In this episode of Controllers Classified, host Erik Zhou is joined by Patrick Lynch, Senior Vice President and Controller of the Boston Celtics. Patrick first discusses career milestones (he started as a ball boy in the 90s!) and offers advice for entering the sports industry. The episode then does a deep dive in the world of accounting and finance for sports teams. How does revenue recognition work for sponsorships? How do you account for multi-year player contracts? What are the implications for renting vs. owning a stadium? All of this and more are covered in this exciting episode.
On this episode of Controllers Classified, host Erik Zhou welcomes Patrick Lynch, Senior Vice President and Controller of the Boston Celtics, who shares his journey from ball boy to financial leader for the team. Patrick highlights the milestones of his career, including his transition from an internship to working closely with the CFO, and the significant growth of the Celtics organization. He also imparts wisdom on how to seize career advancement opportunities and offers advice for those aiming to enter the sports industry.
The discussion then does a deep dive into the world of accounting and finance for sports teams. Patrick shares his goals for the upcoming year - accurate reporting, cash management, and cost efficiencies - and then details why those things specifically matter in the sports industry. For example, while a private company, the Celtics are subject to several reporting requirements as a part of the NBA, and Patrick’s team is responsible for the integrity & synthesis of that data. Similarly, the Celtics cash flow reflects the cycle of seasons, and Patrick’s team is focused on managing the ebbs and flows.
Finally, Patrick shares how he harnesses the power of technology to handle copious amounts of data, reduce manual work, and establish real time visibility. His goal in all of this is two fold - to give his team more time to do strategic work and to empower employees across the Celtics organization to be able to spend on things that will move the business forward.
The episode concludes with Patrick sharing an industry story related to an auditor’s stadium walkaround. Listen now to get an exciting in-depth look at how the accounting & finance team plays a huge role in the success of the Celtics franchise.
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Patrick: [00:00:00] We're doing less of the accounting these days and more of the FP& A because we're relying on tech to do the day to day accounting for us.
Announcer: Welcome to Controllers Classified, the podcast where we take a deep dive into the dynamic world of controllers, accountants, and finance leaders, and hear how their ever evolving roles are redefining accounting and the future of business. And now, here's your host, Erik Zhou.
Erik: Welcome to Controllers Classified. I'm your host, Erik Jo, Chief Accounting Officer at Brex. Today, I'm honored to have Patrick Lynch, Senior Vice President and Controller of the Boston Celtics. Patrick, welcome to the show.
Patrick: Erik, thanks for having me.
Erik: Just to get started, I'm really curious. How did you end up in the accounting organization at the Boston Celtics?
Patrick: I'll give you a little story about my career here with the team. I started way back in [00:01:00] 2001 as a full time staff member within the accounting department and operations department. We were a small group back then. Prior to that, I actually was a ball boy for the Celtics back when I was in high school, and that's where it all began.
I was rebounding for some of the greats. So it was, it was pretty interesting. And I honestly didn't think I would be here where I am today, but I have a lot of people to thank along the way. And part of that was getting my foot in the door into sports as an intern while I was in college.
And that allowed me to understand the business in a, in a position where I never experienced that before. Right. We all watch and enjoy the sports world, but to think about it from a business perspective is pretty interesting. So I did the internship and I've always been a diehard sports fan and I stayed in close contact with the people within the department that I met along the way.
And after [00:02:00] graduating from Providence College in 2000, I went and did. Accepted a job as a inside sales representative for Putnam Investments and went to work in the investment world for a little over a year. And during that stand, I understood that the big company just wasn't for me, right? I really enjoyed working in a small team in a small group.
So as part of that, I was looking to kind of find my way out of Putnam Investments, to be honest, and an entry level position became open here. So I took that job and I've been here since.
Erik: What was your day to day as an intern and starting off in the Celtics and then leading into becoming a controller?
Some background, right? Like, we have a bunch of guests on the show. A bunch of them typically start off on like a big forum or some like public accounting firm. And then you end up learning a lot about the profession and the field because you're there. You're looking at a lot of clients. You're working on a lot of different processes through your audit.
