So I I think for us, the way we've we've created this kind of idea culture is to remind people that we all want to get better. I think people sometimes hear change as a negative connotation that, oh, we're just gonna change for change's sake. But I think as a company, if you can get together, and I challenge people to do this, and remind everyone that we're all trying to get better. We're all trying to do a you know, create a better product, serve our customers in a better way, create a better fan experience, whatever that might be. If we need to do that, by definition, we've got to continue to change the way we do things. The only way to change is to implement new ideas in that process. If you're okay, if everyone agrees that we're okay just staying in the same place, doing the same thing, getting the same results, then, yeah, change is not gonna happen. You know, different ideas are not gonna come about. But if you can agree and say we're in a we're in a culture or we're in a company that wants to get better, And what got us here will not get us there, and so we've got to continue to tweak and iterate along the way. I think the best example is, you know, someone like Apple who continue to, you know, the the iterations of eight point one, eight point two, eight point five, you know, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, they're not just blowing everything up and starting back at normal. It's just one tick better, one tick better, one tick better, one tick better. So if you can go to your team and say, guys, we wanted to create a culture where we're just continually getting better every single day. If you have ideas that fit within our parameters of our company that can make us better, we wanna hear them. Now as a leader, you've gotta be open to say, I wanna hear your input. And then what we do here is we remind people, if we disagree with what you bring up, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just disagreeing with the idea. You're not a bad person, you're not a bad employee, you didn't make a bad decision, you're not an idiot, you're not gonna get fired. It just wasn't the right idea. But what we've done here as a in our in our company is create this culture of of yes and yes and. When we host an idea palooza, I'm kind of the the the referee, I suppose, of the idea palooza, and the rule really is you cannot raise your hand and say, bad idea, that won't work. Because that just that that crushes everything. That crushes creativity. That crushes, you know, inspiration. That crushes your confidence. We wanna create a culture where you bring up an idea, and then everyone else has to work their idea muscle and say, alright. Here's how we could make that work. Here's how we could make that. I could try this, and this would help move that idea forward. This would help change this idea in a different direction. And if we get to a point where we all say, alright. We're out. We can't push this idea any further. Okay. Table that for next time. Some of our best ideas have come from these sessions where our team gathers around and says, alright. I see that idea. We could tweak it this way. We could try this. We could get it to here, And all of a sudden, it pushes through, and something really miraculous comes about, and we make it one step better. As we're coming up with new ideas, as you can imagine, there's some some totally wild and crazy ones. Obviously, our owner is always in a yellow tuxedo, so things are very far from fooling around here. But as far as coming up with new ideas for Fans First and what that looks like, we try and and and start by just asking ourselves, well, what if? You know, rather than turning new ideas down, we always we're trying to say, like, well, what if it actually does work? And and we kind of go from there, and we play that game. And then once we've kind of figured out if it if it is the most fans first thing that we could be doing, we figure out what it's gonna take to make it happen. Fortunately, we've kind of built a culture where ideas are are just part of it. Not that all of us feel as if we are the most creative or that we can just come up with ideas on the spot, but we we feel safe enough that we can contribute ideas as we have them. Whether they're small or big, we feel like we can we can just present them and we're not gonna get made fun of, you know, like, there's the safety in being able to do that. And so we have idea paloozes, pretty much once a month, which basically is where we all get together and we've submitted ideas into the idea box, typically featured around a topic or two. And we just kind of draw them out of the box and go through them, and whoever's idea it is speaks up and shares kind of what they were thinking when they came up with that idea and and what they're picturing from from where it's going on. And sometimes the idea is really well thought out and there's a, you know, a full plan kind of behind, the person who came up with the idea. And then other times, people just kind of pull it out of the hat or out of the box, and then they throw it into the middle and let everybody else just kind of go wild talking about it. As we go through ideas, we have basically three categories that they can go into. And one category is that one hundred percent we're doing it no matter what. This this makes sense. We know it's easy. We know that it's a hundred percent in our means to do it right now. The middle category is we really love this idea, but it needs a little work. You know? We need to research what it's gonna cost, or we need to research, like, who would need to be involved with making it happen. And then the third category is it's a crazy idea, and we wanna maybe revisit it sometime, but definitely not right now. So there's there's those three categories, and we're never saying that it's not ever gonna be a possibility, because sometimes an idea can turn into something totally different. And so we wanna make sure that we're hanging on to the ideas that might be the bad ideas, and and that we're able to kind of revisit them later on with a different viewpoint. Some ideas are huge ideas, and they get mentioned one time, and then they don't really come back up again. And so it's kind of like we get kind of off the hook, and we don't have to actually make it happen. But then other ideas get brought up several times, and that's when you know, oh, like, they're serious about that. So we have to figure out how it works. And and a lot of times, it's it's just calling people we know, figuring out if they're gonna be able to help us make stuff fall into place. We get really creative with trying not to just immediately pull out the credit card and pay for something. So if it's something that our operations guy can make for the ballpark, then he'll go and buy the raw materials and put it together himself rather than spending thousands of dollars on something that's already prefabricated. And and, sure, it it costs him his time, but it's something that as a team, we're always looking for ways to as we're putting new ideas in play, how are we able to to get creative and how we're funding those ideas? And, also, how are we able to repurpose things that we already have? I think that it can be a misconception sometimes that our ideas are meant to impact every single person that comes through the stadium. So sometimes our ideas, whether they're really big or really small, they might only impact, you know, ten or twenty fans a game. And I think that, there's such power in that because we're not putting so much pressure on ourselves to make sure that every single person has this, like, super outstanding, most, you know, memorable night of their lives. We're gonna do little things throughout the night for as many people as we possibly can. But if we're impacting fifteen or twenty people in a way where they're gonna turn around and they're gonna talk about the how awesome their experience was, I think that that that's where kind of we see everything really being worth it.
