We Need Better Systems To Support Officials with Huck Sorock of REFR Sports

The World Cup is almost here, and my life is about to get loud in the best way: I’m heading to seven matches with FIFA and TikTok as a Creator Correspondent, with access that changes what I can share and where I can share it. That excitement is real, but so is the deeper reason I care about this tournament. When the US Men’s National Team takes the field, you see a diverse group that reminds us what it looks like to pull in the same direction, even when the country feels split apart. 

We also sit with a story that is hard to shake: a Somali FIFA referee, after years of screening and international travel, reportedly lands in Miami and is denied entry for “vetting concerns.” We talk about what that decision costs on a human level, what it suggests about travel bans and bias, and why judging people as individuals matters. For anyone who loves soccer, refereeing, and the integrity of global sport, it’s a moment worth examining out loud. 

Then we get tactical with Huck Sorock from Refer Sports about the biggest hidden problem in youth sports and amateur soccer: referee assigning. We dig into what modern referee assigning software should actually do, from paying officials faster to reducing admin chaos during massive tournaments. We talk AI schedule imports, agentic AI as a productivity multiplier, building an in-app community for training and support, and why retention improves when assigners can spend less time on spreadsheets and more time mentoring refs. If you care about sports officiating, referee retention, and smarter assigning systems, this one is for you. 

Subscribe for more, share this with an assigner or official who needs better tools, and leave a review so more referees can find the show.

Transcript

World Cup Trip And USMNT Hopes

SPEAKER_02 0:03

As I record this, we are T minus, two days from the World Cup kicking off. My gosh. I have been waiting for this date for literally, I kid you not, about four years. I remember when I started this channel, I think when we were, I don't know, three or four weeks in, and all of a sudden it started getting some steam and more and more followers and more and more engagement. That my son was like, Man, wouldn't it be so cool if like you were able to get like tickets to go to World Cup Games because of the ref's neat love to channel, you know, years from now? I'm like, yeah, that would be awesome. Well, I am actually going to be going to seven matches, the World Cup, six of them on behalf of FIFA and TikTok as a creator correspondent. They're paying for my flights and my hotel, some ground transportation, not everything, to get me up there the day before, day after matches. We may be able to go to some team trainings and press conferences and have all this amazing access around the stadium. Like it is the coolest thing in the world. But but I'll tell you, I feel like I'm even more excited for the US men's national team and hoping that they do well in this tournament. I do not know what's going to happen. I feel like one side of me says they can lose every game and maybe not even score a goal. One side of me is like, you know, hey, when I saw Pepe and Pallissa clicking together, I was like, man, there's a chance here. I mean, I feel like we've got some pieces that can work together and create some things. I mean, Serginho Dest right now, unbelievable. That kid is a rock star. Uh Robinson on uh the left wing, Anthony Robinson, like he's just unbelievable. Some questions about our defense right now, some questions about you know the midfield right now. I'll be honest. I'm not sold on on Bolligan. You know, I'd like to be proven wrong on that one. I that would be nice. But overall, just as an American, I feel like we need this. You know, as a country, you know, we've become so fractured, and there are so few things that bring us together now, everyone together. Sport is one of those things. Sport is one of those things. People of different ethnicities, different walks of life, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different nationalities, different religions. We can all still come together about a team, and specifically this U.S. national team, which is actually outrageously diverse, you know, and it's got people from you know different parts of the world, whatnot, and all across our country, from the northeast, from out west, from you know, southeast. It is such a cool thing to see. And so I'm just so excited for this World

TikTok-Only FIFA Footage Access

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Cup. Um, I will say, if you follow me on my channels on Instagram and Facebook, I would just really encourage you, you need to check me out on TikTok right now because I can't, TikTok is giving me, and FIFA is giving me this exclusive access to content like every single day, like actually game footage that I can like analyze and post about, but I'm only allowed to post it on TikTok as part of the deal to travel to all these games and have all this access. So I can't post the same things I do on TikTok that I would on Instagram or Facebook. So if you don't follow me over there and you don't have TikTok, you know, just download it for the tournament because there's gonna be some really cool stuff that happened over there since TikTok is the official social media uh partner of the World Cup. Okay, so gonna be fun. Crazy next six weeks in my life. Oh my gosh, dude, literally a week from today, a week from no a week from tomorrow, I am going to be, at least that's what they keep telling me. Like I found out about this week ago, I am gonna be at a UN, United Nations like roundtable function, you know, against hate speech. And it's FIFA is a

UN Roundtable With George Weah

SPEAKER_02 3:49

partner and sponsor of this, and I am gonna be on a panel with George Weia, okay. Tim Wea's dad on the US Men's national team, former Balonda war winner, former president of Liberia. Like it's me, him, and another dude on a panel. Me, David Gerson, reflect love too, at the Center for Civil and Human Rights here in Atlanta. What crazy, unbelievable. But yes, once this tournament kicks off, I'm gonna be Boston, I'm gonna be Atlanta, I'm gonna be Philly, I'll be Kansas City, I'll be gosh, New York. I'm gonna be all over the place for a while. So I don't know how many podcasts more I'll be able to get out. I got like one or two more that I'm planning to record in the next week or two, but who knows when I'll get them actually