And then you end up going into [00:03:00] industry. You started off in industry. I think that's really interesting. So how did you kind of like the breadth of understanding across all the things going on in accounting?
Patrick: Yeah, that's a great point. So we go to league meetings every year, you generally look around the room and most people go through that field, right?
They go into the big four, or they go to work for a small accounting company, and then they come into sports world. Myself, I did it differently. I did the internships, getting close contact with. The CFO at that time, and then took an entry level job. So I was fortunate enough to, to be at the right place at the right time.
And I learned so much from the people that were above me while I was working my way up. And so I think. From my perspective, it was just looking at opportunity, understanding the business, trying to learn as much as possible, absorbing all the information, asking a lot of questions. I think that really helped me try to understand the business.
So it's, it's [00:04:00] really interesting. When I started, we were a small company of 40 people and now we're about 250 people. And that's A testament to the growth of the NBA and what the NBA product has become today and what Adam Silver has done to lead the organization to where it is now.
Erik: And then, would you, like, what would you say are some of the pivotal moments you kind of, like, went through in your career at the Celtics, like, as you got promoted, as you climbed, uh, the rank in the, in the department, you know, what, what were some of those kind of, like, big light bulb things that, that occurred?
Patrick: So in our group, we, it's a small organization. We, we only have six people on our team. So the room for growth is a little limited, however, but when someone does leave the organization, you want to be prepared to take that next step in your career. So for me personally, I went back to grad school to Boston College in my MBA in corporate finance with the hope that the person.
Above me would take [00:05:00] another role in some organization, and if that person did, I would be ready for the next step. So I think I took that approach, and I think also if I were to go to work for a different organization after getting my advanced degree, that would help me look for my next step. So that was a pivotal moment for me was getting my MBA and thinking about what the next opportunity was going to be for me.
Organizationally, when the team got sold, I was still pretty young. That was an extremely pivotal moment within the organization's franchise. We were acquired by A group of local owners who are so committed to winning at any expense possible. They want to put a championship caliber team on the court, obviously in the community as well, but that's their most important goal.
And these were local business executives who came in and said, how can we maximize our revenues? How can [00:06:00] we look at putting a championship caliber team on the court? So I, I would say those are the two. The most pivotal moments in my career so far.
Erik: We have a saying here at Brex, which is that, right. You can't save your way to growth.
Right. So, right. You got to, you got to put some money into use for some capital into use and try to spend in areas that you get high ROI, right. For you guys, it's product on port, obviously, right. Getting, getting the right team together, paying them the market value that they're worth and winning championships, winning, winning games.
But yeah, I, we, we, we talk about that a lot at the company here. What would you say to someone who's trying to break into the sports industry? Like what, what's your advice to them nowadays? Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe some high schooler out there should be thinking about getting a ball boy position like now, right?
Patrick: Exactly.
Erik: Is that what it is or what else can you do?
Patrick: I think there are three key things. I think building good relationships with individuals that are in the industry. I speak [00:07:00] with a lot of college students, a lot of current interns in our organization. Networking is really important. And then have the understanding that Your first job in sports is not going to be your dream job.
You have to start somewhere. And when you get into the sports organization, try to absorb and learn as much as you can with the understanding that you want to continue to look at your goals and where are you going to be in the future, but try to learn as much as you can and absorb as much information as you can so that people can count on you to answer questions and help them through their problems.
And I also thank. If you do get an internship, having an influence on others, be respectful, be positive. Those are key things that we enforce in our department. Just because every day you come into the organization, you want to, you want to have that positivity. You want to have that challenge in front of you that you can tackle.
I think those, those key things are really, really [00:08:00] important for people who want to get in the sports industry. Because as you know, the sports industry is really small. We only have four teams. Four teams in this area that are professional, so there's not a lot of opportunity, but when you get that opportunity, you should really take advantage of it.
Erik: Pivoting to kind of like back in your work arena today, we, we, we are still in the beginning of the current calendar year. You know, what are some of the priorities that you have for this year for your organization?
Patrick: I'll talk about three key goals that we have this year. Um, one of them is accurate reporting.
