In this episode of Bright Ideas, host Jessica Duemig welcomes Matt Wolff, the founder of Ticket Time Machine™, a company that’s redefining the sports memorabilia and fan engagement space. From his inspiration at a Marlins no-hitter to working with major brands like the Savannah Bananas and Florida Panthers, Matt shares how he built a business rooted in passion, nostalgia, and innovation. Learn how commemorative tickets, custom badges, and creative branding assets can create lasting fan experiences – and how to navigate the red tape in sports business.
Matt Wolff’s story is a powerful blend of fandom, hustle, and vision. In this episode, he talks about the spark that launched Ticket Time Machine™—a Marlins game, a no-hitter, and a missed opportunity for a printed keepsake. That moment led to the creation of a business rooted in personal memory and fan experience. Now, Matt works with professional teams, artists, festivals, and iconic sports brands to create unique, tangible pieces of sports history that fans can hold onto.
Beyond just printing commemorative tickets, Matt has expanded his offerings to include badges, lanyards, media passes, and more. His approach isn’t just about nostalgia – it’s about doing it better. He’s determined to offer quality, personalized memorabilia in a market flooded with generic, mass-produced items. And he’s doing it while staying true to his values – legitimate licensing, thoughtful design, and products that actually mean something to fans.
Matt also gives a candid look into the realities of starting and scaling a business in sports. From navigating vendor approvals to figuring out who’s actually making decisions inside pro teams, he shares hard-won lessons on persistence, relationship building, and knowing when to go all-in. His commitment to fan-first experiences and meaningful keepsakes shines through every part of the conversation.
For anyone looking to break into the sports industry – or anyone already in it trying to stand out – Matt’s story is an inspiring reminder that there’s still plenty of room to build something special, especially when it comes from a place of passion.
#TicketTimeMachine #SportsBusiness #FanEngagement #SportsEntrepreneurship #SportsMarketing #BrightIdeasPodcast #Collectibles #CommemorativeTickets
Hello, welcome to this episode of Bright Ideas. I am Jess Dumig. I’m here today with Matt Wolf. Matt runs the Ticket Time Machine. Hi, Matt. How are you? I’m doing great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I’m glad we were able to uh to get on the the recording today because I think it’s been probably a long time coming. We haven’t actually met in person. Um, but we’re always engaging on LinkedIn and social media. So, it’s really cool to finally meet you, so to speak. And then soon uh live at some event somewhere. Yeah, we’ll find we’ll find one for sure. We just found out in a little bit of a pre uh chat that we are basically both from the same area down in South Florida. So, that’s kind of a a fun little tie there. Yeah, love it down here. Yeah. Are you from there originally? No, from New Jersey. Went to school in Gainesville. That’s why everything’s orange and blue. And uh moved down to South Florida afterwards. If your life isn’t pretty much blue and orange, are you even a Gator? Like I mean I feel like you guys are just wearing badges of honor everywhere you go in those colors. So I mean I the blue the royal blue was always my favorite um color. Actually, growing up in New Jersey, there’s, you know, Mets and Knicks. I actually grew up a Broncos fan. It’s um Well, I’m going to show you some and but uh these these were my two of my first uh memorabilia ever. Orange Blue for a long long time. That’s John Elway. Um I’ve always been Orange Blue. So, it’s I don’t think it had any uh effect on my decision on where to go, but it certainly didn’t hurt. And uh my wardrobe is a lot of a lot of blue. It’s always been a lot of blue. That’s so funny. You know, I went to grad school at Southern Mississippi, and at the time I was driving a yellow hatchback Focus, and Southern Miss is black and gold, um but more yellow than gold. And uh people would ask me all the time, “Did you buy that car just because you were coming to Southern Miss?” I was like, No, but that’s a great idea. I haven’t The last three of my cars have been blue. There you go. Some variation of Gator Blue. Were you there when Favre was there? Uh, no. No, I was there uh years later. I graduated in 2010 from Southern Miss. Did you watch the Favre uh documentary? It’s interesting. I haven’t watched it yet. Um, I was at Southern Miss the day that um, Favre signed with the Jets and I’m a diehard Jet fan. So, I was like up and I’m texting and it came through at like midnight Eastern time. So, it’s 11:00 my time and I text my dad. I’m calling. He’s like, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” Cuz now, you know, they’re on the East Coast. They’re like, “It’s midnight. Why is my daughter who’s away at school calling me? Uh, who died? What gutter are you in? Um, did you get arrested?” And uh and so I was like for sign with the Jets and he’s like cool good night. I was like okay. Did you call him at midnight when you when you heard about Rogers? I mean they keep signing these quarterbacks past their prime. Maybe let’s just not talk about Aaron Rogers. Um and we can move on. But I’m from it’s I’m from New Jersey. Uh mo most of my friends are either Jets or Giants fans. Um, I I’ll root. I I’m not a fan of the of the Jersey teams aside from I was the Devils, but I still root for them. I don’t know if a lot of people don’t understand that. You could be a not a fan of the team, but you just root for them. But I’m going to say that’s my team. Yeah. I think people take fandom to another level. I mean, I’m a I’m a diehard Jet fan and the way you are with your blue, I am most of the time with green. Um, and I went to uh South Florida for undergrad, so the green just tied. USF. Sure. I did. Yeah, but um but I I mean I wouldn’t ever like growing up in South Florida, I could never even root for the Dolphins. Like I just I hated them before I moved down here. Yeah. The Heat. But I am a Panther and Marlins fan. So, uh you got to be pretty excited about last night’s game. Yeah, that was that was a show. Well, they’re up 2-1 now, right? 2-1. Yeah. and the way they’ve been able to handle McDavid. He’s maybe the best. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Gretzky in person. I probably have, but I’m I don’t remember it. Yeah. Seen McDavid in person and he’s just it’s incredible what it’s like even playing on skates really. Yeah. I’m not a huge hockey fan, although I’ve been getting into it more and more. Um, I had the opportunity to uh be the PA announcer for the Lightning over here for one of the games toward the end of the season and the in stadium PA. And I mean, hockey in person is fun. I was trying to watch it last night on TV and I was just like, yeah, distracted by everything except you’re not a fan of the teams. I I I get that, you know, and if it’s not in overtime and it was a it was a really a blowout and there was just too much fighting, if that’s what you want to call it. I don’t even know what that was. Yeah. Yeah. I I couldn’t watch it. I typical girl move. I’ve turned it over to Hallmark and I was There you go. happy and not on edge. So, there’s that. So, listen, already we’re on tangents. This is going to be a great chat. So, tell us more about you, your background, aside from after you moved to Florida. And then, you know, where did Ticket Time Machine come from? Sure. I grew up in New Jersey. Uh went to a year of community college. I have a actually I have a twin brother fraternal who went to University of Florida right from high school and I I don’t know how it happened but somehow I got in. I didn’t deserve it. They would laugh at me today. Although everyone they laugh at pretty much everyone today. Yeah. Tried to get in. But it got to University of Florida and um I’m not I’m not what you call books smart. I always consider myself street smart. Okay. not a good studier, not a good test taker, but I enjoyed the conversation and the learning aspect of it. Um, and so when I graduated, I I knew I didn’t want to be in New York City. And when you grow up in central Jersey, the options really are get a job in the city. You can’t really afford to live in the city, so you have to commute, you know, wake up at 5, you know, get home at 9, wake up at 5. It wasn’t for me. So, I moved down to Florida. really struggled to to get it to find work. That’s a big problem down here. Yeah. And uh it still is, but eventually I got a bunch of jobs that aren’t even worth talking about until my dad would always tell me to get into sales. And I always fought it because I thought that if you’re in sales, you have to be either pushy or phony or whatever. Eventually I I got my first sales job working for a ticket printing company and realized that you can operate that way and there’s many successful sales people that who operate that way. But you can also operate in other ways um that sort of fit my personality uh pleasantly persistent I would say um attention to detail followup. And so I I I started to do sales and and did well. Uh left the ticket printing company. I was selling something else. The the story of ticket time timing machine is that I was at a Marlins game. Edinson Vulz throws a no hitter and I collect I have stuff here. I won’t bore you with all my tickets, but I collect tickets and everything from the events that I go to. But it didn’t occur to me to even ask for one because they’ve ingrained the digital ticket and right but they announced over the loudspeaker they said if you’d like a dig a printed ticket come to the box office. So I said, “This is great.” I went there, not a huge line, but there was a number of people there and I when I got up to the to the window, I said, “Can you put Anderson Vulcanz no hitter on there?” And they said that they couldn’t, and I know that they can because that’s the background that I had. And that’s where I came up with the idea of ticket time machine. I actually got the that ticket graded um and stay Edinson Vulc no hitter and birth of ticket time machine. Um, so a couple couple of things that I take from that uh from that day and what happened. Uh, the first thing is that it was uh Mike Stanton or he was Mike Gian Caryo Stanton bobblehead that day. If it wasn’t the bobblehead, I I’m probably not at that game. And if he doesn’t throw a no hitter, I probably don’t ask for it. So there’s a lot of these factors that sort of come into play of just the right time, the right place, chance, whatever, whatever you want to call it that that made it happen. Now, might I have started it anyway? Maybe I did go up to a box office for a concert and ask for um for a ticket, printed ticket, and they wanted to charge me $20. Not because they want you to pay $20, because they want you to get in your mind, you know, the printed ticket is gone. So, it’s possible that I would have uh done it, but I was working full-time and I said, I’m going to do this. Uh I I’ve had a lot of ideas. I’ve always wanted to try and find something to do on my own. And I had a lot of ideas that I just kind of once I hit that first roadblock, I just said, “All right, you know, it’s going to be too hard. You can’t I talked myself out of it.” But with this, I said, “This is I’m going to do this.” And it sort of evolved. It started by putting stuff on a ticket like I was asking like you know this is my first game or Becky got engaged so that um and it’s evolved into you know more of what we’re doing uh today. That’s super cool. And you know you brought up a good point that a lot of entrepreneurs it’s it’s the reason most entrepreneurs fail in the first year, right? It gets hard. How did you like what made you push through it with the ticketing side of things? Well, I I mean, part of it was I was really unhappy at my job, full-time job, and I said, “It’s funny how that nudges you more and more, but I just I was tired of I I just felt like this was this was the idea. It’s solving a problem. Um, I’m very passionate about it.” It just checked so many boxes to be like, I, you know, I would be dumb to not, you know, really follow through on this. And you know, it’s it’s been it’s a roller coaster. It’s like anyone will tell you who’s uh who has a business. And we’re still not out of the woods. We’re not anywhere where we need to be, but um I’m definitely optimistic about uh what we’re doing and and where we’re headed. But it’s just I know that I think when I thought of the idea that day, I said, I’m not going to let any of these roadblocks stop. And you just got to do it because they’re going to be I mean I still have them today, but you’re just once you get past it, you’re going to realize it probably wasn’t as hard as you thought it was going to be. Yeah. Almost like you’re you’re kind of the self-doubt creeps in and you’re kind of looking for reasons why it shouldn’t work, like an excuse to kind of go back to what’s comfortable, what’s normal, what I should be doing or whatever. I know I come across that a lot more than I’d like to admit, but it’s it’s tough. And I think you know the internal battle sometimes is harder than the external battle. Yeah. I