Mike Foster: Laser Focused for the Win
Small business entrepreneurship can be incredibly rewarding, but like anything, its not without certain unique challenges. Some have a dream but not the technical expertise to execute. Others may be skilled engineers missing a creative vision. The ones who find the most success don't let their own limitations hold them back; they recognize them and build a team of all the right people to make implementation possible.
As a sports broadcaster, I see team synergies out perform single player abilities a hundred times to one. Nobody can excel at everything, but everybody can excel together by bringing their own strengths to help accomplish a common goal. It's teamwork in a nutshell. As is so often the case, it's a valuable lesson from the baseball diamond that has direct parallels to the business world. I discuss it regularly when keynoting to corporate audiences, and recently, I was joined on my podcast Rounding the Bases by someone who has found success in small business entrepreneurship thanks to a great idea and the right team.
This was one interview when I traded the infield for the end zone. I sat down to talk football with the entrepreneur behind a digital system that's transforming the game as we know it. His name is Mike Foster, the founder and innovator of Lazser Down. And if you thought the pigskin sport was perfect before, now's the time to think again.The veteran coach needed a couple of seconds and a small screen debut to realize traditional sideline technology was lacking. But it took years of trial, error and fine tuning to finally get it right. Now that prototype has become product, it's giving teams an undeniable advantage measured in yard, foot or inch. The future of football has arrived, and its ready for kickoff.
SINGLE: Smarter, Not Harder
Mike Foster is a recovering football coach among many other things, but by his own admission, tech savvy is not one of them. It was, however, something he needed to bring his vision for a game-changing down and distance marker system to life. Instead of being deterred, he turned to the community to support his small business entrepreneurship journey.
"I worked on it for about three years," he said of his first prototype. "I wasn't an engineer, so went and got some help." After 30 years in the football game, he went from coach to being coached, soaking in everything Kansas City had to offer. With the right relationships and people on his team, Lazser Down began its acceleration from idea to invention.
DOUBLE: The Now Factor
These days, everything is about information. People want it accurate and they want it now. In a general sense, waiting has become a lost art. But in sports, impatience is viable, critical even. "The quicker you have it, the better off you are," Mike said of down and distance. Exacting measurements have long been the norm in baseball, and from my seat in the broadcast booth, I know immediately how hard a pitch was thrown or how far a ball was hit.
In a game like football where mere inches separate winners from the other guys, the lack of comparable, instantaneous statistics is somewhat surprising. And it's one of the problems that Lazser Down solves, in addition to fewer interruptions and better communication across the board (or stadium, if you will). From players and officials to fans and media, everyone wins...attention spans included.
TRIPLE: Win-Win-Win
Mike's playbook for prototype development was all about working smarter, not harder. It also included tapping into the incredible potential of Kansas City's CAPS (Center for Applied Professional Studies) program, which gives high school students the opportunity to gain real world experience from hands on learning with local businesses.
Over the course of five semesters, students at Blue Valley High School and Northland High School honed their tech and engineering skills to build Lazser Down's physical components. Throughout the program, CAPS students also received coaching from heavy-hitting corporations like Garmin and Bushnell. When product development was complete, the Lazser Down system had been created, Mike earned himself a patent for his innovative idea and best of all, students gained immeasurable experience. A truly winning strategy.
HOME RUN: A Team Effort
There's a saying that if your goals don't scare you they aren't big enough. And nowhere is that more true than in small business entrepreneurship. Lazser Down and it's game-changing technology has already found a great deal of success in its short existence, and counts programs like Notre Dame, the XFL and the USFL among its current clients. But as far as Mike is concerned, he has only scratched the surface.
To become the nationally accepted standard, there must first be buy-in at the top. "We've gained some acceptance in the NFL, but we're still working through," he told me. "It's a large log, and the chopping takes a while." Revolutionizing the global authority on professional football understandably takes some time. But he's made progress - and gotten national attention - with inroads such as the East-West Shrine Bowl and Reese's Senior Bowl, where Lazser Down has been recruited as the sideline system of choice for several consecutive years.