Somali Referee Denied US Entry

SPEAKER_02 4:33

out. The last thing before I lead us into this week's podcast, yesterday we also found out about Omar Artan, or I think his like actual last name is Adul uh Kadir, I believe it is, is how you pronounce his last name. Um, the Somalian referee who was not able to enter the United States to officiate at the World Cup. And like, again, I I have no idea why he was denied entry to the United States, aside from the fact that Somalia is on a list of uh travel banned countries, but it is just so unbelievably gut-wrenching. You you spend your entire life as a referee. Like, he's in Somalia. You picture the environments this dude is officiating in, right? We we kind of bitch and moan about grass fields or maybe it's a little patchy or something like that. We're talking dirt. We're talking one of the poorest countries on earth. 19 million people in Somalia, war-torn countries, civil war, famines, like it's just been awful, awful. But this man has committed his life to becoming an official and worked his way up to becoming a professional, and then became a FIFA referee, okay, since 2018. And in 2025, he was voted in in the African delegation to be the top ref in Africa, uh, referee of the year. And he's only 34 years old. So he did that at 33 years old. Okay, he would have been the second youngest referee to attend this World Cup, second youngest. So what an amazing story. I mean, this guy is unbelievable at what he does, like fitness, foul recognition, confidence, like he is beloved in Africa as a referee, which is crazy to think about. He is so popular. So to come to the United States, the referees were responsible for getting their own passports, uh, you know, made sure the passport sets getting their own visas and their own travel documents to be able to come to the United States. And he did get a visa. He was given a diplomatic passport from the Somali government, okay? Diplomatics. That's like a whole different level of status, okay, in terms of his passport. And he was denied entry when he flew over, connecting flight through Turkey, came from Turkey, flew over from Turkey, lands in Miami, you know, on the Saturday, all the referees are arriving about a week ago Saturday, and he is denied entry by some bureaucrat in customs and border patrol. And the reason given by the CBP, our government, is vetting concerns. Mind you, this guy was like initially like selected as a potential fit to come to the World Cup like three years ago by FIFA and has gone through outrageous levels of screening and has traveled all over the world as a referee and as an official. You know, I mean, people like to complain about referees and stuff like that, but generally 99.99% of them are like, like, especially the professionals, are a squeaky, freaking clean man. I mean, like militant about their profile, their social media, you know, just their appearance, like everything. Like this guy is everything that we should want in a professional coming to our country to work in the World Cup. And he is excluded. What I can only imagine is just because he's uh coming from Somalia. And I'd also like to say, probably a Muslim and a black man. I'm just gonna throw it in there that often we we like to put countries on you know ban lists that you know are Muslim and might have uh people with darker skin. I'm gonna say it. It's true. Prove me wrong. Show me the proof otherwise, please. Um and it's really upsetting. I mean, it's like imagine, you know, and and again, listen, I'm not saying there's not some bad people in Somalia, but it's like saying as Americans, okay, we're not allowed to go travel into other countries now, or other countries aren't gonna let us because you've got a bunch of people with guns who commit gun violence in America, and you've got rapists, and you've got fraudsters in America. Like you'd be like, wait a second, but I'm not one of them. You know, I'm I'm a good citizen. I don't have a criminal record. You know, I've never committed any crime. Why are you gonna hold me responsible? I'm in a country of 300 something million people. You know, I'm an individual. You should judge me as an individual. And unfortunately, this young man, Omar, was not judged as an individual, was not judged on the content of his character. He was judged on something he had no choice over. You know, the country he was born and that he's a citizen of. I just think that's freaking wrong. And it's upsetting. And it's it's it makes me sad. So sad. And I also think about listen, the reality of this financially. Okay, so the World Cup is the biggest payday for any referee in the world. Yes, it's the biggest event, whatnot, it's so glamorous to be able to be at the World Cup. But it's money, man. The average Somali citizen makes less than $750 a year. A year. Between $100,000, like it's something like $75 to $100 a month.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

I mean, it's like really low. Okay. This tournament, he could have made fifty or sixty thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Like, that is freaking generational wealth, like 40-50 years of an average Somali salary in a seven-week period of time to come to work this World Cup.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Can you imagine that impact that has on him and his family? You know, in and generations of his family. Heartbreaking. Just heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Yeah, that's all I gotta say about that. All right.

