Dustin Heise 0:00

Phil, so good to get some time together today and can't thank you enough, especially with an Olympic Games right around the corner for you and your teams. And what an amazing opportunity to just get to spend a few times to to think innovatively together today and and just kind of build on the momentum and the energy that you're bringing into the call. Today's guest is Phil Andrews, CEO of USA Fencing and one of the leading turnaround operators in Olympic sport, known for driving commercial growth, culture change, and on-field progress across major governing bodies. From media rights to grassroots expansion, he's built a reputation for transforming organizations inside Notes. Welcome, Phil. Thanks so much, man.

Phil Andrews 0:36

Thanks, Dust. Didn't really appreciate it. It's a too kind of an intro, but pleased to be on with you. And uh likewise, we decided to chat today and explore your world and and our world and uh get to know you with it.

Dustin Heise 0:48

Yeah, well, in the chance that we had to just connect heading into this call, I mean, you've led some major turnarounds and and you know, you must have done that through innovation, inspiration, obviously, you know, guiding high standards. How do you keep the business side from pulling too far away from the the heart of the sport? You know, how do you make sure that you know you're able to lean in on the feel-to-play results as much as the commercial results? And maybe they're almost one in the same, but maybe just share a little bit about how you ensure that both are performing at all times.

Phil Andrews 1:18

Yeah, look, I think you have to remember that it's an entire ecosystem. I have a couple of frameworks I referenced for that. One isn't originally mine, but it's members, money, and medals. So a good program in a national governing body, and I think you could apply this into for-profit sport as well, affects at least two of those things. The other way you can look at it is we really have two missions in a national governing body. Essentially, one of those is to grow the sport and to therefore service the current sport uh that you have, the current membership, and to grow that sport. The second one of those is to go and win shiny round things at fun international events. And there's a lot in the middle of that, don't get me wrong, but if though if you think about that, and you alluded to this, those are distinctly different missions. And sometimes they clash with each other. And I think getting real clarity around where your community wants to go in terms of those two areas is really important. And that's where our strategic plan is a really important part of what we do every four years. And a lot of people ignore the strategic plan element. I think it's a really good reference point of let's go to our entire community of USA fancing or USA weightlifting or Canada Snowboard or whoever it is, and address what we as a community, not just the board, not just the key committees, not just the staff, not just the CEO. What do we as a group care about and want from these next four years? And how do we get to both spots? So I think those are three ways of looking at it. The other thing I do or try to do is what I call compartmentalized employees. It's the number one thing I advise new CEOs of national governing bodies to think about is there is always going to be something. You've got to compartmentalize that out and really to sort of section out your day, section out your week, section out even your mind into dealing with issues, day-to-day, where you want to go, growth, commercial partnerships, philanthropy, field of play, and what have you. And sometimes that pendulum's gonna swing a little bit because what are your real challenges? When I came here, our team's winning. We were doing really well. So it was less of a priority than when I came into weightlifting, where we were not doing so well. So here it was more about okay, let's get the governance and the business side solid. In weightlifting, we aren't winning. We have never won. We need to go do that. And it was still an element of the business piece. Here, there's still an element of the field of play piece. What's your team like? Where's your team's strengths and where's their interests? Not just strengths, but also interests in what they really want to do, what do they get joy from? All of those things factor, but those models of thinking about your mission statement in parts, thinking about your strategic plan and agreeing on it, coming up with some sort of model, if any members' money and medals, or it can be something else that matters to your organization of okay, does it tick more than one box? And if it only takes one box, is it important enough to still do it? And if so, why? Then those are the things to look at and the way to sort of make sure you're playing a game of business whack-a-mole in in a way that actually makes sense for your organization and gets things done.

Dustin Heise 4:18

I love the way that you've shared just the simplicity of it, also the ability to lean in and and put the blinders on when necessary to focus on what matters most in that particular time. And you know, I think that the key pieces that you know you've talked about, especially around reform and accountability. What's been the hardest part of changing systems that people have learned to live with, you know, as you've continued to build?