For all the prestige that comes with the NFL, it's a short term goal in the bigger picture. "There's over 17,000 high schools," Mike told me when reflecting on what he hopes to accomplish with Lazser Down. He's well on his way to becoming the choice system for programs of all levels across the country, but is quick to recognize its been a team effort all along. "You don't get somewhere by yourself," he said. "I have a lot of people that share in our success."
Listen to the full interview here or tune in to Rounding the Bases every Monday and Thursday, available wherever you get your podcasts.
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Full Transcript
Joel Goldberg 0:00
Welcome into Rounding the Bases the podcast about culture and leadership with a baseball twist presented by Community America Credit Union Believe in Unbelievable. My name is Joel Goldberg. Really cool episode today combining a little bit of sports, a lot of technology, innovation, entrepreneurship. This is this is really fun stuff. And then the timing is good too is we're getting ready for football season. Right now quick shout out to my friends at Chief of Staff Kansas City, if you're looking for a job, if you're looking to get placed, if you're looking to hire someone, they're, at minimum, an incredible resource. I do a lot of work with them on culture, I'm proud to partner with them, Chiefofstaffkc.com Making Connections That Matter. At the minimum, I was saying they'll help you help lead you in the right direction and be that resource for you. So with that said, I know they're all big sports fans over there. I say this whenever I have a sports type of guest on while this show isn't necessarily a sports show, they're always really interesting ties between sports and business. In this case, we'll we'll have a lot of that. On this episode of Rounding the Bases, we're trading the infield when I do my baseball stuff for the endzone. That's right, we are talking football and we're doing it with the entrepreneur behind a digital system that's disrupting the game as we know it. His name is Mike Foster, the founder and innovator of Lazser Down. And if you thought the pigskin sport was perfect before now's the time to think again. This veteran coach needed a couple of seconds and a small screen debut to realize traditional sideline technology was lacking. I mean, think about how many times we see them trying to measure out first downs. And there's never really a science to it. But it took years of trial, error and fine tuning to finally get it right. Now that the prototype has become product it's giving teams an undeniable advantage measured in yard, foot or inch. The future of football has arrived and it's ready to kick off. So I say all that saying that there is a lot to discuss here. Right now with Mike Foster. Mike, welcome into Rounding the Bases. It's funny because we were talking a little bit of technology on the podcast side, you said I'm terrible with technology. I said wait a minute, I was thinking you've created this incredible technology, which I know must come from love and passion and history with football. First and foremost, tell me about your company.
Mike Foster 2:27
Well, yes, I am. I'm terrible at technology. I just have a really, really great engineering firm BV Systems. Barry Vonada, that's here in Kansas City, everything we do is in Kansas City. And this was born out of frustration, 30 years of coaching as you had mentioned, and eight different staffs, five different states, 13 moves, all that good kind of stuff. But on each one of them, it was always the same. On our post medium boredom meetings on Sunday morning and just became fingerpointing, you know, you didn't get the call soon enough. You know, I would have known it was this, I would have called that we had to play a game. There was, you know, timeout, whatever the case may be, but it was just always an argument, it was the same thing over and over again. So when I got out of football, I knew there had to be a better way of doing it. And so we got together with some people, and we came up with it. But again, it's just my idea, I'm terrible with technology.
Joel Goldberg 3:30
Well, you can be terrible with the technology. But as long as you have the right people that can help implement the idea. And this, this seems so I don't want to say it seems so obvious. But in a sport, where every little detail matters. By the way, that's true in every sport. But I mean, in a sport like football, where you are talking about feet, inches, sometimes millimeters, you expect accuracy too. And so it sounds to me like like a lot of this was born just out of the frustration you were talking about about needing more about needing it to be better. So is there a point where you said, Wait a minute, I can do this not create the technology. But just the idea. I mean, well, how did the idea really begin to marinate?
Mike Foster 4:15
Well, it was actually from being up in a press box and talking about those arguments that we had or the finger pointing. But actually, when you're up in a press box, and I was a coordinator on the sideline, I was calling calling out down and distance from up in a press box and dependent upon the view that you had, you know, you couldn't be 100% accurate, the only time it was accurate was going first and 10. That's the only time that it's you know, 100% Correct. And all the others was a guestimation. And then there was just always the problem of going from a press block to the sideline sideline to the field, and then players players and so it took up or ate up a big part of that 25 or 42 second clock. And so that's what our technology solves because it gives everybody in the stadium, instantly the information. So whether you're a broadcaster, you're a coach, you're a fan, you're a player, everybody can look to the sideline and get that information. And so it allows more time to be used between play calls for anything that you have, you know, as far as the checks that, that you're gonna call offensively, defensively, audibles, whatever the case may be. So it just extends the play clock.