Why Referee Assigning Must Evolve

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Today, guys, on a more positive note, I've got Hux Rock back from Refersports. And listen, there's reasons why I bring, you know, entrepreneurs on here because we need more people making cool stuff for referees. Okay. And Refersports has created a really cool platform that makes people's lives better, referees' lives better. And I want you to hear from entrepreneurs who are doing this because if you've got a good idea on a product or a system that you want to do better, I want you to feel empowered and encouraged to go out and do it. Figure out a business plan, start making that thing happen, you know, set up that website, you know, do what you got to do. I had someone call me today who wanted to, you know, change how we send out badges here in the state of Georgia, because in Georgia, all we do is we put a badge in a blank envelope, no paper inside saying, hey, thank you for being a referee. We just send badges out to someone's address, you know, with a label on it and no message in it. Well, he's got an idea and he wants to do something for people with less than a letter for people with less than one year of experience, got a letter for people with up to five years and a custom coin for them, and then like a, you know, like not a veteran award, but you know, a more experienced referee, like 10-year plus coin and cards that go out to our referees with 10 plus years experience. I'm like, that's amazing. I love that. And he got inspired because we were having a conversation this weekend on the pitch. He was officiating on the pitch next to me and we were talking under the tent after the games. And I was telling him what I do and my story, and he got inspired. I love that, man. And so I'm gonna help him figure out how we're gonna do this and how we're gonna get it sponsored and paid for. Okay. This is an amazing time in our country where technology is the costs are significantly low. You know, you can use AI to put together beautiful visuals. You could set up a new website really easily. You can email people, you can text people, you can do all sorts of things, we can create petitions. You know, on change.org, there's so many things that we can do. So I hope that this podcast inspires you to go and do. If you've got something you want to go and do, if you've got an idea, man, if you've got a concept, whatnot that you think could be a great product for referees or just whatever, just in general, and you want to talk to a small business owner who's started like three or four different businesses now, talk to me. I'll give you feedback. And you know, if I can't help, I'll help. But I think this is a good thing. So I hope you guys enjoyed today's pod. And uh yeah, I love you. Enjoy the World Cup. Go, USA, go. Let's hope we win some games. But most of all, enjoy the experience. You know, we should be thankful that it's here, and I hope everything goes well. Love you guys and talk to you soon. Hello, and welcome to the Ref Seed LoveTube Podcast, a show that gets real raw and behind the scenes of one of the hardest jobs on the pitch, the referee. I'm David Gerson, your host, and everywhere these days, so whether it's TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. And now, as we gear up for the World Cup, I'm gonna be a correspondent for the World Cup as well, attending in numerous matches and giving you kind of match of the day analysis. Guys, today's podcast, we are actually bringing a guest back on for the second time because there's been some real changes and innovation in the assigning space. Refer Sports, has been a longtime supporter of this program, just continues to innovate and evolve and make people's lives easier because it shouldn't be hard to get assigned to games. It shouldn't be hard to assign people to games, but we still have people out there using spreadsheets and emails, and it's complex game this weekend. And literally the only note that I have or any record that I have that I'm doing is a text from the assigner. That's it. One text. So things need to change, and refer really has been changing the game. So I'm gonna bring back Huck Sorak, the president owner of Refer Sports, to bring us up to date. Huck, welcome back, man. Hi, David. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, no, I'm thrilled to have you here. You guys have been going through some explosive growth. Can you tell us a little about it?

Refer Sports Growth And Pricing Model

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Yeah, it has been a it's been a fun journey. It's been a little bit overwhelming. We it's a first-world problem. We're growing fast, and that can be overwhelming sometimes. I think it's taken time. It has been, I've been working on this for four years. The first couple years, it was frustrating. I had a naive vision that a year from now, everyone in the country is going to use this software and it's gonna take the market by storm. So I've got a motorcycle going by me here in the office. But it's been a it's been a fun journey. I in the last year, we've seen somewhat of what I'd say explosive growth. I think a lot of that has just come to fruition over time. I'm also a young founder, so it's taken time to just get our foot in the door and grow relationships. But one of the things we were talking about before we went live here is just how getting people to make the switch. And you mentioned a lot of people don't want to be the first mover, but they want to be the first second mover and the person to jump on it soon after. And so our initial strategy was really built around a land and expand strategy, where initially we were building what I call the table stakes. And it took us a couple years, like credit given to where it's due. There are competitors in this market, and as much as some of them are old softwares that aren't super intuitive or user-friendly, like credit given to where it's due, they do work. And so it took us a couple of years to build the table stakes and just the things that we needed to play the game with our competitors. And so our initial strategy really stemmed around landing and expanding. If our ideal customer profile is one, two percent of the market, let's go find those people soon after, six to nine months later. Like we have boots on the ground in different locations around the country, really advocating for our product, what we're doing. I think the thing that sets us aside from some of our competitors is my partner and I are young guys. We are not the NFL official, the MLS official, or the MBA ref that's starting a software company and selling downwards to our relationships. We're young and we're really good with technology. And we saw an opening in the market to build a better software, but also to just love our customers and support people in a different way. And so we have two portions of our business, one being the software stack that people are ultimately using to manage their small business of sports officials, make assignments all the way through payments, taxes, et cetera. The other half of our business is really consulting arm, where we have made our model very different than our competitors, where we don't charge you based on how many referees you have in your pool. We charge you based on it's a usage-based system. So you pay for what you use, and what you use is quantified in the terms of games. And so that has really helped us go to market from a consulting standpoint, where we're actually not a subscription that people pay and we forget about them. And I've heard countless stories of other softwares where it's I have a problem in a huge tournament coming up this weekend, and I reach out and I don't hear back for two months. And so we've come into it with more of a consulting arm, too, where we actually help our clients build websites. We help with recruiting, we actually do SEL on the back end to help them appear higher on Google. And then beyond that, we're just helping with simple processes. Everyone from our operations team comes from a consulting background where we're really diving in and saying, hey, you schedule 300 officials across 5,000 games a year, and you're covering games for 30 different soccer organizations. A lot of the times we come in and they don't have a website built. They're recruiting off of the back of a baseball diamond or word of mouth. And they're there are 30 clients, but 29 different ways of being paid. So some of it's just like the operating system, then ultimately some of it's just how we consult with people. And we're actually a partner of the people that we work with. And the more games they do, the more they recruit, the more they succeed, the more we do too. And so we've created this kind of mutually beneficial relationship, which has led to us like having zero turn on our software, with the exception of a few people falling through the cracks and onboarding. Like we once someone started using our system, they've never left. And so that to us is a big win. It's that we're continuously providing value. And the other thing I've learned throughout this is just there really isn't such thing as a good business idea. There's good problems to solve, and man, was this a good problem? But we're really only as good as our ability to listen and learn and keep making it better for the people that the customers that we're serving. So that's been a little bit of just the growth and initial strategy. Now it's definitely flourished a little bit to the point where it's getting a little bit overwhelming, but we're starting to just really see real brand recognition. If we're calling people, oh, you guys are refer sports, I've been hearing about this. We've landed in 42 of the 50 states here in the country. So we have boots on the ground all over the place actually advocating for this product now. We have a little over 10,000 officials on the system here in the US, too. So it's just it's starting to get to that point where there's actual critical mass like advocating for it around the country.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Uh, that's so exciting, man. And if you don't mind me asking, I know it's a personal question. How old are you, brother? I am 25. I turn 26 next month. Yeah. See it's interesting. I get away with some things, possibly on the pitch as a referee or just in life, because I've got gray hair. And there's a thing, a lot of the assigners that you are marketing to, or even referees that you might be talking to about the software, they look at you and they're like, oh, but you're a young guy, 25, 26 years old. These people have been doing this a certain way for 20, 30, 40 years. And when they started assigning, you didn't use any other automated tools. There were, there was no apps. That didn't exist. iPhones did not exist. That was just not a thing. Google was not a thing when they started. And so that that's one of these barriers