Second one, and I'll jump into these in a minute. Second one would be cash management. And then the third would be improving cost efficiency. So when we talk about improving cost efficiency, like looking at our ROIs, looking at our margins on sponsor arrangements, looking at our ticket pricing, Looking at expenses that go along with those departments, how are we [00:09:00] evaluating our investments and whether those are producing good returns.
So that's, that's sort of the improved cost efficiency side. Cash management, our cash flow cycle is like a ski mountain. Um, we, during the season, We, a lot of, we have a lot of incoming cash, but then as the season ends, we're still paying our players and our cash management basically declines, our cash inflows declines.
So managing cash is really, really important. And then accurate reporting is really important as it pertains to the entry level, like once we enter at the data entry level, it's really important as the export of those entries, we need to produce three sets of financial statements on an annualized basis.
So ensuring. The accurate recording is precise by making sure the entry level point, those entries are accurate.
Erik: Digging into one of [00:10:00] the goals, like you mentioned the accuracy, and I think you guys have, you said six folks on your, on your team today, right? Right, yes. So when I hear that, I hear, okay, there's entry level data that's going into the system.
But there's, if there's only six people, how can you guys be reviewing all of those inputs with, with just the amount of human resources that you have, like what, what, what, how are you going to achieve the level of accuracy that you need with, I don't know, probably tons of data that you guys have to input?
Like, how do you actually accomplish that?
Patrick: So we rely heavily on technology. Um, and I, I can talk about this a little bit. When I first started, we were on QuickBooks. We were running our closed analysis through Excel and using QuickBooks as a system to write checks and make payments to vendors and track cash.
But as the company grew and as we hired more people and had more employees [00:11:00] and doing all these research projects and looking at the next big revenue driver and trying to figure out where the business was going to go, we need some tech to support that. So we did a big research project on trying to find the right products and we partnered with Oracle to Roll out NetSuite back in 2016.
And that was, that was a big project for us. We would never implemented a product like that before. So we started out with NetSuite and then we added some vendors to help us be more efficient and add integrations along the way, such as AP automation, closed software. Travel and expense. And then we got our feet underneath us and said, this is how the landscape's going to look.
But we also challenge ourselves to yearly to look at those texts and say, is this working? Are we doing the right things here? How can we be better? What [00:12:00] else is out there? What can we do to drive our business forward? So we realize heavily on technology. And if we didn't have those technologies, I think we'd be in a different position right now.
Erik: So you talk about a few, a few departments there, like including AP, you know, maybe there's some like general ledger staff that you would have had or needed as you guys grew, you know, just for the audience to understand, like, what, what's the difference there? Like you have the tech, how many people would you have needed potentially to kind of do the work that the tech's doing?
Have you guys? Ever thought about it like that?
Patrick: Give you an example. So AP, we used to write checks through NetSuite and have a bunch of invoices about this high, and then a bunch of checks about this high, and we'd go one by one signing checks, looking at the invoice, making sure it all matched, and then The AP person would receive the checks after we sign them and approve them, photocopy the checks, [00:13:00] attach the checks to the invoice, mail out the checks, and then file the checks in the filing cabinet.
So that was the way we used to do it. Now it's all digital where we, we receive the invoice. We run it through an email that runs directly into our BP partner. The AP partner loads it into their system. which integrates directly with NetSuite. So once it's booked in NetSuite, we review the payment through the AP partner and then sign off on it digitally.
So it's, you're saving so much time by doing it the way we're doing it now compared to where we were back in the day.
Erik: No, totally. Yeah. My, my parents, I mean, they run a small business, it's a restaurant and they still, you know, my parents are like seven years old, but they still pay their vendors for supplies and materials via check.
And yeah, they're still doing it on their kitchen table, like [00:14:00] every, every, every couple of weeks and doing it manually. You know, it's not scalable at your side, right? Like, so that totally makes sense. So, so that's a great example. Like, okay. So then over time, the way you're measuring, I think performance is also different.
So how do you, how do you measure that, the performance of your processes now and like how the automation is working and where you see potential improvement opportunities? Going forward. Sure.