Phil Andrews 4:39

So change is hard, right? Period. And you're going to have people who are anti-change is too strong, but are a little fearful of change, or they like the way it's done, or in some cases they wrote the way it was done. Right. Um, and I think you've got to be careful with change. I think two things have I've found are key. One is communication, communication, communication, communication, and when you're done with that, some more communication. Why is that change necessary? What are we trying to do? Is it perfect? How do you give feedback? And it's never perfect, by the way, is the correct answer to that. There will be problems. Admitting those problems when they occur and preempting them where you can. You know, that level of honesty is really important. Being willing to sit down with people with whom you disagree on that change and talk them through it. Be and when I say sit down, that could be in person, could be email, could be Zoom. Be open to that. Be open to that regardless if it's an Olympic champion or paralympic champion, or if it's somebody in your case that's just got on a snowboard for the first time and fallen right down on the butt and uh says the skier. And um my wife's the the snowboarder in our household very much. Well, it all good. Two-year-old daughter has very much chosen her skis, and um I'm I'm secretly over here, yes. Um but anyway, um good. We'll get her on the other side. Yeah, but well, and and to be honest, with snowboard, it's really those who can't ski, and I'm the one who can't, so that's what it is. And if you guys could take just a little bit less time to strap in the top of the lift, that'd be great. But getting back to change is so the first thing is is really open, transparent communication. Uh, there are change models out there that actually go through some of this stuff, but it is really about being thoroughly transparent about change because people will make up reasons why that change is happening if you don't. So you might as well tell them the full lock stock on two smoking barrels. I think the other thing is if you're attacking something that has fundamentally been part of that community, that sport, that business, that NGB, whatever it might be, have enough in there for the people who've built that tradition, for the people who were there before. And so they can see some of their feedback, see some of themselves in that transition. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. There's reasons why you have to change, but there's probably also reasons why it was like that in the first place. So find that reason, find what's good about it and try and keep that. I think those are the two major things for me in managing change. And sometimes it's just a case of look, in my case, for the last quite a few years, I've been the CEO, and this is where we're going. This is a bet I'm making, and judge me on the result. And sometimes that result is good, sometimes that result is not so good, and when it's not, you've gotta be willing to raise your hand up and say, You were right, it did not go the way I'd hoped, and here's what we're gonna do about it now. It's much simpler to say that than to do it, but you know, the I was taught a lesson years ago that trust is earned in drops and spent in buckets. And inevitably, when you lead any organization, at some point in time you will need to spend a bucket. So you better earn some drops along the way.

Dustin Heise 7:48

Love it. I think it's uh a huge piece as we lead in these roles those key lessons along the way. Those are words of wisdom, my friend. A lot of people see fencing as you know niche, but you've worked to make it more visible. Clearly, you're coming up with incredibly innovative ways of getting in front of a broader audience. You know, what is bringing more people into the sport you know matters so much to you?