Joel Goldberg 5:24
So everybody wins on it. I mean, it seems so obvious, maybe it wasn't at the time. But when you look right now at and I can certainly speak from the baseball side of things, that we have information instantaneously, we know immediately, how fast the ball came off the bat, how far it went on the homerun, how hard the outfielder threw a backhand when he gun the guy out at third base. I mean, in the moment, just with all the cameras and everything that is set up. And I guess, you know, my question on that is that isn't that sort of where we're at right now in society, we want everything right now whether we need it or not, in this case, I know that you need it. But there's a demand for that isn't there in terms of where we're at, in this world.
Mike Foster 6:11
It is, everything it's about information. And information is gold. The quicker that you have it you can disseminate it, the better off that you are, you know, the same is where a microwave society and that's kind of the way it is nobody wants to let it bake in the oven for an hour to you know, they're just not patient anymore. So they want everything right now. But for for sports, I mean, it's, it's viable. It's something that is needed, because it just helps with the game and the communication. And the speed of the game is also affected by this because we don't have interruptions for the timeouts to march out to the field, get the measurements and all that. So the pace of the game is better. And everybody is trying to do that with pace of the game. Because unfortunately, the attention span of the audience has been shortened, shortened, shortened. And so we're trying to cater to that.
Joel Goldberg 7:00
So you mean, that's not just a baseball problem, the pace of play issue, right? I mean, it's everything is slowed down, yet our society is sped up. So for better or worse. People, people get bored, right?
Mike Foster 7:12
They do. And so they want that information. Now, they don't want to have the interruptions. And so the quicker we can get it to them. But it does, it does help the game, I think on multiple levels, just communication between players and coach, and then broadcasters and then also the fans, there's more fan involvement with this because they can see now, it's 36 inches wide and Andy Reid call that play, why didn't he call this play or something. And you go back to the Super Bowl, when you had the Patriots and the Seahawks there and everybody thought Marcia Marshawn Lynch was going to get the ball going in, and they throw the pass. And so the second guessers are going to be there whether you have the technology or not. But it will just give everybody that technology.
Joel Goldberg 7:58
So I want to get back to when when you started dreaming this up a little bit. I mean, you're, you're a football coach here. Maybe I don't know if you're if you're dreaming of the world of business and entrepreneurship that is sometimes something you could see from both worlds. But But was this totally new to you to suddenly be be hatching a business concept?
Mike Foster 8:22
It was and to be honest, I have my wife to credit for that. Because after 30 years, and all those moves, she was finished and wanted to come back Kansas City, which is our home, and at the time, we had to have our 15 Well, now 16 grandbabies are here. And so she wanted to come home. And so that gave me the opportunity to work on it. Because if that wouldn't have been the case, I would have just continued coach and I'm still a recovering coach, I tell everybody, you know, I'd still like to be coaching football, but it's just given us this window to be able to do it. And so I worked on it for about three years by myself and figured out that I wasn't an engineer, and I went got some help. And Kansas City is an awesome place to get help because of the entrepreneurial community that we have here available to us.
Joel Goldberg 9:12
Yeah, I mean, that's and I don't know, I know, it's great in Kansas City. I don't know, and I know it is in other places, but it's not that way, everywhere. And so suddenly you're knee deep in the middle of a start up and everything that goes with that, which is I'm sure a fascinating process. I know 2015 selected as one of SPARK Lab KC's Top 10 Startups, there had to have been I'm guessing Mike a bit of I mean, I hear this often from athletes, coaches, like I want a CEO that I talked to that competitiveness that desire to win that, you know, oftentimes ask ex-athletes, you know, how do you replace and they'll say, Well, there's no real replacing being in the locker room. There's no real replacing being in the game. But this can oftentimes be Next Best Thing, whether it's business, whether it's broadcasting while you're still in the game in a different way, and an exhilarating way, did you feel a lot of that?