Patrick: Yeah, that's a great question. So it's, it's more of taking that process and allowing our staff members to focus on other things that could provide value to department heads.
For example, the AP person, it's not necessarily. Data importing that entry every time so that that allows them to evaluate year over year expenditures. Look at our sponsorship revenue, our sponsored expenses, make recommendations to department heads about how we can be more efficient in [00:15:00] investments in this area.
So we're now looking at more financial planning and analysis than we are actually data inputting and just reviewing things. Prior to evaluating the, their circumstance. So I think it provides them more opportunity in other areas than it would be if we're not investing heavily in tech. So that's just one area, but we're always looking at ways to be more efficient ways to look at our costs, understand what's our most expensive expense and how we can.
Look at those and make improvements in those areas.
Erik: I like what you said there. Actually, the story you mentioned about your AP person, kind of taking on more of an FP& A role, to some extent, right? Like, they're doing a little bit more critical analysis on some of these expenditures that you have in the ROI.
You know, we have a similar story here. We've also, like, you know, we, this company, sorry, Breck, started in 2017, and [00:16:00] then we tried to automate some of our AP efforts through Coupa back in 2020. And we did that. We, we, we, we, we have a flow going that automates matching, et cetera. And what it's done, it's allowed the team to just do more fluctuation analysis.
Like, honestly, it's not, it's no longer just the input stuff like we mentioned before. Right. And I think for An accountant's career. It allows the team to, I don't have to hire a separate FP& A person or an out analyst, like this person is expanding the skillset that they have and they can learn from at Brux itself.
So I really resonate with kind of like what you're mentioning about career growth and skill, skill learnings.
Patrick: And just to expand that a little bit. So our functionality. It's twofold in that everyone in our group is doing sort of FP& A, we have a lead FP& A person, but everyone's looking at FP& A and then also doing the general accounting that everyone knows well.[00:17:00]
So it's, we're doing less of the accounting these days and more of the FP& A because we're relying on tech to do the day to day accounting for us. And that's why we're obviously going with RECs. With the real time visibility, the be more efficient, the data accuracy, close our books faster, like those are really key initiatives that we have and key important steps we need to take so that we can focus on bigger and broader items in the future.
Erik: We actually haven't had a customer testimony on the show, but I know you just signed up with Brex. I'm just really curious, like, are, what are the specific pain points with Brex that you're trying, that you're, you're meaning to solve with the implementation?
Patrick: Our position right now is we're more of a reactive department when it comes to travel expense.
Okay, and I want to be more proactive. Our sponsor team has 50, 000 to spend [00:18:00] on travel and expense for FY25 upcoming starting in July. I want that group to feel empowered to go do their traveling, meet with customers, meet with clients, entertain customers. In the prior year, it's more of review and analysis on the back ends.
Once the transaction happens. With Brex, we're going to get out in front of it and we're going to empower employees to make those purchases, evaluate their budgets on a project by project basis and make the determination of what they think is the right investment. So that I'm really excited about that.
It shows that the company is going to entrust the employee to make the right decision. And then the visibility that we have. When they're making that purchase is really, really important. And it's going to, this is another thing we talked about earlier, but our AP person's chasing down, currently chasing down [00:19:00] employees to submit their expense reports so we can accurately report our financials on a month to month basis.
Brex is going to allow us to eliminate that process. And that person is going to, again, focus on bigger, better projects along
Erik: the way. And just to reiterate kind of what you said, we, we, we utilize the same product. So we eat our own dog food, right? We, we produce the product, we implemented the product ourselves.
What you're, what you're talking about is something similar that we run for our own marketing and sales team. We basically set aside a budget or a spend limit specific to a particular purpose. Meeting clients. Taking out partners and entertaining them, et cetera. Let's just say it is 50 grand. You have to assume good intent, right?