Trust Barriers And Tech Debt

SPEAKER_02 19:55

to entry, is just a young person who's passionate and excited about an idea. And sometimes people can't see through that. They can't see through that I've got this young person sitting across from me who's got telling me they have a better way of doing things. They actually have to see some of their peers experience it at work. And then it's, oh, okay, now I'll listen. But it's that classic when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. They needed some other students to experience it and see success before they're willing to give you a shot.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Yeah, it's we could use gray hair on the team, actually. And it has been a challenge. At this point, we've, I think from a technology standpoint, we've crushed a lot of our competitors and just our ability to innovate. I also think tech debt is a real thing. The way I typically describe it, if someone didn't know anything about building coding and building software stacks, like tech technology is like an onion. And the more things you add to that onion, the more layers there are. And eventually we get to a point where we have a hundred thousand people using this. We've built it for 20 years, like to cut through all those layers and change the foundation gets harder and harder. Yes. And so we've been, even in our four years of life of this business, like we've started to see that, and we're being very intentional about trying to minimize tech debt and continue to keep our developing velocity velocity going. It has been a challenge, though, and I think, but it can be frustrating too. But at the end of the day, like it it's taken time for us to develop trust in the industry, which white and I my partner and I always talk about if you look at a big corporation, no one's gonna get fired for sticking with IBM, is the analogy. So a lot of the times people will see this, they'll look us in the eyes and say, This is the best offer I've seen on the market, but I'm not gonna get fired for sticking with what I've got, even if it's not working great, as long as I'm not getting fired. And it's and so even to us, like we've tried to focus of this does it can't be two times better, it has to be 10 times better. Yeah. And eventually you get that compounds and you can start to take people. And to my point earlier, too, it's once we've landed and we have people advocating for it in that market, you start to develop trust with their people. Years, which can be really powerful too. But it is it genuinely is something that we've struggled with. Is sometimes we'd sit across from someone, I'm selling someone something that they've done for longer than I'm alive, and I'm trying to bring technology to them to change the way they operate, which can be a challenge.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Yeah, no, it's a big time challenge. One of the things and bringing you back onto the pod, you and I had a conversation. We actually did a demo with an assigner not long ago, and I posted the full video on my YouTube. But there were some innovations that you guys have done over the last couple of years that really blew me away. When I first saw the app, almost it's two and a half, almost three years ago. It was cool. There was basic functionality. It was clean, and but I say basic, easy to read, easy to find what I need, all the things I'd want or expect out of the top choice app in the industry. So everything there, competitive. But I saw some things that on that demo that I was, oh my gosh, dude, that is so cool. I really think we need to have a conversation about that so that referees listening to this or assigners listening to this can start having real conversations about things going and how we need to evolve. And that staying with the status quo, like you said, I won't name names. I don't want to like anger anyone out here, it's just it's unacceptable in this day and age. So one of the things in particular, and this

AI For Building And Scheduling

SPEAKER_02 23:20

for anyone who's listening to this pod who's a big techie like I am, I've been watching the rise of AI, okay, and how it's been changing. And I remember using it early on, and I would use it for catching spelling errors on an email I was writing or helping me rephrase an email. And then I started using it to help me develop formulas and tables on spreadsheets and things of that nature. And then, oh, the next thing is maybe I could it can help me create some images or it can help me create some graphs. And now I don't know if there's a task that I need to do where I don't think about, let me ask Claude about this. That's the one I'm using right now from Anthropic. And last night at the dinner table, my son needed to put together a resume, and he had like this list of stuff written down in a doc. And I was like, dude, just give me that. And I threw it into Claude. I was like, give me his professional resume, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And boom, done. And my wife is, What? How did you do that? I'm like, dude, it's magic. But I saw when we sat down last time, one of the big things that is a real big issue for assigners is tournaments. We're coming into the summer tournament season, and they're working with people who are using spreadsheets, who are just like changing things on the fly and sending things to the assigner. And then the assigner is having to manually input these things into their system that they're using, and that's painful and it's time consuming. And then they send over another spreadsheet and things that change, and they're gonna manually find those things. You guys have integrated a whole new way to leverage AI. So take all of that manual way work out of the system for assigners. Can you talk us through that? Like, how did that start? And what has that been doing? How has that changed the game for assigners?