Mike Foster 10:09
Definitely. I mean, it's been a conduit where I can still stay attached to the ballgame. I don't have the hours that I did, I didn't have don't have the headaches, I'm not depending upon, in college, you're dependent upon 18 to 21 year 22 year old kids basically for your livelihood. And so that's not the case anymore. So I'm able to deal with the adult world. And, you know, a lot of times there are some in the adult world that, you know, kind of act like the 18 year old but um, so, to navigate those strains.
Joel Goldberg 10:45
Plus, I mean, I know you're back in Kansas City, but you're, you are coaching football, you are knee deep in football and in the hotbed of Texas, right?
Mike Foster 10:53
Yes, yeah. I loved my time in Texas, everywhere we were but Texas, Oklahoma, California, Missouri, Kansas. And all of them had their pluses all of them had their minuses. But yes, we have done really well in Texas, that's one of the hotbeds and where we've established our product. And we're working with the UIL down there with University Interscholastic League, and then also the Texas High School Coaches Association. And it's it's been a great partnership, and it's continuing to grow.
Joel Goldberg 11:25
Okay, so tell me about a little bit more about the process and the product. You said, kind of what three years or so that you were dreaming this up working on it, you obviously got the help, as you alluded to, from a technology standpoint, then you got to convince people. And I would imagine it helps that you are a football guy, you had connections. So you had relationships. But which is by the way, a part of any locker and part of coaching part of sports is is is the relationships, right? And building that trust and those bonds. Where did you go with that you already had a foot in the door from a football standpoint, now you're a business man. How did you tie all that together?
Mike Foster 12:05
Well, we as I alluded to a little bit earlier, we went through the entrepreneurial community here in Kansas City, which is just unbelievable. We started out with Blue Valley CAPS. And we've done Northland CAPS, which is the Center for Applied Professional Studies. And these are high school kids. And we actually got our first patent by going through that and we worked five different semesters with high school kids who were able to do this, because they work with people like Garmin and Bushnell and everything on our product. And then we went to Whiteboard to Boardroom and then UMKC, the entrepreneurial community that we have there, the Kauffman Fast Track program. You talked about the Spark Lab 2015 Digital Sandbox, the ECJC Growth Mentoring Service and Scale Up Kansas City. So those were all programs that kind of pushed us for work through the portal. And then I used Yes, my coaching contacts going from there. And when we developed it, we initially started, the number one program that we got, and this is hard for people believe it was Notre Dame, but we got Notre Dame, Nebraska, Tulane and then one of my son's high schools, which is Bloomington Central Catholic High School. In fact, Danny Matthews is a grad there, so there's a little connection there. And Sean is the principal or now, he's the president there, but they used it. And we did it with him for two years before we brought it to the market. So that's how we kind of did it. I mean, that's just been a bootstrap word of mouth and we're in 28 states plus the District of Columbia right now.
Joel Goldberg 13:47
What was there a tipping point for you? I mean, Notre Dame that's, that's about about as big as it gets.
Mike Foster 13:55
Well, the there was also an acceptance with the USFL and the XFL, and then we're dealing with the NFL. We've been doing the Shrine Bowl for the last four years. And then also we did the East West. Sorry, we did an East-West Shrine game and then we did the Senior Bowl. And so we've gained some acceptance in the NFL, but we're still working through. That that's that is a large log, the chopping through takes a while.
Joel Goldberg 14:26
So the NFL is I would imagine the one of the ultimate goals right?
Mike Foster 14:30
It is yeah, if we can get there the acceptance is everywhere, but the money, being just completely honest about it, is not professional. It's in high school because there's over 17,000 high schools and professional leaders you know, less than 75.
Joel Goldberg 14:50
So, just based on the pure magnitude, then by the the recognition the The just the the from a PR standpoint, I guess the exposure comes from the NFL, but the big business is getting into all those high schools all over the country, I guess, right? I mean, the, the the numbers, I'm sure you've thought about it too, if this thing takes off, you've got the patent and all that you're talking about being everywhere in the country.