The company is still small enough. Let's assume you have good hiring practices and you hire people that are looking out for the business. You know, we provide the budget for the whole year and then you can make the choice on how you want to allocate that 50 grand across the different. Customers and business partners that you want to spend the money on to promote the business.[00:20:00]
And it's way less trouble in the backend. We're not approving every single trip, right? They can go out and do, we have other, other controls and limitations and thresholds for spend. For instance, it'll highlight live, whether or not a hotel charge is like more than the suggested limit, or if someone basically bought like a first class flight when they weren't, when they weren't supposed to, but we're now managing by exception.
And like just looking at it from on the back end that way. And like, to your, to your point, it is a little, it's more proactive, actually. And you can spend more time on other things. So I really appreciate the example you shared there.
Patrick: And there's one other thing I want to touch on too, Erik, is the procurement process, right?
So today our department heads are going out, making purchases based on what they feel is necessary. Brex is going to help us be more efficient in that area too. Our travel is. Not so extensive on the business side. It's really heavy on the basketball side with scouting and professional [00:21:00] scouting and those types of expenses.
But procurement or the travel on the business side is a little bit limited. So we're excited to, to look at the procurement process and limit the check writing process. So again, looking at AP, where can we be more efficient here? Can Brex help us with the procurement side of our business? So we're really excited to take that next step.
Erik: Just moving on to other operational items related to your day to day. Sure. What about on the accounting side and some of the more nuanced accounting principles or important areas of focus that you may have versus Versus like even Brex, like, so you're in the sports world. The sports business is obviously very different than, than us.
We're a card issuer, kind of fintech, you know, is there anything that you would call out from a revenue recognition side or maybe in your operating model that's like interesting for, uh, other folks to think through in the sports business?
Patrick: I touched on this earlier, but we need to produce three sets of financial statements on an [00:22:00] annualized basis.
The reason for that is, number one, obviously we do our financial reporting for our bankers, so that's, that's one thing. The second one is what we call basketball related income. So the salary cap is set based on BRI. So BRI is any revenue and expense A team produces that is basketball related. So I'll give you an example, ticket sales, sponsorships, media.
So they accumulate all those revenues and say, what's deductible is that's driving that revenue. And so we deduct that. That number gets produced into a pool of all the other NBA teams and the salary gap is set. We then have a set of financial statements that produce our revenue share model. And that is really very similar to GAAP, but we pull out some expenses.[00:23:00]
In revenue that are non deductible for revenue sharing. So that's the, the interesting nuance when it comes to sports, where I think in some accounting practices, they're looking at one set of financial statements on an annualized basis. We're looking at three and sometimes we get to a fourth. So our, our real focus is the attention to detail when it comes to each one of those sets of financial statements to ensure.
That they're accurate, the reporting accuracy is, is 100%. So that's a little different than any other organization, I would say. I would think a lot of sports teams operate that way, but that's really our, our main focus because once those three sets of financial statements are done, then you have auditors coming in and evaluating those.
Erik: And do you get auditors for each three of the financial statements that you produce in the different kind of like standards that they're produced in? That's correct. And that, and [00:24:00] what's the cycle for that? So your year end is, is June. So does that mean your cycle is kind of in the summer?
Patrick: RBC season, I always say, is from May to Thanksgiving, so we do BRI in from May to June 30th, and then we have a little bit of a lull, and our gap audit starts in September, runs for about seven weeks.
September, it's the month of June. Middle, late October, and then revenue sharing is two weeks following that. So that's our,
Erik: our busiest time of year. Out of curiosity, typically the finals are in June,
Patrick: right?
Erik: Why is it that BRI audit or like that financial report that those financials process is in May and June?
Patrick: Free agency starts right after July 1, so you need to know what your, your salary cap number looks like heading into the next season and they need to know what BRI looks like and then what the salary cap number is and then they set what player [00:25:00] compensation is going to be for
Erik: like break basketball related income during the year.
That makes sense. Yeah,
Patrick: we know what our revenue is going to be. Expenses are a little tricky.
Erik: Yeah,
Patrick: especially if you make a deep run to the playoffs, you kind of don't know where your expense is going to land. So there's a true up process at the end of the BRI audit that you can roll through some expenses or revenue that you didn't report earlier.
So
Erik: no matter what the standard, there's always accruals.
Patrick: Exactly.