SPEAKER_00 25:06

I think it's there's two components to that. And what I alluded to earlier is at one point we were building what we call the table stakes, right? There's two components to this. If I at the table I'm sitting at right now, if I took two of the four legs away, the table would fall down. And so initially we're just building the legs to the table. Now we're building the finishes and what we call the bells and whistles. And so we've got all of the needed components there. Now it's like, where can we add value? Now, with AI, I see two sides to this: there's internal use and there's external use. How do we empower our team to be more efficient and provide more value to our customers? And how do we empower our customers with tools that they can use to minimize their workflows, clicks, whatever it might be? Now, internally, we are working extensively on this. We use all different types of AI. Our developers are typically using Codex. I use Claude and GPT on a daily basis. There's pros and cons to all of these things. Interestingly, I think stats are showing that nine 99% of token usage is happening is actually happening from 1% of the US population. A very small percentage of our population is doing the majority of work on AI. And so internally, we're doing things like refactoring our code base, putting everything into context files. Actually, we have actual agent agentic developers now that are actually doing code and actually laying code on the system and then pushing it to one of our developers to actually review their PR. So that's just speeding up our development velocity. We're able to move quick. We've got essentially agentic employees that are doing a lot of the code on the system that's being reviewed by real.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

When you say agentic, explain that for people who don't understand.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah. So it effectively, if most of the average population is going into like what you had said, build me a resume, or I'm feeling these symptoms. What am I? What is this? I need help building a financial plan for my personal life. Those are typical questions being asked probably by a normal person that's using AI on a daily basis. Agentic AI is effectively a recurring task. So I can actually not just answer this question, but actually go do this and do step one, two, three, and four and report back to me. So effectively, we have real people, but it's not a real person. It's an agentic person. So we have a name for them, they have access to our system, they have an email, they have a Slack account, they have access to our code base. So essentially it's just multi-layered tasks that are being done by AI in the form of a human in some way. It's almost an employee in the company that's not a real person. I am not the I'm not an AI engineer.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

So if for And you are a real and just so everyone knows, you are a real person. I'm staring at you on the screen. You're a real person.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

I am not. But it's even interesting. What do we name it? We're coming up with the names as a team. Sorry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

No, I know you're in downtown Minneapolis, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

I am. And I it's a very nice day, so I've got my window open, which might not have been a good choice for a podcast. But no, it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

But I just want to say just you before you go on, this is real. The companies who are going to be successful in the future are going to figure out how to leverage AI models to make them more efficient, to extend their team. And yes, I know a lot of people are out there, humans could be doing those jobs. Yeah, guys, wake up. This is real. You need to figure out how you can solve problems for people and leverage AI to do it better, because that is what is what is coming. I see it every single day. I had a phone conversation a couple weeks ago with a customer service person. And this woman had a southern accent. She, the what the way she was talking to me, the words she was using, the cadence of her speech, everything, I thought I was talking to a real person. It was not till five minutes into the conversation where I recognized this was AI. This was not real. It is coming. And it's just the thing is that as an entrepreneur, for this problem that you want to solve and making people's life better and assigning and getting assigned as a referee, you can innovate faster, but you can develop better products to the market. You can be more efficient, you can lower your cost basis and not have to charge significantly more than the competition, even though you have a better product because you're using these agentic AI models on the team. So it's a it's one of these things. I think people hear AI, they get really scared, they get really worried. It's listen, you need to recognize what it is. It could be a friend or it can be a foe. For those who are really leveraging it, it could be a big win for the company. And I think can you talk about again how people are able to use AI now to kind of make themselves more efficient as assigners if they do have the platform? Yeah, so that's the other side of it.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

And the way, so from a business standpoint, like ultimately these assigners are small businesses. Whether they're structured as a nonprofit, whether they're structured as an LLC, they still are a business that needs to be efficient and operate effectively. A lot of these businesses are they're service-based businesses, and it's a chicken and the egg game. Like I am only as good as my ability to train and retain more refs this year than I lose. That's how I grow my business. I firmly believe that egg in this instance comes first. If you have the refs, you can go get the contracts for the games. And so a lot of people will say,

Retention And Paying Refs Faster

SPEAKER_00 30:24

hey, I'm gonna go get a contract and then I'm gonna find the refs. Like that, in my experience, a hundred times is probably work once. Most of the time, I think it comes down to finding the refs. And now, the important things to an assigner is not the 10 hours that you spend clicking on a website to make assignments. It's the 10 hours that you spend recruiting, that you do on training courses, providing mentorship, actually spending real one-on-one time with these officials. Like the average retention rate across 30 sports right now across the US, if you start refing today, there's about a 46% chance you'll be doing it a year from now. And I don't firmly don't believe that, yes, parents and coaches play a role in this, yelling at the 15-year-old kid like me that started out, but that's a reality, and most people know that getting into it. I think a lot of this stems from the fact that I might work a game and get paid for it a month and a half later with a check in the mail. I'm tracking things on a spreadsheet. I'm manually doing taxes. And so our goal is what we call the 80-20 split. A lot of assigners are spending 80% of their time on the busy work that's associated with managing their business and 20% of their time on the things that really matter. And what we're trying to do is provide some of technology and real human support. Now, we'll leverage AI to make ourselves more efficient, but we will not remove the human component. So, how do I make myself three times more efficient so that I can spend more time with my customers, right? Same thing for them. How do they make themselves three times more efficient so that they can spend more time what actually matters? Like spending time with the person starting, putting a mentor on their first five games. Like these are the things that actually matter and actually help them grow a business. And so that's our philosophy is yes, internally, how do we leverage AI to make ourselves more efficient? How do we use this to increase our velocity of our development? But externally, it's like we love our customers. We are actually spending real time with them. The more they grow, the more we grow too. We're trying to flip that script and give them real tools that help them mitigate the time they're spending on busy work and spend more time on the things that matter, is the very simple way to put it. It's an amazing thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