Phil Andrews 8:11

It's that growth part of our mission. And how does that relate to the performance part of our mission? Well, ultimately, cream rises to the top. So the more fences or in your co snowboarders or weightlifters, whatever it is you have in the pool, the more likely it is you're gonna find that talent you need to go out and win Olympic, Paralympic, Pan Am Games, whatever it might be, medals. So that's part of it. Uh and I think part of it is it's double-edged. It's growth, obviously, it grows the business as well. It grows respect for the sport, it grows pride in the sport as well. It grows the zeitgeist around the sport. It's been really interesting watching this fencing journey in recent times of where we've really made an effort to go and grow the sport and bring eyeballs to the sport. And I hear in a lot of places things like fencing has momentum. Fencing, I'm seeing a lot more fencing than I used to. I hear people talking about fencing more than they used to. That's kind of what we're trying to do. Ultimately, what we're really trying to do is get people to the front door of a fencing club and walk in and try it. And you know, to put their hands on a saber or an epe or a foil. And that's part of the job of a national governing body. It's a forgotten part sometimes because it's not the event that's staring you in the face in three weeks. It's not that urgency that that you've got. I do think in the US right now, with the home Olympic Games, there's a little bit more going on in that of people realizing I've got a window here and I need to take advantage of that window. I've fortunately enough been part of two home country games now. And so I I've that resonates with me. Team Hamble here, Hamble back in in Europe, grew massively in after the London 2012 Olympic Games because people saw it. That was it. They saw it. For me, we've got to try and grow between the flames. So we've lent heavily into gaining more eyeballs through influencer campaigns. We're doing uh a creator showdown in the fall in New York City where we're bringing in 16 creators with over a million followers each and having them do some fencing ads and yards. Yeah. We're leaning into the K-pop and K-Wave craze. We'll have fencing all over America at different conferences and events at Tokyo X, at K-Con, uh, three different versions of Comic-Con. Uh, we've had fencing out on basketball courts, on ice rinks in the NHL, in basketball courts in the WMBA. We've had fencing at MLB stadiums. All of these things get the sport out in front of people. And it's that repeated, it's sort of marketing 101, right? You need a certain amount of touch points before you're gonna go and pick something up. And fencing is something you need to go and claw and fight to do that. You can't just exp lean back and expect either your pro league or sort of the world to do your work for you, even when it comes to things that are adjacent to us, like film. You know, we've got a number of different sword-based films, sword-based video games coming out over the next couple of years. And it's up to us to go and do our best to be part of them and to bring benefit to them and bring them bring benefit to us. So Mortal Kombat 2 doesn't actually have a lot of sword fighting in it, but there is one Mortal Kombat character, Katana, who historically has got um swords and blades. And so, for example, although we didn't end up doing much with the promotion of the film, we're able to secure a private screening ahead of IBS release for fences in New York City, which is just a great thing and fun for them to be able to do.

Dustin Heise 11:32

Yeah, absolutely.

Phil Andrews 11:33

So, you know, we've had F1 World Champions come and fence, we've had movie stars come and fence, we've had influencers come and fence. I think it's just, you know, what can we do without spending a fortune? Because we don't have that money. That money should be going to our athletes for funding. That's it. We've got to spend some, but we can't spend a fortune in the way that you would spend to market a regular brand. Where can we lean into earned media? How can we show up in places where fencing matches the demographics of the people reading those papers, magazines, web, paper? That's really something showing my age. And how can we show up in the places that they are gonna be? So, you know, how can we show up at a Comic-Con where there's a lot of people who share demographics and interests of fencers? Uh, how can we show up in variety versus in sports illustrated? We want to be in sports illustrated too. But how can we as a sport find our way into these unusual places that are gonna grow the sports zeitgeist, gonna grow the sports eyeballs? And part of it is just sitting there going, all right, let's spend 10 minutes just thinking about it and putting down some ideas, no matter how harebrained they are. We'll delete the ones that are just totally insane and go off of those ones, which seem like they're impossible, but you don't know until you ask.

Dustin Heise 12:50

So I could listen all day to how you're building and innovating. Are you seeing this through working with your team come to life through your strat plan? How are you leveraging that? How are you tying AI into that to come up with this plethora of innovation ideas and then making them real? How are you leaning into that?