think I mean I I my confidence is is very high that I’ll be able to figure out what I need to do. That doesn’t mean I get everything right. You you know you make mistakes and you hopefully learn from them and not uh continue to do them or you can work smarter and not necessarily harder. Um, I I don’t there’s always the question of is is this going to work out just because it hasn’t yet where you’re like, you know, a huge company with all these people working under you and you’re just thinking like how how would that work if I’m going to be that person? You’re just like, well, that doesn’t seem like something I’ll be able to do or something I should be doing. But, um, I I don’t I don’t let that affect me too much. I mean, it’s like the same with sales. anything in sales. You get down because you hear so many nos. Um but you just got to keep you just got to keep pushing through. Yeah. So, okay. So, you launch this business, right? Kind of on the side. You push through these these obstacles, these boundaries, these problems, these challenges, whatever. Where does it go from there? Tell us the evolution. Yeah. So, I started to I started to really get unhappy at my job. Um, and it was a good job and I had done well there and you know I had some many good years. Um, but I thought to myself if if I’m going to be successful with this business, I have to go allin and that means because I can, you know, I’m on I was on LinkedIn for my other job, but not really. But I can’t, you know, publicly be doing ticket time machine when I have a job and I’m connected to all these people, right? So, I said to myself, I got to be available to go to these events because I had gone to a few events. We did uh we did Sopranos Con in uh in New Jersey. Uh spoiler alert, the the organizers of Sopranos Con were not uh exactly 100% legit. Who knew what who knew that the people running a Sopranos con would have been that way? But I so I had done some events and you know I had plenty of time off and you can do that and you can answer at night but I think the reality of it is that I needed to be doing it uh full-time and so I gave my uh full-time job uh notice and in uh I told him that April 1, 2020 will be my last day. Um, and then the pandemic hit, which it turned out to actually, I think, be a good thing for for us. But, um, you know, April 2020, I I started to turn over my LinkedIn and went from, you know, 600 connections to it scaled pretty quickly. I think I’m at over 10,000 now. Wow. So, I do connect a lot. And I wish I could it’d be there’d be an easier way to maybe remove connections. Although I don’t think there’s really a negative about it, but I just I wish I would have I don’t know. You have a lot of connections, but you don’t really know them and they don’t know you and so it’s you know that number is great. I guess I have a really good network I would say and I don’t you know the circle and network whatever you want to call it. So, but I had to move all of that over and and start and really start to connect and get relationships and learn more. It had been about seven or eight years since I was in the the print ticket printing business, but I leveraged some old relationships to start and um and here we are today again. Still, I think we’re we’re growing uh but we’re growing slower than I I probably would like. And um you know the good news is that I think there’s so much opportunity there that I think we’re just it’s a it’s a matter of time before we’ll get where we’re going to be because and we also see on the commemorative side which is there’s a lot of people doing stuff like that. I think they’re not doing it well but they’re doing it. So it’s like a you know a good and a bad and um so I it just shows to me that that’s where a lot of this is headed. Yeah, there’s such a um there’s such I’m going to pull up your website because I’ll I’ll cite it for sure, but there there’s so much noise out there sometimes. And I think that there’s it’s just it’s very frustrating when you’re you’re doing the legit uh work with the expertise, putting in a lot of really good thought and then someone else is just like throwing something into Canva and printing it on card stock, right? Like I mean uh how do you how do you position yourself against some of those guys? Well, I think it’s not I use Canva myself. I have a team of very good creative, but I’ll use Canva just to get, you know, the ideas going back and forth. I don’t I don’t think it’s necessarily sometimes it is the it could be the artwork, but I think it’s just the idea, you know, it’s selling a a commemorative ticket that’s really just a piece of paper that doesn’t it’s not personalized. The back is blank. I mean, there’s a lot of things that I would not do uh with regards to something for the fan. Um, you know, there’s more people doing it on Etsy and and Pinterest who are just selling stuff that’s real cheap and easy to, you know, it’s not licensed. So, you know, I’m I’m I’m looking to be a legitimate company who’s going to work with the biggest uh companies and brands and leagues in the world. So, I can’t be doing that. Otherwise, right, I could do whatever I wanted and had no consequence. We’d certainly be able to make more money, but I don’t think we’d be more we wouldn’t be a legitimate business, which I I think I feel like we’ve accomplished when we go to uh conferences and when we’re, you know, when I’m talking to people, and I’m at the Super Bowl and stuff like that. What’s your What’s your most exciting part? Like what part of your business do you really like get like gets you fired up? Oh, I love being at an event, seeing people wearing my our stuff. It’s I’ve been to Panthers games. We did stuff for the Panthers uh for the playoffs that that was really cool. That did a bunch of stuff for the Savannah Bananas and I’ve been at those games and and even just walking around uh at the at the uh trade shows when we print badges and especially if it’s a really unique badge where you say, “Well, what do you do?” And then you just hold up the badge and you show them like this is uh here this is what we do. Yeah, that’s super cool. Um, so where did the name ticket time machine come from? Like how did how did that come to life? That’s a great question. We I I was working with a a graphic uh designer and I I’ve been asked this before. I don’t know exactly who came up with the it. It might have been him. It might have been me. We were definitely talking and throwing things back and forth and um he came up with the logo which is it’s got a couple Easter eggs in it um that most some people know some people don’t but um it just was the idea of because when I when