I've so I've met the owner of one of the major platforms out there. I think I've met actually the owner of two of the major platforms that are out there that are competitors of yours. They never talk about those things. Honestly, I think they're trying to come up with a way to get games into the system and send notifications to referees, but you're talking about much bigger picture things. You talked about development of referees. You're talking about intelligently spending their time focused on creating relationships, creating community, training and development. And absolutely, that's what assigners should be doing. I know in Minnesota, we have a mutual friend, Danine, at the referee advocates. My gosh, every couple weeks, job.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

And interesting stat. I might be sorry, Denise, if you're watching this and butcher this, but their retention rates last year were 97%. Yeah. And that does not come down to parents yelling at those kids that are starting, because I guarantee it a lot of those kids got yelled at on their first few games. And that's something that we could work to change, but that is a reality of our industry. They did that by loving the people that are involved. And the idea, too, I think, is for us, our mission is way past an assigner. Our mission is to have a positive impact on youth sports through a very overlooked aspect of this. Across 100 million games a year here in the US, and that's excluding professional and SAA sports. The one thing every single one of those games has in common is the need for refs. If you go ask 40 parents behind the backstop of a baseball diamond at their kids' 12U game, 39 of them probably don't know what an assigner even is. And so part of it for us too is for every assigner that we bring onto our system, we bring 200 refs with them. How do we affect the lives of the 99.9% of the people using the system through technology and love for that one person that's managing them? And we give them the tools that allow them to operate so efficiently and spend more time on the things that actually matter to the point that it has a positive impact on the refs. And beyond that, then it has a positive impact on the players, the teams, the entire ecosystem of amateur sports. It's deep.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

I'm telling you, I know. I like I again I just love it. I used to always we had a great CEO that I used to work for years, and he would say, if you manage to the numbers, you may hit the number. If you manage to the mission and purpose, you'll hit the numbers and beyond. And I think that's really what you're doing. You're trying to look at the big picture and trying to address these major issues that we have in turnover and lack of retention and lack of training and development. And again, that person, the connection that referee has to the games that they're officiating is the assigner. That is the connective tissue. They're the ones who should be thinking about okay, who's going to be working on what game? Who should be on that crew together? Is that the right game for that person? Can we potentially get them some additional development? What kind of feedback are we getting post-game? How can I help train that person for their next match or something that nature? Can I support someone who's had a rough game? And if you're spending all of your time doing administrative busy work, you're not thinking about and doing those things that are going to help retain, develop, and train your referees and make them feel part of a community, which is what we're trying to cultivate here in the U.S. Now, the referee advocates, I mentioned it briefly, but I spend about two hours a month on webinars with their referees, both on their fast track program, which are their referees really looking to advance and go as far as they can as referee, but also with their newbies, their junior referees, those kids who are 14, 15, 16, and adults who are 40, 41, 42, who are just starting out, who have tons of questions, who are just looking for support, looking to a safe space to have dialogue about, and I did this Tuesday night and I have a call again tomorrow night, but Tuesday night, someone was asking me, what do you do if you have a coach who yells at you, or if you have a parent who yells something at you from the sideline? All right, let's talk through it. Let's use those words. What can we do? But again, those types of activities is what's going to make an assigner successful long term and create a really strong group of referees. Spending hours upon hours combing through spreadsheets and trying to get that information into whatever the assigning platform is not adding any value at all. You're on mute huck now.

Community Features And Tournament Imports

SPEAKER_00 37:17

So that actually's the feature I showed you a couple weeks ago, where essentially you can drag something as simple as a picture, a handwritten schedule of a tournament. And instead of spending three hours in a spreadsheet just to upload those into an assigning system, the AI tool eat through it instantly. And that's just a simple time-saving feature. One of the things that you would ask, what are some of the big things we're working on? That community component is probably one of the biggest. We will be releasing in the next month essentially an embedded community into the system. And so picture a Facebook group, but it's directly built into the system. So you can actually pair with multiple assigners and be a part of their community, or with governing bodies like a U.S. soccer or a state high school league or a large multi-state tournament provider, you can actually be a part of a broader community as well. And so talking about things like posting announcements that are really simple or just having separate channels for different sports that you assign, and also being able to manage members, have live sessions where someone can join a live video call and go over hard calls that they made, things like training libraries, embedded messagings that you can create group chats directly into the system. So that's one of our big things that we're working on right now. Beyond that, we also just live by our core values. We run an operating system internally in our business, and we try and just genuinely live by our values. And so our five core values is one is build with integrity, win as a team, the relentless pursuit to improve, value first, and support with enthusiasm. I think really what where we are winning in every deal we do is the last thing. Support with enthusiasm. We have the ability to have an actual impact on one person that can impact 200 people, that can then impact thousands of people just through helping one person improve their processes and flip that 80-20 thing. And so just providing real human interaction, and it's tough to be an assigned. I did this for a long time. I basically assigned just to feel the pain points of an assigner so that I could build better software for this person. It's one of the most thankless jobs on the planet. Like I was alluding to you go talk to 40 parents, 39 of them don't even know that person exists. Yeah, you know, the only time you hear from someone is when something goes wrong, an official doesn't show up or there's a dispute in the game, or whatever that might be. Like these people need love just as much as the refs do. No pun intended for the refs need love too podcast.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

But yeah, no, I would say assigners leave need love too. And I do I try and take time to send a note to my assigner every now and then and just tell him, Thank you so much for this assignment. I really appreciate it. Hope you're doing well. Just because I know they get zero love. They get zero appreciation.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

