’t have access to it, finding a way to get to it. It it. It ate at me a little bit. I didn’t appreciate that part of it. I and I don’t miss that part of it. Yeah, so what? Go ahead, go ahead.
Chad Franzen 31:33
So I was going to ask you at next what what was your what kind of led you to transition outside of out outside of sports? Over tomorrow? Ah,
Paul Ratner 31:41
yeah, I’ve actually I’ve known the owner of this company, about eight years. And ironically, he started it at the same age I am now. And he has two kids, he has two boys, I have two boys. We both are Jewish, there was just so many parallels and what he wanted in his life, when he started this company and what I wanted today, and I think it was honestly probably about a year and a half ago, when I knew I wanted to leave working at a pro sports team. And I did it about you know, five months ago. But my I wanted to be pragmatic about what I was gonna do. And to my point about, you know, being a part of my team, I just hired seven people coming at a COVID. And I did not want to ditch them. I wanted them to have at least a full year of me. And we had a great year. Last year I was I was there. This is my my way of honoring it right like capitulating that we won. But we had a great business here before any of that happened. So it was, it was rewarding. But what led me to come here was that I wanted more time with my kids. And I wanted more upside. So we talked about all those perks you get in sports, right? Like, I’m never I’m not, I wasn’t gonna be an owner, I wasn’t gonna get equity, I wasn’t gonna get stock, I wasn’t going to have grand opportunity in the bottom line to raise my salary exponentially. Until I got to probably the next two or three levels, there are one or two levels. And even then, like I didn’t really want it, because of all the other things that were bothering me about it. And having the time with my kids, I was probably working about 80 hours a week, I thought I would find something for me, that would give me one of these two things that I would have either more time with my kids or more upside. And this was one of those opportunities that gave me both. And that was one of the things where I was just like this is this is the opportunity. So I was in the industry I ever thought I’d be in wasn’t what I thought I was going to doing. But then I realized how translatable my skills were, I’m talking to businesses, I’m talking to early stage businesses, as opposed to the fortune 1000s. I learned so much when I was there, that I realized how this core of customers, and then actually have more time with my kids and create a lot of upside for myself and for this business to take it to the next level. And it just seemed like too much of a perfect fit to me to not do it, even though it wasn’t what I thought I would be doing because I always wanted to work in sports. I realized like the life I wanted was here. This is the life I wanted. No.
Chad Franzen 34:29
That’s great. Great. Congratulations. What do you have? Have you kind of had a chance to figure out like a vision for goals that you’ve set for yourself and just kind of, you know, moving forward?
Paul Ratner 34:40
Yeah, great question. I’d like to say I gotta learn every aspect of this business. I’ve had people here tell me that it will take me six months to really feel like I got things going and I’ve had people tell me that it will take me five years till I feel like I know everything. But then I’ve seen people here 20 years and running into things that they’ve never seen before. So I think me learning, constantly being a sponge, never having too much of any ego, having an open mind, I think is what’s what’s gonna get me going. I have a goal this year of having at least, you know, six companies that I work very closely with and that we’re able to financially help. That is something I would like to have done in my first full year here. Whether that’s realistic or not at this point, I couldn’t tell you, but I think I think it is.
Chad Franzen 35:36
How can people find out more information about Marble Bridge?
Paul Ratner 35:39
Yeah, you go to marblebridge.com, go to our website. And I’m also got an open profile on LinkedIn. So if anybody ever wants to talk to me, and they have growth, liquidity challenges in their business, I’d be happy to talk to them. Even if I’m not the answer, I probably know someone that could help you.
Chad Franzen 35:58
Final question for you. You may have alluded to this, who has been a mentor for you? And what is the best advice you’ve ever received? Yeah,
Paul Ratner 36:07
we didn’t, we actually didn’t talk about this very much. But I have someone who’s become a very dear friend of mine, her her name is Jen Louie. She actually lives in Hawaii now. And, you know, she may not know that I view her as a mentor, actually. But this was the best advice I ever got by action. And I just followed and adopted this policy when she did it with me, but she asked me to help a charity that she was a part of. So people internally at my company did not want me to do this. But I actually got us to donate a suite at the warriors to her charity. And she was so thankful that we did it. She then made 10 intros for me over email that people that she thought would help me in my work. And I talked to her and I said, I can’t believe you did that. Why don’t you do that. And she just said, I love helping people. You know, I always you got to have a small network of people that you trust, and that you help. And she just kind of adopted me in that in that world. And I kind of adopted this referral based sales process off of talking to her and learning from her. You fast forward, you know, parts of her family and her best friends are now my financial advisor, my real estate agent, like, those are ways that I thought about not only that compassion process I talk to you about this is how I might how I operate as a business person process, right? Um, I go in thinking about how I can be a giver. First, how I can give something to somebody, rather than asking them to do something for me. Very nice. And what’s interesting about that, as the founders at Rise25, I had that same connection and relationship when we first talked, that they follow the kind of the same policy, they have the same ethos. And that’s one that i i Follow, right, like I will help people that have that mindset. Anytime.
Chad Franzen 38:02
Yeah, definitely. They definitely do. And I appreciate that about them and about you. Hey, Paul, it’s been great to talk to you today. Thank you so very much. Appreciate your time. It’s been great to hear your story and all your thoughts. Appreciate it.
Paul Ratner 38:14
Thanks for having me.
Chad Franzen 38:16
So long, everybody.
Outro 38:17
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