I was when I came up with the idea for ticket time machine a lot of it was to be in the past like hey you went to a game you want it to be personalized let me know we’ll be able to do that but really a lot of it is in the f in the future events and the events that are going on now. So that’s why where the time machine comes into play. And uh if you look on the logo, if you look closer, the T’s on each of them have an arrow pointing forward and backward. And then there’s a a thing right there that if you know if you know, you know. Well, I don’t know. Tell me. It’s a flux capacitor from black Back to the Future. Uh I was that would have been my guess. So, it makes it makes a lot of sense. I love that with the arrows going both ways. And, you know, it’s funny you bring it up because I I think time machine I always think about going back to the past. Not even not even thinking about going to the future to be honest. So, I love that that it does. That’s why it’s called Back to the Future. Yeah. No, no, I know. But it’s uh that’s that’s very cool. One of my favorite movies, too. So, you know, we can when you can include anything that’s really part of your favorite with regards to the company, um, it’s always good to get that in. Yeah, it’s it’s really cool. I I love that about working in sports. I feel like there’s so much iconic stuff and and I say that I know you just were talking about obviously major pop culture, but with sports, I feel like it’s so open to nostalgia, right? It’s the the game you went to way back that got you hooked and and you know or the movie or the whatever. And I feel like you know with theme days and all that cool stuff that goes on now at sporting events, it’s it’s not the Titanic day, right? It’s not the uh Inside Out 2 day at the ballpark. It’s stuff from the 80s. It’s stuff from the early 90s. Um and that’s and I I guess that’s maybe the cycle of who’s involved. But anytime you can put what you like, you called it perfectly, an Easter egg into anything, it’s just it makes it more fun. Yeah, I love pop culture. And uh there’s a guy, his name is uh Matthew also. He is called two things. Two ta ns. And he is an artist who will put any two things together and paint you uh this, you know, unique photo painting. And he actually copies it and sells it. That’s why he’s able to sell to you for a little bit cheaper. But I have one on my wall of Seinfeld and Family Guy, two of my favorite shows all in one. It’s uh so yeah, I think um you know, pop culture, sports, entertainment, movies, music, they all kind of blend in together and I’m I’m a big fan of all of it. Yeah. So So what is your what’s your favorite project that you’ve done to date? I mean, the stuff that we we did for the bananas was good for the K Club where you you had a lanyards and and and a foil badge that was pretty cool and uh and a um and a pin um just, you know, to be able to I wish I could have seen people open it, but I did see people walking around with it when I was when I was at the game. But yeah, I worked we’ve done a job for with the a few jobs with the Florida Gators um and hope to do more with that. Obviously, anytime you could do uh something with the the Gators and we’ve done work with the Florida Panthers, but um there’s been some other cool uh jobs at Four Chord Music Festival. We do um this will be our fifth or sixth year working for them. This was the first year. Richishi, uh, organizer of Four Cord. Um, he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He’s always fun to work on, uh, his his ticket with or badge. It’s generally for VIP, but he does sell he does sell some of them. Um, and, you know, we actually did a some of my favorite things that I’ve worked on are stuff that didn’t even come to fruition. We we do a lot of proof of concept where we put together a mock mock proof. Uh, we did stuff for the Back to the Future musical, which they didn’t use, but they actually did something that was not very good. Uh, you know, college football playoff stuff. We put together FIFA. So, it’s been fun. Something for Deion Sanders for his inaugural game that we didn’t get. I’m hoping to be able to do something for Michael Vic and Deshawn Jackson’s uh inaugural games. But there’s uh it’s just fun to work on, you know, when they give when we work on a project and they don’t already have the artwork and I get to sort of give my say on what I think it should look like and then my creative team kind of just does the rest. Those are those are a lot of fun. I It’s probably 5050. I mean, there’s a lot of time people just say, “Here’s our artwork. They have art people. They know what they want.” Um but that those are fun projects to work on. Yeah. So when you’re building a business in sports, right, because a lot of the people who are watching this are either your customers or who or people looking to get into the industry in diff different ways, right? Um when you’re building this in sports, right, there’s a lot of red tape. There’s a lot of you mentioned licensing earlier, you know, what were some of the biggest challenges for you aside from like the the roadblocks, but what were you, you know, straight up against where you had to make a very pivotal decision? Yeah. Well, I mean, the licensing is one. So, that’s not really a decision to make, but it’s it’s something that you’re aware of that you need to try and navigate through. So I found out very early that licensing the licensing uh avenue is was not it’s not for me. There’s a lot of reasons for it. The customer doesn’t get as good a product. The person who owns the the brand doesn’t get as much of the money and I can’t sell as much even though uh as someone else can sell there. So there’s just a lot of reasons why it’s not the right thing. um you know being the the new kid on the block. There’s companies that have been around for a long time who have these relationships and they’re very hard to you know to take their their jobs and their their opportunities. That’s the biggest thing. Um people who didn’t know who I am and even though that now that they do know who I am but you know I’m not an approved vendor for Major League Baseball or how do you get to do that? Well, it’s easier if you if you’re doing stuff for the teams. Well, how do you get to do it for the teams? Well, you got to be an approved vendor. So, we’ve been very lucky to be able to do some uh projects for professional teams like the Panthers. It’s actually been hockey. We did stuff for the Utah Hockey Club um on the retail side that went in the the arena store uh for their inaugural game and inaugural season. Um so, that’s that’s you know the toughest. And then the other