Erik: Basically. Yeah. Okay. What about like, you know, I'm curious, I'm diving into a little bit over this more deeply, but like, I know that some teams own the stadium. And then some teams rent. Does that play into some of these calculations?
Patrick: So anything that's, if we own the arena, so our, our structure is.
The Celtics just, Banner 17 just owns the basketball team. We have a lease agreement with the arena. Delaware North owns the Bruins, owns the food and beverage company, and [00:26:00] then owns the arena itself. So, we're just tenants there. So, some structures are teams own, So any concessions or parking revenue or naming rights revenue, for example, fixed signage, they call it, would go into your basketball related income calculation.
So that's, that's a good example of things that we don't recognize as revenue, but other teams would. So that's, that's, that's basically the difference between a renter and an owner is there's multiple revenue streams coming in. I think I mentioned earlier, our three biggest revenue streams are media, Sponsorship and ticket sales.
So other teams may have real estate income, like Golden Stadels or Arena. There's some restaurants and stores at the base of that arena that might go into BRI. So there, there are a number of different examples across teams. If you were to own the [00:27:00] arena versus being a renter.
Erik: You mentioned the salary cap and then.
You know, obviously that, that's a big deal for the entire league, right? In terms of like, the accounting operations and the accounting for player compensation, like, I don't, I don't want you to go into like, Too much of the details, but what's the nuance there? Like, you know, it's pretty sensitive info. Like how does that get approved or like paid out?
Patrick: Yeah, that's a great question. They're huge numbers. So how it usually works is the players generally are paid from November 1st of the upcoming season. To 10, 15 of the next year. So when we started the 23, 24 season, they have paid over 24 payroll periods.
So we're on a June close period, June 30th. So we're going to have a big accrual for Blair player compensation at June 30 for the remaining payroll periods. That are the next fiscal year. [00:28:00] The league has a salary cap team that helps us with player compensation. And they are really, really good people to, to, to work with because they know the nuances of player comp.
So they provide a schedule to us on a payroll by payroll basis that says you need to pay this player X amount of dollars. Now that wasn't the case pre COVID. Pre COVID, teams were calculating player comp based on contracts. So, the league has really stepped up and helped us with that.
Erik: What drove that change?
Like, it wasn't, I don't, it feels like that's not something that, even though, like COVID's not one of the things that would have driven that, you could have still done the calculations in house, I guess. Like, what, Yeah,
Patrick: so the biggest thing was, you know, the expense, the revenues and expenses came way down during COVID.
So they were evaluating the whole economic system to ensure the players were getting their fair [00:29:00] share of DRI. So as part of that evaluation, they changed the process a little bit in terms of the system they had in place. Prior to COVID, players would put in 10 percent of their salary into what they call an escrow system.
And then once BRI is completed, the players, we would ensure the players had their fair share of BRI. So the 10 percent would either get paid back to the players or a portion of that 10 percent would get back, get paid back to the players. During COVID, The revenues were way down. The players wouldn't get their fair share of BRI because of the lack of revenues.
So what they did is they spread, spread that portion that the players owed back to the teams over a three year basis so that it was a fair calculation to everyone involved. So that's what changed the whole reporting system.
Erik: It gets pretty nuanced with, depending on industry to [00:30:00] industry, everyone's got to deal with kind of their own.
That's why you end up with a, like, sure there are generalists out there, but that's why when you end up in a position like yours or mine, I think typically a lot of people end up focusing on one industry, whether it's like financial services on my end or for you in the sports industry and all the nuances there, so it makes a lot of sense.
You know, we always end our podcasts with something fun, and so You know, I think from my end, I think I'm a lot of fun. You seem like a lot of fun. I'm curious if you have any funny, like accounting debacles or jokes or anything like that to share with our audience as we, as we end the segment.
Patrick: I was counting on you for that.
Erik: Oh, okay. I mean, I'll share a story. I don't usually do these. But I worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers for 11 years as an auditor, and I split time between the New York practice and then the San Francisco practice. I worked on large, multinational financial institutions the whole time, and they pay, they pay [00:31:00] big dollars for some of these audits, right?
