We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ben Trainor a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ben, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Not Found
It all started when I was young with my love for sports, travel, entrepreneurship, and making connections. I was fortunate enough from the time I could walk to as I am writing this piece for CanvasRebel Magazine, that I had the opportunity to play and watch every sport, travel to places I will always remember, learn from my two incredible entrepreneurial parents, and make connections that will last forever.
From 2013 to 2017, I left Albuquerque, NM and embarked on my undergraduate adventure to West Virginia University “Go Mountaineers”. It was there that my love for all four supported friendships, business classes, opportunities, and more. It also was the place that helped me realize people who might never connect in our day to day lives, can connect over travel, sports, and simply being together.
Following graduation, I started a typical 9-5 and begun to accept life as I most know it – work 9-5 Monday through Friday, enjoy the weekend and restart. However, being raised by two outliers knew that this lifestyle wasn’t going to be forever. I looked back on what made me most excited and I came back to my four pillars of sports, travel, entrepreneurship and making connections.
I wanted people all over the country to elicit the same opportunity I got at West Virginia University to build connections based on your love for one team, the excitement of travelling, and the environment to make connections you typically wouldn’t. When someone asks ‘What is Gameday Guide’, I simply tell them it is a sports travel agency that provides the opportunity to meet fellows fans, travel to support your team wherever they may play, connect with others via the love of sports and travel, and most of all make long-lasting memories while doing so.
As I have said since 2018 when Gameday Guide was created, there are two rules we live by: 1. There’s no such thing as an away game and 2. A company made by a fan for the fans.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Gameday Guide is a sports travel company that provides the means and logistics to attend sporting events you normally wouldn’t. We provide travel, ticketing, and tailgate services to any sporting events in your area. We offer a one stop, seamless service to enhance your gameday experience.
Our game day packages include round trip travel to avoid driving yourself, carpooling, and potential drunk driving incidents. We will pick you up in a convenient point to start your game day, bring you to the game, and bring you back following the final whistle.
While travelling and once you are at the event, we encourage and expect you to enjoy yourself. We like to think our transportation doubles as a “moving tailgate” including music, food, drinks, and more. Once you arrive, the tailgate only continues with traditional tailgate set ups and each and every potential sports outlet,
Last but not least, we include tickets as well. Your game day experience isn’t complete without truly supporting your team wherever they are playing. Within each package will include a ticket to the event to round out your game day experience and provide those lasting memories.
We thrive off being a bunch of fans that have a sole purpose in supporting other fans. We work to provide both open ended packages where anyone can join in on the fun for any game, and also custom trips where we work with you to build a game day experience for you and yours. Either way we are a fan centric organization who’s love for sports, travel, and people have brought together the perfect game day experience.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When you start a business it comes with plenty of obstacles and challenges, but resilience is what determines the success stories versus the ‘what could of been’. By no means have I found the success I’d hope to or even come close to the goals I want to achieve, but resilience is something myself and Gameday Guide is founded on.
In 2020, the world was hit by a pandemic that effected millions of lives, businesses, cities, and countries. It took the world by storm and didn’t let up for anything or anyone. That included Gameday Guide. As a sports travel and entertainment business, we were built around the sports and travel industry. With both practically completely shut down, we were almost completely shut down.
If it wasn’t for our resilience, we might have accepted the fate of our business and decided to close shop. However, like millions of humans and businesses we were ready to get right back to it once the world was open to operate once again. We had worked tirelessly to understand next steps, regulations, and provide adjustments to our experience, for the fans, to once again create an amazing game day experience.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
All businesses and especially start up business have to think outside the box in everything they do. Over the last four years of business Gameday Guide has won and lost from countless strategy’s for growing clientele and growing the business. We’ve explored marketing tactics, operational advantages, sales funnels, and more.
It wasn’t until 2021, where we hired our first campus / area manager, that we realized we had discovered an incredible opportunity. Our campus or area manager program is where we provide incentives to support Gameday Guide’s promotional activities, operations, business, and more on your campus or in your area.
We work with undergraduates, alumni, sports fans, and business savvy folks alike to create a clientele and Gameday Guide fandom in areas starting with the people that know them best. As we explore new opportunities and new sports teams and events of interest, we discovered that the people that know them best are the people that truly live and breathe their respective teams.
The program continues to grow and develop and we look forward to continue successes and providing the opportunity for fans to work alongside Gameday Guide in the future to provide game day experiences to each and everyone around the country.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://gameday-guide.com/
- Instagram: Gameday_guide
- Facebook: Gameday Guide
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gameday-guide
- Twitter: Gameday_Guide
- Youtube: None
- Yelp: None
- Other: Gameday Guide application on the Apple Store and Google Play Store
Image Credits
All images are from Gameday Guide