thing is just trying to figure out who who it is you’re supposed to even be talking to. Um you know you can reach out. You have an educated guess. You know could it be ticketing? I guess it could be. Sometimes it’s marketing, it’s operations. Um so I I don’t there’s no one set person to be reaching out to. And then you know from that if you don’t hear back from someone I don’t know if that’s the right person or not or you can get a note from someone who wasn’t the right person. So it’s it’s not it’s probably very similar to a lot of other things and it’s sports, it’s entertainment, these you know you got these huge companies who do you talk to? There’s got 15 vice presidents of of you know fan experience. Um yeah but uh you know I think the good thing about this is generally speaking there’s always going to be another season, another event, another game um another tournament, another conference. So there’s always opportunity in the future. I don’t I don’t look at it as a as a no. I look at as it not not now, not this year and and say what can we do um to try and do better. And some some of it’s just a waiting game. I mean we’ve lost, you know, some some jobs some due to no fault of our own and someone else got a chance to do it. And so, you know, that that’s disappointing when you do right by someone and don’t get a chance to have the conversation. So, I I see it on the other end. There’s someone there who’s doing who’s been doing something for them. Um, I I believe we can do it better and and for a lot of different reasons and uh just hopefully get the get the chance to do it. But, you know, it’s a lot of it’s a waiting game. Um, but trying to figure out who to talk to and getting them to respond, I think, is the is the biggest challenge. Yeah, I I would agree with that. I I find it to be very convoluted. And I think it’s very convoluted on purpose, right? even just internal versus external, you know, when you’re in the college scene of of operations, it it makes a lot of sense once you know. But for someone coming in who doesn’t know, I mean, there’s there’s so many different people doing not very well described like like their their titles and what they do don’t tie very well together. Um, yeah, I think they also don’t communicate. There’s not a lot of good internal communication, which doesn’t help when you’re on the outside trying to trying to figure something out. Yeah. So, I’ve always known you as more on the commemorative side, right? So, talk us through your your whole thing because you’re talking about the badges, you’re talking about really cool custom stuff. Obviously, where you started with the very straightforward tickets, but talk us through all of what you offer because I think there’s maybe I mean, if if I was confused on it, I mean, I think that there could be some room there. We started out as wanting to be the commemorative ticket company and then realized, well, we don’t have permission to do all the commemorative stuff. So, we still do work on commemorative stuff. Like here is a a ticket that we commemorated the inaugural game of Pitbull Stadium for FIU. Oh, nice. But we do a lot of other stuff for events where it’s could be all access passes. It could be media passes. These are golf bag tags for the SPS and we’re doing another one this year for the SP. Rob Wgles the best. He’s so funny. Joel Male is on this year’s I don’t know. I’m sure it’s not a spoiler alert for anyone who’s who’s talking to, but lanyards and then just basic event, you know, this is nothing’s fancy about this, but it’s a it’s an event badge. So, we do event badges. This is synthetic and we have laminated uh badges and stuff with foil and just um a little bit of everything. This is a badge, a name badge uh for a Oh, neat. for just a conference. Yeah. You know, this is laminated. And then we have plastic and then you have wristbands and then you do stuff like this that’s tickets for the actual game. You don’t do as many of those, but um we we do have the ability to barcode and not and there’s a lot of these events like here’s something we did for uh Dale Murphy has like a a camp, you know, a camper type thing, you know, simple stuff like that. So it could be any name badges, credentials, laminates, wristbands, lanyards. We have specialty uh products as well where we can do and I just did one of these for my friend who had a uh this is a an acrylic frame so you picture on there and you could put whatever you want and it’s magnetic so we can put a ticket inside of there. So really uh you know stuff the fans that’s really why I started the company. I’m a fan. I like stuff like this. this is the type of stuff I want to buy when I go to an event to be able to to remember it. And um and then of of course the old school tickets that we have that you know if if you want something from a game you went to and you want to you know personalize it like like I said we get some this was my first concert, my first game. We got engaged here. It’s an anniversary. This was you know my favorite player’s debut or first first hit or anything like that. Um but yeah, that’s that’s what we we do a lot of a lot of badges and we end up doing a lot of badges uh for the events that are, you know, they don’t actually necessarily have to give you access as like a touch, right? Or for RFID, but we do have we do RFID and we barcode and all that, but a lot of times it’s just a simple uh badge like this or sometimes it could be an animated badge if you want something nice. Uh, I think it’s ripe for uh, sponsors, you know, and new new and unique assets for them to be involved with that, you know, I think a lot of people keep these regardless of what they look for, what what they look like, but certainly if they look great, uh, you’re going to get people who want to keep it. And so, you know, it’s uh, these are the type of keepsakes that I think people want that they might buy. This was for the inaugural game of the Utah Hockey Club. That’s super cool. But also if you just go, you know, this is a Super Bowl event that I went to. Um just sort of a networking party event and it’s just nice to have something like this, especially when it has your name on it. And um people like to show that off where they have, you know, it’s almost I liken it to the the medals of people who are doing uh half marathons and Iron Mans. They have their medals all hanging. These people have their lanyards. Um, and even some of the most famous people who’ve been to ridiculous events have, you know, their lanyards and their their credentials, uh, they’ve kept them. Um, totally. I know it. It it it absolutely is. I um I laugh because I’m in the middle of moving