They are pulling in. This isn't something people are going out and making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They're going out and they're supporting their local sports ecosystem and they're doing a very overlooked thing that they get very little. They're just not here and like, hey, you did a great job this year. Like they're hearing, hey, a ref didn't show up to my game two weeks ago. And it's or even just people being naive of, we're gonna send someone a schedule on Wednesday for a 400-game tournament that starts on Friday. They probably had that schedule two weeks before. And it's just like hey, they're just putting them in tough situations over and over again and making that split for them even harder. It's tough to assign a 400-game tournament. It's really tough to do it two days when you get a schedule two days before that tournament happens.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

Yeah, no, I listen, I completely agree. I think the I'm sure there's some assigners someplace who's it's their full-time job and gig, whatnot. I know some people who do it. Usually it's a supplemental income to a first primary job, or if people do it as kind of semi-retired, but it is hard work, especially right now as we start moving into tournament season, where you're gonna have tournaments that have 500 games, a thousand games a weekend, or something of that nature. It is crazy. And especially, again, like when you're at the very, very top level, you're at those MLS next events where you've got referees traveling all across the country for the opportunity to ref there, not about the money. They're literally losing money just to get there and get development. When you're doing those local recreational tournaments and you've got referees all across the experience spectrum, you've got a lot of young kids out there, and they're not necessarily professionals in their own right, and they're it's a it's just a kind of a random part-time job. Man, and people are gonna get injured over the weekend and people are gonna drop out and not show up and getting all those games covered. It is brutal. How about on the other side from the referees? Have you heard any feedback now that you've had all these cool advancements to the tool and the app? Any feedback from referees about what it's like using the tool these days?

SPEAKER_00 42:11

Yeah, we see positive feedback all the time. We're still working on doing more surveys and actually starting to get customer satisfaction satisfaction rates. Some of these things are tough just with where we are in the lifestyle in our business and having real tangible long-term data. So we're not really releasing stuff like that as we're still trying to generate those reviews and things like that. But in general, we hear very positive things from the officials. It's been a win for me to even just talk to some of these people. I make an effort to call 25 refs on the system every week and just check in with them. What's your experience? Because we hear a lot from assigners. I want this changed, I want this change. But at the end of the day, to my earlier point, most of the people using our system are the refs. And so we do make a very conscious effort to hear them. But what can we make better for you? One of the things that's one of our big 30,000 foot view things is retention rates can be improved, I think, a lot just through operational processes. Another thing I think that can improve is there's a lot of other contractor opportunities out there where you can actually work in more of a full-time capacity, especially if you do one sport, but you might really only operate four out of the 12 months of the year during that season. Maybe you're picking up some off-season stuff, but it's slower. You can pick up your phone and go on care.com and babysit all 12 months of the year, or drive DoorDash, or deliver, you know, and deliver food, or go on Uber and drive 12 months of the year and make a real living out of it, even if it's a contractor-based job opportunity. What we are trying to do is really address one thing is that we talked about this a little last time. I don't personally believe in the shortages as much as people

Allocation Over Shortage Plus Final Pitch

SPEAKER_00 43:48

think. I think a lot of it is an allocation problem. If you think about a varsity football game in Texas, the state of football, yes, they all happen on Friday nights. They're all high level officials, and chances are We have a shortage at that level or an MLS next game where we're looking for really qualified people that have done it a long time that work their way up the ranks. We probably have a shortage of a high level of controls. When it comes to a flag football game in Austin or San Antonio, that's a tenue game, and they've got a tournament going over the weekend. I don't think we really have shortages at that level. One of the things we're trying to address is reallocation of supply. If you think about two metropolitan like suburbs outside of a metropolitan area like Atlanta, where you are, chances are there's a soccer assigner in both suburbs, and it's a Venn diagram. Half of them overlay into the other suburb and they should really be working for both the people. They might not even know that other person exists.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

I hear that all the time where people are like, hey, do you know an assigner who does this? Do you know assigners over there? Do you know these assigners over there? And I know that's one of the things that you can do on refere is you can just look up and see who the assigners are. I had literally this morning I had an email from someone who's a referee in Oregon or Washington, and they want to do some tournaments down in California this weekend or this summer and just do a little travel roughing. And he was like, Do you know anyone out there? And so I do, so I could connect him, but man, it would be so nice just to be able to hop on an app and see these people.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