Phil Andrews 13:09

Yeah, look, you know, AI has been an interesting part of what we do. And and, you know, I think that the issue with AI right now is it is in this really explosive growth phase. So as we sit here today, I'm not sure how long it's going to take to edit this podcast and come out, but my bet is that there's been an innovation in AI between the two. There might have been during the time we've been on the podcast, and so far it's been like, I don't know, 22 minutes. I mean, I've even noticed that in the last two or three months. So, first of all, we've used AI along with one of our amazing members to basically build a camera uh that can follow the fencer down a strip, which is not as easy as it sounds, because it's a 55-foot long by five-foot strip, and that you've got to have that AI camera understand which fencer, which human being it needs to follow. It doesn't need to follow the referee, it needs to follow the fencer. And it doesn't need to follow the fencer that's on the piece behind it. It needs to follow the fencer of the piece that it's allocated to. So it's actually a much more complex use case than you might imagine. So that's one of the best ways that we've leaned into AI. We've also leaned into AI with regards to outreach and to uh we don't have a huge outreach team. So we've leaned into AI in terms of being able to automate some of our outreach to particularly new partners, sometimes to media, and not so much in the drafting area, but certainly in the figuring out who we reach out to and the volume of outreach has been a big part of that. That's helped in our collegiate programs, that's helped in our commercial programs, that's helped in our media programs. We are careful to make sure that we're sense-checking that and frankly, fact-checking that. Um, there are definitely errors, especially in niche sports, because the number of sources that even a Claude, for example, which is, I think, arguably the market leader right now in general AI, I might call it, it definitely makes mistakes. Well, for example, Lee Kiefer, our triple Olympic champion, it is absolutely certain that Lee is a qualified medical doctor. She did attend medical school, but it's it's it Claude and I have had several disagreements that Lee is in fact a qualified medical doctor. But yeah, we've leaned in in those sorts of ways. We're we're looking at how do we use Igentic AI to make it easier for people to reach us, especially because a lot of people's fencing occurs on a Saturday and Sunday when our office is closed. So when you're thinking about fencing and you want to ask that question, have an Agentic AI that understands, has digested all of your policies, procedures, selection procedures, how you qualify for this or that is really important. But again, because we're niche, that was very much needs to be sensed-checked and needs to be right before it's rolled out. We're leaning into AI in places where it can help us just, you know, analyze documents as well. Like, okay, what's the gist of this? What's the gist of this information? So we're probably behind some of the bigger pro teams who've got large IT teams or large analytics teams, but we're probably a little bit ahead of a lot of smaller organizations of similar sizes, I'd like to think. Yeah. I think we're cautious but leaning in if that makes any sense. Um I think the other place is we've used AI now with uh ID, uh, with Jumeo, one of our partners, uh, we developed uh we check age and identification uh and nationality as part of our sports integrity area. And Jumeo has used AI, and then you can opt out. But now instead of going on and you'd upload Dustin's face and your ID, you know, we'd go, yep, Dustin, sure enough, is Canadian. I think you could also upload your accent. We could absolutely authorize that. But the um uploading, you know, your face, your ID, and and yep, he's Canadian, he's dustin' uh dust in ice, we're good to go. But that wouldn't happen if you did it on a Friday night until probably like midday on Monday. Now, if you go on on Monday night when you're thinking about fencing, because it's likely something you're not doing during your day job, then you go on and 10 minutes later it's all good to go, you can go ahead and register for an event. So it just speeds everything up. We've got about a 96-ish percent success rate on that, and generally really good positive service reviews. So things like that, where we can just make life easier, just a shade for our members, that's a win. And they happen to come in as a commercial partner alongside that. They sponsor one of our athletes alongside that. There was a lot of wins that came out of the Jumeo agreement. But that's our lens is what can make we're a small organization, what can make us act like a larger organization? Where can we lean in in terms of things that can make our lives easier or our members' lives easier? And then where can we innovate in the field of play? So the obvious place is AI officiating or AI supported officiating, which is a scary thing to talk about. It's I don't ever think that at the very least in the foreseeable future that that we should or can be disposing of the use of an of a human referee.

Dustin Heise 17:58

I couldn't agree more, but what a great way to provide more tools for them. That's right.

Phil Andrews 18:03

It's it's the tools in the toolbox, it's also the trust in the refereeing of well, that referee didn't like me. Well, good luck telling the iPad it didn't like you. So it's unless your name was Android, the iPad probably doesn't have anything against you. So that's probably the big hairy goal that we're going after next. And then you probably saw the Bull of Fencing League. This wasn't actually AI, but it's it's highly related that they had uh some following the blade of the sword, which made it a lot more understandable. So there's ways that we can lean into that as well, whether it's with Dentsu, which is technology that they used, or whether it's with some new provider, that concept of sports data and being able to see what's really happening in the sport is really important. So good.

Dustin Heise 18:46

Thanks for sharing. And all of sport is going through such consistent and similar challenges, growth, opportunity learnings, and how we're noodling through all of that. It doesn't matter the sport. We're all learning in in in real time right now of how to optimize each of these opportunities. Now, when you look at the future of Olympic, Paralympic sport, and kind of as a closing thought, what kind of leadership do you think you know the system needs most right now? And, you know, very clearly you're a leader in that space, innovative. What does sport need most right now?

