What Ticketmaster Gets Wrong and a New Solution by Fanfare Founder Michael Dodsworth

S6:E7

Loralyn Mears, PhD, aka “Dr. LL,” brings you thoughtful conversations with entrepreneurs and small business leaders navigating visibility, leadership, and growth. Thank you for being here.

Overview

There’s a specific kind of fatigue that comes from “doing the right things” and still feeling ignored. You show up consistently, you post, you refine the offer, you keep building, and yet traction stays unpredictable. Often the issue is not effort, it’s misalignment: the message is landing in the wrong place, or the experience is quietly breaking trust before people ever become customers. This is one of those patterns that looks like a marketing problem, but behaves like a credibility problem.

👤 Guest: Michael Dodsworth Fanfare.io Improving high-demand launches and fan experiences in live events and retail drops

⚠️ Core Problems Discussed: -Launch-day demand creates queues, bot activity, and broken purchasing experiences -Big platforms often tolerate frustration because they do not feel enough incentive to change -Founders can pour energy into the wrong channels, missing where customers actually are

🧠 The Bigger Pattern Dr. LL Sees: Across many small businesses, visibility stalls when the customer experience and the communication channel are out of sync. You can be excellent and still be overlooked if the buyer cannot access you easily, trust the process, or even find you where they already spend attention. The fix is rarely “more content.” It is clearer alignment between audience, channel, and experience.

🥡 Practical Takeaways: -Treat the customer experience as part of your credibility, not a technical detail -Choose channels based on where buyers behave, not where founders feel comfortable posting -Use failures as feedback loops: fix process gaps, then document what changed

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:01:22 The real problem behind “bad launches”

00:08:44 Why early-stage teams feel customer pain more clearly 

00:13:00 “Run at the failures” and what founders avoid

00:18:29 Finding your customers in the right channels

00:20:44 Examples of major launch failures and what they reveal

 

🔖 Who This Episode Is For:

Small business owners who feel stretched thin

Consultants and coaches building trust online

Solopreneurs who feel stuck or unseen

 

A Supportive Next Step If this episode hit a nerve, you might be carrying a very specific worry: “What if my business is good, but the way people experience it is quietly turning them away?” That can feel personal, even when it is just a systems issue. Many founders default to working harder: more posts, more tweaks, more tools. But the deeper pattern is often alignment, not effort. The audience is somewhere else, the message is slightly off, or the path from interest to yes has friction that erodes trust.

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