right now and um we’re packing up my apartment and find box after box after box of lanyards and and hard cards and it’s just like man that’s a great time to figure out what you have. I have that here and I probably should go through and sort of organize it some of them in some way. But that’s a good it’s a good way. Uh yeah, I mean look tickets are worth money. I mean, I don’t collect it for that, but there’s a big big uh contingent of of fanatic and these are the most fanatical people you will ever meet of actual ticket collectors. Um, and now if if a if a player makes a debut, their ticket to that game, if it got you in selling for a hundred bucks just like that. Yeah. Guy made his debut, never did anything. $100 you could sell a ticket for. It’s crazy. I mean, I can see it in a in a whole new world of NIL. I mean, I could see that going bonkers with these athletes kind of calling out their own achievements, whatever they are. Um, could be very, very interesting. We’re trying to work in the NIL space. Um, have talked to some people. We’re working on a big name in college uh college athletics. Um, we talked to in the past. The issue with that for me is we’re not I’m not Tops. I’m not Upper Deck. I’m not Nike. I’m I can’t throw money at at someone. So, what I can do is offer them a really uh cool product for them to offer to other people and you could actually get someone else who wants to be a part of that. So, that’s what we’re hoping to do where we can sell some stuff. It’s not going to, you know, I just heard the pitcher for Texas Tech got a million dollars. like it’s not going to move the needle like that. But don’t you want your fans to have something that’s pretty cool about what you mean? There just so many shirts you can buy and wear and posters. Totally. There’s it’s like a trading card. It’s a collectible. It’s not really It’s more of a It’s more of like a what we want to do is like a trading card ticket. It’s almost like Tops Now, but for moments that actually deserve something special. Not you know Tops Now every week comes out. Like I saw they once did a a CFL quarterback threw for three touchdowns. I’m like well that that happens every week in any football, right? Why do we need to commemorate that? You’re just they’re just selling it because they can. They have people who want to buy it. Um and it’s it cost them nothing to print. And so and then they’ll throw the autograph one and say, “Oh, it’s it’s it’s become more of gambling.” Well, we want be able to buy our stuff. Even if there could be limited edition, say, “Hey, we’re going to put 500 of these on sale, but it’s not the stuff I’m doing is not meant to have people bidding and overpaying to to get.” Um, right. Which I think that’s what the collectible I say that because that’s I think it feels like what the collectible world and the hobby that’s not they’re not necessarily hobbies anymore. They’re invest they’re more investments and gambling um which is obviously pretty popular right now. Yeah. Uh I I saw something listed the other day of card breakers and they’re paying ridiculous amounts of money to these people to sit on a computer and like or whatever and uh live break these packs and then send these out. And I’m like I mean I guess do whatever you can get people to pay for, but it’s insane to me. We used to play I’m old I’m old enough to to say that we used to play poker with trading cards and some decent ones, but we we were just with the card and it was getting cripped and crumpled and nobody cared really. Tried to keep them and I have cards now. They’re not they’re not really worth a whole lot. Some of them are, but to me that was a that was a hobby. That was a collector. We look forward every birthday or holiday we would get a box. And now the average family or kid can’t can’t afford to buy a box of these cards. And if they do, they’re just they’re just hoping that they get, you know, hit with the big one and then the rest of them are are garbage. We used to want to collect the we used to buy the whole set and and keep because, you know, even though 90% of them weren’t worth anything. Yeah. So still back to the moving. um found all those probably 10 15,000 cards sitting in boxes. What’s your What do you have that’s good? Anything good? You know, during COVID I cataloged them. There’s a website you can go to that you can like click and it keeps it all digital record. I have no idea. I mean, if they were all graded, they’re probably worth I mean, I have them from early mid80s up through, you know, 2000s. I mean, I know there’s LeBron rookie cards in there. I know there’s Michael Jordan baseball stuff. Yeah, it’s ridiculous stuff where I’m just like, this this is cool. And now I’m like, what do I even do with this stuff? And then you’re always off like I think you sell maybe I don’t know. I I don’t have kids and I I don’t know what anyone would want to do with my collection. I think at some point I probably could sell some of them. Um, you know, there’s very little I had that I just wouldn’t sell no matter what, right? Uh, but most of it’s not life-changing money, but but it’s still money. So, I I probably will go to like have a booth, maybe a ticket time machine booth where I can print some tickets, but also sell some memorabilia and collectibles and cards. Yeah, maybe someone else wants it, but everyone knows what everything’s worth now. So, right, different than back in the day. You like had no idea. Maybe you get a good deal. You go to a, you know, you go to a a card show or a or a garage sale or a flea market and someone didn’t really know what they have now, right? Very, it doesn’t happen very often. No. And and it kind of kind of kind of killed the nostalgia part of it. I mean, like you were saying, you used to play play cards, play poker with your trading cards. I mean, my dad was like, we used to put these on our bikes, folks. I’m like, I mean, cool. But like now I think everyone’s buying with the idea of collecting as a or collecting to ultimately sell to make money down the line. And there’s no scarcity, right? They’re printing everything. So well, I mean there is a little bit of scarcity, but it’s it’s forced scarcity and people to to to chase. So I think there’s very I mean I don’t even know what the number would be. You’d have to talk to someone who’s probably bigger into into the industry than I am, but there’s way more people who are or collecting for the money than they are to to have who enjoy it. And it it’s probably three to one. It could be one. It could be 10 to one. I don’t even I don’t even know. But I think that number is very small of people who are actually still collecting that