Phil Andrews 19:18

I think sport probably needs it needs a lot of change managers, people who do change well, people who change, uh who understand that that things have to change, understand how to lean in in an appropriate way to changes. I think it also, to a degree, it needs innovators who are gonna really embrace those changes. You've got a lot of money coming into sport, you've got money coming into sport at the pro level, you've got money coming to sport at the even at the the youth level, you've got that those will have expectations. You've got a lot of change in the world, both in frankly, the the economic and political environments, macro to sport, but also in this, in AI and tech and so forth. So I think you probably need people who are quite aggressive in the way that they're looking at their organizations and can see, okay, this is the organization I think we need to be in six months, and preferably the organization we need to be in two years, the latter of which is really hard because you don't know what the world's really going to look like in two years. If I think about we're sitting here in in May of 2026, was we record. If I think about what it was like in May of 2024, there's a lot of things that have changed since 2024. Oh, yeah. And if I think about May 2020, even more so. So there is a lot of things to to think about there and to be nimble about. I'm sort of going back with this, and I think honestly, it's not just sport, I think every business kind of needs that. And it's in it, it's yeah, well I was at Semaphore, this World Economic Forum, where there was a lot of CEOs of very large businesses, and this was kind of the talk of the town of we need to move much faster than we're used to because the pace of change is much faster than we're used to. Yes. And what is current today may not be current in six months, especially technology-wise. And also in the wider situation around ultimately, if we're a national governing bodies, we're sending people around the world as part of national teams. Well, therefore, we're really susceptible to travel issues. We're really susceptible to geopolitical issues, we're really susceptible to costs. So you also manage a national governing body. I'm certain that you've noticed some slight changes in in costs around. Oh, yeah. Our budget's very different. Exactly. Yes. And you know, I I've probably just, you know, our board will vote next weekend on a budget, and it's probably the most uncertain I've ever been about a budget because this is the best guess I have today. This budget's supposed to last me until July 31 of next year. No idea if it's it's our best guess, it's a good piece of work. I cannot tell you that it's going to be entirely accurate to the assumptions that we've made in that budget. But you know, I think the other thing you need alongside that fast pace, that decisiveness, that change management is world-class communication, particularly with members and particularly with people who are not so keen on change or not so, and there's nothing wrong with that. Again, that I have skills around pace, I have skills around decisiveness, I have skills around change. I don't have skills around that nth degree of detail, that nth degree of, you know, why is it this way? There's the there's disk assessments, D I S C will use them in USA fencing across our team. And there's definitely been an insertion of D, which is D is highly related to pace because it's decisiveness. Okay, we've got S and C is the more conservative, detail-oriented people. You absolutely need both. And there's a temptation if you're S and C to have a lot of people who are S and C around you. There's also a temptation if you're D or D and I. I is uh influence, so it's all around relationships. There's a lot of temptation to have a lot of people in that area. The reality is you need a team that's got all of that. So you must have alongside that fast pace and that decisiveness and that change management and that go get them out at you. You also need the person who goes, wait a minute. Those are both really important. So as each other. And sometimes if you're in a really small NGB and some of us are, we're not, you know, we've got 20 people, so we can get that variety. You need to be both at times. That's time. 100%.

Dustin Heise 23:12

Well, we need more unicorns and more folks like you, Phil. And don't forget about that. I'm certain you're we don't want just Dustins and Phil's, no doubt about that. But we certainly uh we need more leaders that are are continuing to think outside that box and look at innovative ways, bringing in the resources, bringing in strategy, and then just willing to communicate and jump on a call and and and share the knowledge and in your learnings, you know, to this point in your career. And I can't thank you enough for just taking the time today to noodle on this together. And I look forward to doing this in the not so distant future, maybe in a year from now, and do a reflection and a and a look ahead of uh you know, games will only be a year out. Yeah, it'll be it'll be cool to see how you've continued to grow and and I know you've got some good stuff cooking there that I I look forward to hearing more and more about. So yeah, likewise.

Phil Andrews 23:59

Likewise, and yeah, I really appreciate having me on and uh at some point we'll have to grab a a coffee and then and tool get all things counted a snowball because that's equally as fascinating for me.

Dustin Heise 24:07

Well, I'll look forward to that as well, my friend. Thanks so much. All right, cool.