Mike Foster 15:19
It is. And that's what our ultimate goal is. And we've made some pivots, you have to because this business started one way, and it's gone another direction, but I've had mentors and partnerships that have influenced me that way. And got a lot of great advice. So this, you don't get somewhere by yourself. I mean, we're a small, small company, but I have a lot of people that share in our success.
Joel Goldberg 15:49
Before I asked you my baseball themed questions, Mike, I want to just paint a picture. And people can can see some of this too on the website, lazserdown.com. LAZSER lazser Down Lazserdown.com. But explain in the simplest terms, how it works.
Mike Foster 16:12
Okay, I actually came up with the idea a couple ideas, a rangefinder and golf, okay, so you know how far you are from the hole. And so kind of using that concept. And then also with the gas station, where you see the digital, the amount of gas $5, for dollars dependent upon, you know, who's wearing the government right now, but the, the price of that. And so it was just using that, and what it simply does, and I'm not an engineer, but our engineer and putting it in layman's terms, he says, you push a button and measures the amount of time it takes to go from point A, which is where the ball is to point B, which is where the line to gain is, and then it converts that amount of time into either a yard, foot or inch. So we are accurate, from 99 yards down to six inches. So it'll go 99 yards, it'll go down to yard, two foot, one foot, and then or go somewhere between 11 and six inches. So it just converts the amount of time into a usable distance that's displayed on the field. And it's available to everybody.
Joel Goldberg 17:23
I would imagine that you hear from some of your colleagues or former colleagues, or at least any coach, I guess anywhere that's sitting up in a press box, which I know can be a little bit of a lonely place when you feel like you're that eye in the sky. And you can't quite get to exactly what you want to get to whether that's coaching or information, I would imagine that you're hearing a lot of cool things
Mike Foster 17:46
We do. And there were a lot of things that I did not even realize that were going to be the benefits of this. And that's what you know, what we give out to people. This is what the feedback that we get, we didn't have to invent any of these. And so it's it's been very rewarding to be able to do that. And it just making the game of football better. And that's really what I wanted out of this. It started as something to alleviate the stress and frustration of just getting the communication and it's evolved into stuff completely more encompassing than what I ever believed. And just a quick example, like when we were up at Notre Dame after the first year that they were actually using it in games. And we were just showing some people there were some people there from Stanford was playing there that night. And so their athletic staff wanted to see it as demonstrated on the field. And the Notre Dame statistician came down and he says, This is the greatest thing that I have ever seen. He says this makes my job so much easier. And we had another game up there that I was at, where it showed up I forget the exact but it was like fourth and seven inches or something. So the PA guy up at Notre Dame says it's fourth and, there's a pragnated pause there, seven inches, and you could kind of hear the laughter going through the stadium and everything, just kind of a murmur. With that. So that part of it, those things are, are kind of neat. But even the breakdown of film, when people are able to do it because they don't have to look at you know, try to find it, figure it out. It's right there on a video for him. So it just makes everything a lot quicker.
Joel Goldberg 19:28
Super cool. It really is and should be expected. Again, in this day and age where we want everything to be exactly accurate. We always wanted it to be accurate. We just didn't know how to do it before. Mike would say he didn't know how to do it either. But he came up with the idea and he had the right people to help it. You need good people on your team to be able to do it. You can't do it all yourself. So with that said, I get to my baseball themed questions even though this is a football story, so to speak. Really, it's an entrepreneurial story and a story of innovation for me. What's the biggest home run so far? That you've hit with Lazser Down?
Mike Foster 20:02
Probably our biggest home run that we have is, you know, being going being able to go through that entrepreneurial community. There's no doubt that that would that was game changing for me, because I'd struggled with that for three years, didn't know that this even existed. And then just going over to the Blue Valley CAPS and those kids being able to get our first patent was just, that was that was a homerun because everything trickled down from that point forward. So everything in Kansas City has just been awesome for us.
Joel Goldberg 20:36
Yeah, I mentioned mention 2015 Spark Lab KC, also 2014 Digital Sandbox, you alluded to that their Summer in the Sand Program. And I know those CAPS programs are spectacular. And so to be able to have the kids involved, that's a huge homerun for so many people, including that next generation, who, again, understand some of these things better than guys like you and I do and they're these kids are brilliant, which is really cool. How about a swing and a miss? And what have you learned from it?