that sort of stuff. And I’m a collector. I got stuff here. It’s worth nothing only but to me, but it means something. It’s just it’s pretty cool. I got uh Yeah, I’ll show you like the stuff I bought like this. This thing right here. I bought this. I was actually very lucky enough to go to the Field of Dreams game, first one that they had and uh this was a beer that I bought uh while at that game. And so I I love that I have the commemorative ticket from the game somewhere. But I mean that’s the type of stuff that it’s just I don’t know it just means it just means something to me and it’s well it brings back that memory. Yeah. Like you you just lit up. You’re telling this story about this this beer you had at this game at Field of Dreams. Like that’s so cool. Like triggering that thought. Yeah. I’m a I’m a fan. It’s why I started the company. So we’re really I know you know Banana Ball likes to talk about how they’re fans first. I mean, I do this for for the fans because I’m a fan. And so I, you know, I’m probably more fanatical about some of this stuff than other people, but there’s a ton of people out there who who are collectors or have or love the memorabilia. I was just watching the Peewee Herman uh documentary, and he he has like a museum. I don’t think I have enough stuff for a museum, but I got some pretty cool stuff. I think that people it would be cool to really talk about the stories and some of them I just posted the other day like I posted this on LinkedIn. I I I don’t know what this is from. I I know it was great and that’s why I collected it but I can’t remember what this was from. So I know that whatever event I go to whether it’s a concert, a game, a trip, you know, I’m going to collect something. So why not give options that are are unique or cool, you know? So I could have something like this, right, from the Field of Dreams game or, you know, and I got a lot of stuff I it’s it’s not really showtime, but I got a lot of things that I could be like, this was really cool that I got from that event. Um, so that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to keep the printed memory alive and and give fans uh something to to keep that they that reminds them of of the time they had. I love that you just gave me an idea and maybe we co-host a uh adult show and tell. Oh, I look I’m How fun would that be? I’m ready to I I’d love to do something like that. I think uh yeah, it’s just really um I don’t know. I got so much stuff. And and the interesting thing is like does anyone care about that other than you? And that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be, you know, the story is what it means to you, not whether or not someone uh it doesn’t necessarily need to resonate with them. But it might be like, oh, you know what? I was at an event and I did have a can, you know, it could be a Star Wars soda. I mean, they’re selling Star Wars shaped CocaCola, which is probably half the amount of soda in it for four times the amount and people are buying it. Like, I don’t know if I would buy it if I wasn’t going to collect and keep that actual thing, right? And, you know, but how many times can you do? But it’s if you’re a kid and you went to that, you know, I think that’s pretty I think it’s pretty cool. Yeah, I would love to see it be a lot easier to showcase like your stuff, right? Like I was I hosted a um or I produced rather a basketball tournament last year and at Disney Wide World of Sports and um and at the end of it, we got the mouse ears that say champions on it, but with, you know, branded with that, but then also the confetti and the pictures with Mickey. And I’m like, it’s so hard to shadow box stuff. Like, could I do it myself? Yeah. But guess what? I’m like a monkey with tools. I’m not graceful. It doesn’t look great. I wish it was easier to do stuff like that cuz what am I going to do? Put it in a box. It’s going to get bent. Then it’s not even worth having as opposed to just putting like a cool little thing together, putting it on a wall in my office or whatever. You know, I’m I’m going to give uh a shout out to a company um that does that very well. Highland Mint does that very well. Okay. Highland Mint. Yeah. But that’s their own stuff. What I think that they don’t where I think that they fail is that I think that this their ideas are cool. The stuff they use can be upgraded. And we’ve had conversations to try and try and make that happen. But so the idea would be it would be your stuff but not that. And if you’re if you’re artistic, you can get that. And and we’re you know that’s down that’s in that’s down the line for us as a roadmap. We we don’t do a whole lot of oneoff things. Uh we’re mostly B2B 4C. Um but it’s on the road map and that’s that goes to something like this. You know, you know, you get some pictures and and we can print you the ticket or you can have a ticket or a badge or a backstage pass. But um you know, something like that that you can customize. I think uh it’s it’d be great to have something to put all this stuff together instead of just sitting in a box. I agree. And I try and display some things. I have a hat rack there because, you know, I collect hats and I have rows of beer cans there and bobblehead dolls and all all of that. They’re not they’re not so easy to uh to display, but you have to have room and and then the time and then the money. So to have all that together uh becomes a little bit more difficult. Luckily, I’m in an office that, you know, we’re we’re we’re a memorabilia, collectible, whatever you want to call it. So it it kind of fits the mold for what we’re doing here. Um yeah, it works well. But I should have something back here that sort of shows it. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Um, okay. So, what if what if people want to get in touch with you? How should they do that? Yeah, I’m I’ve always been this way. I’m about as accessible a person as you’ll ever meet. I uh I have basically inbox zero. I don’t I don’t have any red on my phone. If I if I show you my phone, um there’s no red on my phone. I reply to 99% of everything I get, even to the people who are spamming me. Uh, so email, LinkedIn, um, if you can find my phone number, call it. Um, yeah, any of that. Awesome. Let me ask you, answer any questions you have. See how I could help you. Let me know if you know anyone that I should be talking to. Um, I think a lot of that’s like we get a lot of requests for teams and I’ll I’ll sometimes just forward it to them and say, “Hey, somebody wants this.” Like it’s not a lot, but why wouldn’t you want to be able to help even if it’s a such a tiny number? Yeah. Yeah. I could see I could see like a Oh my god, I’m I’m bad at this because I have so many ideas. Like everyone I talk to, I’m like, “How about this? How about this? How about this?” It’s uh uh it’s I’m sure it comes off as annoying, but yeah, I love I love to talk about um I love to talk about events and tickets and sports and music and everything related to Ticket Time Machine. I’m also a champion for mental health. I so I’m I’m an advocate. I’m I’m happy to talk about that. I love to travel. I’m a foodie. All of that. But I’m also love to hear and talk to people about what they’re doing because especially if it’s on the periphery. I think there’s probably a good chance they can help me, but I also know that there’s a chance that I can introduce them to someone. And I I think, you know, we need to do more of that. We’re we’re not really fighting against each other. I used to think that way, but I I don’t now. And I think we all, you know, we all need help to get where we need to go. And so I’m always willing to help people even when I need it for maybe more myself. Um yeah, I hope that you know people will do right by you because that’s what they should do but it’s probably how they got where they are and um I don’t know that’s so I’m I welcome anyone who wants to reach out on LinkedIn. We also started an open to work uh and looking group on on LinkedIn. So people are we’re trying to help people get back to work. So, if you’re looking or you’re hiring or you want to help people out, uh, join that. It’s called Open to Work and Looking, uh, join that group. There’s a lot of good resources, people posting jobs. Um, sport, it’s not just sports. It’s it’s everything, but a very I have a very good, uh, connection in to sports and to music and uh, and all of that. Um, sports is my biggest passion, but I also love It’s crazy like if I if I had to do sports or music. I kind of feel like I would maybe pick music if I could only do one and never like never watch sports or play music. There’s just something about music and movies that, you know, sports is great, but I I feel like I might pick music. I don’t know. That’s that would be a tough decision to make, which is surprising because I you would think for me it would be sports. It would be no question. But I I don’t think that way. I think if I had to pick one side of my life or the other, like sports or corporate, and I can never work in the other one again, I would definitely, I think, pick corporate, which is a very tough thing to say because I enjoy sports, but not when I’m working in them. Like when I work in sports, it’s it’s work then. It’s not as enjoyable. Not as glamorous as everyone thinks. Although there are a lot of perks to it. you get to places you might never be, but you know, you might be missing the whole first half because you got to do this or maybe you miss the ending because you got a deadline you got to go and you’re, you know, so you’re kind of relying on secondhand information. Um, but I still encourage anyone who wants to do it to just to get into sports and uh I don’t know what your advice would be, but just get anywhere because it doesn’t really matter. I think you get your experience. Nobody really cares if it was with the Yanke, you know, the the Yankees minor league team or some farm team or uh you know, a local high school uh tournament. You know, you have it’s all transferable in my eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Everything Everything these days and and I think this is maybe the biggest lesson that anyone could learn is everything is transferable, repositioned, reframed, whatever. I mean, if you can sell, you can sell anything. Uh I don’t believe that people can only sell one thing. If you can market, you can market almost anything. Um I I agree. There is something about uh believing in it and being passionate about it. I think that helps and that’s where, you know, I try tend to focus because I could have sold a lot of different things and I did well selling some things, but I if your heart’s not in it, it’s I think it it’s different. It doesn’t mean you can’t do it, right? But also on on the flip side, it’s not always that easy to get into the field of what you’re extremely passionate about. I mean, I think if that’s what you want to do, then just go ahead and do it and find a way in. It might not be through sales. It might be through customer service, which is a big part of sales anyway. And now, right, you know, it’s you can just transition. It’s a lot easier to get, you know, to move up or move sideways once you’re in the industry than it is to just go into an industry from somewhere else. when you say, “Well, I got 20 years of sales experience.” They might want someone who’s had the the you know, the industry experience. Not to say that you can’t have a deal. Yeah. No, you’re you’re right. And and I I do think one of the big things about sports is is people think it’s really glamorous and and it’s fun and and listen, it is fun. I mean, I love what I do in sports. It’s there is nothing more exciting to me than the pressure of live event production on football game day, you know, or getting ready to call a a baseball game. um in the stadium, the first welcome to the fans. It’s it’s amazing. It’s super fun. But there is a lot that you give up to work in sports. Sports don’t happen when people are at work. They happen on nights and weekends. Yeah. Which is when your friends and your family are going to want to get together. And Thanksgiving this year is in an arena, not around a table, you know, and and people forget that. And as passionate as you may be, there are sacrifices. And you cannot I don’t believe that you can have everything. You have to at some point you’re going to have to choose one or the other. If you’re okay with that, amazing. Get into sports. You know what? If you’re not okay with that, amazing. Get into sports and then get out when you’re over it. Yeah. Right. It does. Nothing these days has to be forever. So, you know, you get to choose it every day. It’s never too late to to go into sports or you go into sports and then decide you want to go elsewhere. I think uh it’s it shouldn’t be too late. There’s there’s opportunities out there. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Matt, this has been super fun. I’m so glad we got to know each other even better through this and and now that people are going to get to know you and and your company as well. So, um thank you so much for taking the time. Um everybody, this has been uh our latest episode of Bright Ideas with Matt Wolf from Ticket Time Machine. Thank you again and um subscribe, follow, and we’ll see you on the next one. Thank you.