And so sometimes when they ask, we just deliver, or try to as best we can. And then there was one time when We're about to finish the 10K audit. We're going to be done around February 15th or whatever. Right after we finish the 10K audit, there's typically a stand alone bank audit, like for that stand alone subsidiary, but that's due by the end of March, so within 90 days.
So typically it was like, you know, get the 10K out, everyone's working crazy hours, like 100 hour weeks sometimes, getting it out, and then the client just said, you know what, we don't want to deal with basically all this for another 45 days, so Trying to get this other subsidiary audit out. Can you just like get it done right after we get the 10k?
Like, like the next day? And like, this is something that typically took another 45 days. Okay. You want to compress it to one day of work. Now for context, a lot of the work is just So this is like kind of technology or like that we ended up [00:32:00] doing for this job. But a lot of the work to get that audit out was already done from the 10k because this is a subsidiary, right?
So when we did the consolidated audit, we looked at books of the bank already. We just didn't document it. specific to the bank in a certain file that has to stand alone. And then, I mean, this is one of those things where like, I couldn't believe my eyes, like we had like six partners on the call, all the engagement managers across the entire consolidated audit on a call.
So it's like 20 of us and we're all just like talking shop about like, can we do this? Is it possible? Can we write something up? Can we do this? And transfer all this, can we use something to copy and paste all these different files and put it in this other database, like overnight instead of like spending 45 days copying and pasting and blah blah blah.
And We ended up writing like a 30 page memo over the course of 24 hours incorporating by reference everything in the first database into the second and we delivered it. [00:33:00] And I gotta tell you like, you know, the client loved it, but then we also set a precedent, right? So every year, everything has to all be done at the same time.
That's
Patrick: tough.
Erik: Yeah, when you're in the service industry, like people like, you know, your client doesn't expect the service to get worse every year. And yeah, but you know, that's just one of the things that I recall doing. That was crazy. I ended up that whole week. It was like up till I don't want to discourage people from getting to the industry, but I was a profession.
There's like 3 a. m, 4 a. m nights, like, wow. Like that's a lot for a week. It was, it was, it was because we added that piece of work on. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious if you have any debacles that I got to
Patrick: get one. I got to, yeah, I got to get one. So So we touched on BRI a little bit earlier, right? So BRI happens in May and PwC is the audit company that comes in.
So thank you, PwC. And as part of that, the procedures, they need to walk around the arena and look [00:34:00] at fixed signage and tickets and sponsorships and suites so they get an arena tour. So we always schedule the arena tour, usually since, like I mentioned earlier, because we're tenants in the arena, the basketball court's not always down, right?
So you want to make sure the basketball court's down so we can look at the sponsors on the courtside tables, look at the sponsors on the seatbacks. Well, we scheduled the tour and we left the office and went down to the courtside area and there was a shootaround by the visiting team. So the visiting team will come in the morning of the game and do like a walkthrough.
To make sure they're prepared for the game that's upcoming that night. So we're walking around and I'm saying, well, here's our signage and one of the security personnel from the visiting team, I won't mention who it was, came up to us and started giving us a hard time about being in the arena.
They thought we were like, recording spies. We were like [00:35:00] recording the game, their plays prior to the game that night. So we used to say we just turned around and walked away. We thought that they thought that we were doing something that we shouldn't be doing. I think that the auditors are kind of mortified.
So it's kind of funny.
Erik: Yeah. If I, if I recall, like I used to work in this oftentimes people that do the walk around, I don't know, they're typically more junior people. And like, they don't even, they've never been in a situation like that ever before. They didn't want to step on the client's toes. They don't want to cause any trouble.
Just trying to, it's like counting inventory, you know, they're just like, let me just count things and then, yeah. So it's funny. Yeah. Well, Patrick, thank you very much for joining the show today. I appreciate all the wisdom and the advice that you shared and. Yeah, I look forward to the next time we get to connect.
Patrick: Yeah, thanks, Erik. It was great to talk today and I appreciate the conversation. It was [00:36:00] really good to talk with you.
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