I think one of the the app they can create an account, they can put it their USSF certification number, and they can go find other assigners. One of your point of positive feedback. I talked to a ref last week that went to a different state, found an assigner on the system, worked a game for them, and got paid for it when they were back in their state that they were from the next week. That refs actually working across state lines now and doing things in other places with people that they didn't even know existed. And so we're trying to open that up. The other thing too is there's 50 to 70,000 assigners across the country. We will not work with every assigner that comes to us. We are not looking to get rid of assigners, but we are looking to create really good assigners, people that people want to work for and that feel like they're a part of a community that are getting valuable feedback that they can take to their next game and do better. And so we would like to displace some of those assigners naturally by just loving the good ones. And hey, we're not gonna take on an assigner that doesn't agree with our values and those five things that I said to you. We want to work with people that are looking to grow, looking to provide good services, looking to actually love the officials and mentor and actually bring people up the ranks. That's ultimately, I think, going to help with some of the retention rates naturally, where I can see all the people in my market that I can work for, and I naturally am going to want to work for the people that provide good goods and services.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Yeah. No, I think it's a wonderful thing. We need to start opening up the landscape for referees who want to work games, make sure that they can find assigners in different areas if they want to travel, pick things up, give them opportunities to work in different leagues in different parts of the city. I tell you, every time I travel to a different field to go referee and I make connections with people I haven't met before, and I see referees work a different way that I haven't done before, I get better as a referee. Our community gets better. We need to start breaking down the walls and just trying to open things up without a doubt. We will all get better in that. So, Huck, as we kind of bring to a close here, I wanted to hear from you if you could say something to the assigners out there right now, again, who are using those antiquated systems or maybe no system and still doing spreadsheets and emails, man. If you could give them kind of that one-minute pitch as to why they at least need to check it out and do a demo with refer, what would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Yeah, I think it's a good question. Ultimately, it comes down to like how positive an experience do you want to provide to your clients, the organizations you schedule for, and the people that ultimately make your business happen in the reps. We are really good software when it comes to scheduling and managing officials, but beyond that, we're really good people. We're all young, we're hustling to grow a business, we're actually looking to spend real time with our customers. We don't sell everyone that comes across a demo with us, but I do think we win hearts and minds in every demo that we do. We live by our values and we want to provide value to our customers. It's an opportunity for us to learn too. Not like every demo we do doesn't go through, but we learn from almost every demo we do. And we're consistently iterating and listening and learning and actually making positive changes to the system. I would not look any person in the eye that I meet with and be like, this is a perfect system. It's not. It is only our ability to listen and learn and keep making it better. And the more people we have in our corner in our community, the better we are at be actually facilitating that. What I would say is to look past the young and and this isn't an epotism-filled industry that's been a frustrating wall to break through, but we're really trying to break down the walls, show people the opportunities that actually exist for them out there. The other thing I would say is that, and this is one of my mentors in Florida, his name is Adam Bates, had told me, there is more of a chamber of commerce to officiating than people think. And so one of my selfish dreams is that somebody goes and they get a job from somebody they worked a game with because they see on their refer profile that person's LinkedIn is there, and that person is a real estate agent or works in finance. Or that to me is wow, there is more to this than just getting out on the field and providing a good game experience. Like these are real people, part of a real community, and we can actually help each other grow in other professional ways too. So I think just opening up that chamber of commerce aspect of the industry is something that's really important to us, making it so that officials have visibility into the games that are out there, and then trying to help assigners flip the script and actually spend more time on the things that actually matter when it comes to growing their business and minimize clicks and busy works and the need to pull hair out of uploading schedules, actually putting in assignments, things like that should all be technology should help with all of that.

SPEAKER_02 50:05

Awesome, man. I love it. I tell you, I did hear a bunch of beeps in the background. I think your computer is blowing up with people messaging you. I do hear that stalled.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

But I think it's I'm getting a video upload stalled and audio upload stalled notification in the bottom of my screen. Oh, it's okay.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

I I see you perfectly. You sound great. I would just say, man, I am always so impressed when I talk with entrepreneurs in our industry who are trying to solve problems for our people. I've been a big supporter of every single person who wants to do something better, whether it was my my friend who makes the rare bit buzzer flags, Leland who makes the Umpiros. I've talked to referees who or who are making 3D printed pieces to make larger finger grips for whistles and stuff of that nature. Just there's so many people out there who have just been like, there has to be a better way. And they've jumped in and they've created something that is better. And maybe it's not perfect when it begins, but eventually they get to a place where they've got something that is could be best in class and that tool. And it's just so gratifying to see. Huck, I'm just I'm I'm I feel so grateful that we've gotten to meet when the time that we have, and I've just been blown away at watching your growth. And I hope you just continue to keep on booming, man. Can you tell everyone?

SPEAKER_00 51:23

Oh, sorry. I was gonna say I appreciate you more than for us. Like part of this journey is beyond anything official related. It's to me, it's like we are I joke with my dad, I'm getting my MBA in air quotes just through trial and error and getting to grow a business. And I'm trying to solve a problem of something I actually care about. But beyond that, like from a personal growth standpoint, I'm just growing as a person and we're not perfect, we're developing as leaders, we're learning how to have employees, like all of these things. It's like a stepping stone of learning. We do, we appreciate your support. I also want to drop this on you. One of our initiatives this year is that we're actually building out a sports-specific advisory board, and I would love to have to be the soccer representation on our advisory board there.

SPEAKER_02 52:07

I'd love to. I accept, I accept. I don't need to even ask my wife to say I accept. No problem. I mean, I love Minnesota too. So I'd love to come on up. I owe Danine a visit up there. I'd love to hang out with you guys.

SPEAKER_00 52:17

So we're gonna do is actually have everyone for advisory board come up here for a weekend and spend some time. We'll do a couple boring sessions and then a couple really fun events and things like that, too. So I wanted to put the press while we're live and you can't say no.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

No, I'm not I wouldn't say no. I was hoping that you'd ask. All right, man. How do people get in touch with you, my friend?

SPEAKER_00 52:38

Yeah, you can find us on our website, r efrsports.com. Um, we have a book a demo link there. You can also reach out to me directly. My name is Huck H U C K, and my email is Huck at refersports.com.

SPEAKER_02 52:51

Yeah. I just uh highly encourage anyone who's out there. If again, if you're an assigner or you have influence in uh referee association, please, you will not be sad if you reach out to Huck and his team and get a demo. Or at least it will give you inspiration and think about what could be or what other types of functionality you should be looking for in a tool. But I promise you, you will not be wasting time talking to these guys. And quite honestly, personally, for me, again, as an entrepreneur and a small business owner, I'm just rooting for these people to be successful because they are doing really amazing things for our community of referees, or referee assigners. And again, if a referee assigner is more efficient, they can do more training, more development, build more of a community, be more supportive, get you guys paid on time, all of those things. So it's a wonderful thing. Again, Huck, thank you so much for your time, sir. So much, David. It's been really fun being out. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening today. We really appreciate all of you. And as always, I hope your next match is right card break.