Mike Foster 21:05
Okay, our biggest swing and miss was probably our initial business plan that we started out with. And we were just going to be a assembly, we were just going to be a standalone hardware company, meaning that I just went into this with the vision, we're going to sell this hardware, and that's going to be the end of the business. And so we were able, I needed boots on the ground since we're a small company. And we had a contract with one national, I'm sorry, two national and one regional company. And what I found is that those people were not as passionate about it as what we were. And so our sales just tanked because we were dependent upon others. And so then I was able to get in contact with a company. And we formed a collaborative partnership. And it's called Act Two in Bentonville, Arkansas, and they became our agency of record. And so now we have multiple conduits and achieving some substantial growth, access to a wide range of resources, services, product status, strategy, marketing, channel development, a lot of things, finance things that I was not aware of. So we are not only just hardware, we're now able to be on the field sell broadcasting rights, advertising rights, and have a pathway to purchase with things that are advertised. And so the hardware is going to become the smallest part of it. And what we have become is an expanded billboard, through our partnership with Act Two in Bentonville, Arkansas. So that was the swing in the mess and how we recovered from it.
Joel Goldberg 22:38
Great story there. And then the last baseball themed question, and then we'll wrap it up and move over to YouTube for a little bit small ball, the little things that add up to the big results. What are the little things right now in your world?
Mike Foster 22:51
Well, I'm a big believer in reading. And so all of the small things that I have done, I've taken a little bit out of each of them is I'm a Parrothead. So Jimmy Buffett says that plagiarism is just undetected. You know, originality is undetected plagiarism, I guess, I should say. And so some of the books that I've read, and I'll just quickly go through them, but Jim Mattis, he's a four, retired four star general, and a call to sign chaos learning to lead. And he says, if you haven't read hundreds of books, you're functionally illiterate. And you will be incompetent because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you. Joshua Metcalf from Chop Wood and Carry Water. The process is more important than a goal. As Your Strength Lies in the Faithfulness to Little Things from Mike or Michael Gerber and the E Myth. Work on the business and not in the business. Phil Knight from his book, Shoe Dog says let everybody else call you going don't stop don't even think about stopping until you get there. And don't give much thought to where there is when it comes. Just don't stop. Ray Kroc, which I enjoyed reading this, grinding it out making the McDonald's and he says you have to take risks. And in some cases, you must go for broke. If you believe in something, you've got to be in it to the answer your toes taking reasonable risk is part of the challenge. It's the fun and you can always switch directions. If you're willing to persevere. Chris Voss and never splitting the difference that by the way, he started to scam city street cop ended up in the FBI as their top international negotiator for you know, people that were kidnapped, whatever. And he says negotiation begins with active listening, gathering information you can use to find the Black Swan and then finally, Getting a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman. He says when everything's important, nothing is important. So I take all of those things, all those little things. That's my little ball that you talked about. and ask what our mission is because so I steal from all of those people. And that's what I, you know what I try to do day in and day out.
Joel Goldberg 25:07
Yeah, I love that. And also love the fact that we just got ourselves a little bit of a reading list, which is good. Everybody's always looking for that. And there's so much out there. And so I really appreciate that, especially from the standpoint of leadership and business. Really good stuff there. A lot of inspiration, a lot of interesting words and quotes. And, you know, shoot, you're an ex coach, you said, recovering coach, that means you've done your homework, you got to do your homework, if you're a football coach, there's a lot of it. So I appreciate you doing your homework here for me. I do want to continue the conversation over on YouTube with four final questions, some pretty fun stuff. But I want to remind everybody, if you're listening to this, wherever you get your podcasts to just check out the website. And if you have any interest, there's a lot of information there at Lazser down.com LAZSER Lazserdown.com. Mike, congrats on all the success. We'll continue with some fun stuff on YouTube, you can find that in our show notes or just search Joel Goldberg Media Rounding the Bases. And you'll find that but Mike congratulations continued success. I can't wait to see you in the NFL, and all over the country as you continue to grow. Really cool story. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Mike Foster 34:07
Thank you. I appreciate being on Joel. Thank you very, very much.