“It doesn’t matter if you are a sports team or a concert venue or a nonprofit.

“You are going to see better, more enduring, more durable success if you can figure out a way to engage your fans, to engage your customers so that they don’t just like your product, but they actually believe in what you stand for.”

That’s the main takeaway from Tessitura President & CEO Andrew Recinos in a recent episode of Dave Wakeman’s “The Business of Fun” podcast, which focuses on selling and marketing live event experiences. Dave and Andrew discussed a wide-ranging list of topics including finding your purpose, the power of live events, generating growth, and navigating change in both commercial and nonprofit cultural organizations.

Both agreed that today’s environment requires organizations to embrace a spirit of experimentation.

“It's not a choice of change versus stay the same,” Dave said. “It is a matter of change versus innovation, because change is coming no matter what. The innovation comes when you're an active participant in it.”

“To me, innovation is deciding to surf the wave, knowing that it still might crash over you,” Andrew added. “We've learned, and this is well documented, that the more ideas you have, the higher [chance] you're going to actually have one that works.”

“I'm consistently amazed by the creativity and grit that the arts and culture world has.”

Andrew provided examples of successful initiatives from the Tessitura community, including Ballet Austin in Texas, Roundhouse in London and Lyric Opera in Chicago. “I'm consistently amazed by the creativity and grit that the arts and culture world has,” Andrew said.

Dave shared that appreciation with a personal story about his emotional response to attending a concert after illness. “I want people to understand how important your jobs are and how important it is to build those structures, those engines of relationships, not those engines of transaction,” he said. “Even though I touch a lot of different areas now, still, this is where it really means the world to me.”

Listen to the podcast online or through your preferred podcast platform.