Edward Castillo
Co-Founder, Figure It Out Agency
In this edition of Required Reading - an online zine designed for you to download and apply to your career - you’ll meet Edward Castillo, the Austin born and raised co-founder of the experiential marketing agency Figure It Out. For over a decade, his “say yes to everything” approach has consistently brought about deep connections with some of culture’s most iconic brands, events, and artists, both personally and professionally.
“You can sell tickets.”
Growing up, my mom took us to Zilker Park in Austin and we always went to free concerts. We were always immersed in music so I knew that I loved it but I didn't know that it was possible to have a job in it. I thought everything had to be in LA or New York.
As I got older, I was going to concerts all the time. I went to a Wiz Khalifa show, and back then, if you went to a rap show in Austin, it was at a bar, so the artists wouldn't perform until like 2:00 a.m. if they even showed up. I got to the show at 11:00 p.m. and it was already over.
Somebody randomly pointed out Annalise [need last name], and she said there were these kids in Austin, from the University of Texas, who started a company called ScoreMore and were throwing these concerts, and they were young. I went to three ScoreMore events back to back, and then I reached out to them.
I set up two interviews with Claire [Bogle, ScoreMore’s co-founder]. She canceled on me the first time. I was about to have the baby two months later, so I was sitting there stressed out, like, “What am I even interviewing for?”
When I interviewed, they told me “You can sell tickets.” I started working with them and realized that I was one of the few ticket sellers in the room who didn't go to the University of Texas and was also one of the few people who wasn't like a frat boy or anything like that. I thought to myself, “All these frat boys have to be rich, right? They can probably sell 200 tickets easily.”
I would go out and I would find people who were also into music. I would join Facebook groups, and I'd post, “Hey, I got Big Sean tickets. I'll be here, or I'll go meet you.”
I would be sitting at a Walmart for hours in between shifts or in between jobs. I was also selling cars at the time, so people would pull up on me at the car dealership. I'd be selling a car and selling a ticket at the same time. Then I realized, okay, this is kind of crazy. I think I love this. I didn't know this kind of job could be a thing.
The start of a career
I would be disappointed in myself because I would sell 75 to 100 tickets to shows with artists that I didn’t even really know. One day, Sascha Stone-Guttfreund [the co-founder of ScoreMore] showed up and he asked me, “How are you selling all these tickets?” I learned that everyone else was selling, like, three, four, five tickets. They were selling them to themselves and their girlfriend and their brother, and here I am sitting at a Walmart, basically selling tickets like they’re drugs, which Walmart accused me of more than once.
I believed that I would work harder than anybody else. I've always thought that way. It's easy to defeat yourself, especially when you walk into a room and look at a bunch of college students, and you assume they're rich. It’s easy to talk yourself out of taking that leap. I just had to realize, “Why not me?”
About a year into selling tickets, Sascha came to me and asked me if I wanted to work full-time with him. At the time, I had a full-time job with the government with great benefits, great everything. ScoreMore didn’t even have an employee yet. Sascha said, “I don't know what it looks like to be full-time with us, so you have to set everything up. You're the only person who's ever worked a corporate job.”
I was like, “Yeah, I'm down.”
Embracing casual professionalism in the early days
I remember when I was applying for jobs in the industry, I would write this long email, like, here's who I am, here's where I'm from, here's why you should work with me, here's a story about my mom, here is all this stuff. I wrote this whole book of an email, and then I wouldn't get a hold of anybody.
I remember being discouraged in the beginning because I applied for multiple jobs. I did what Google told me to do and what my teachers at the time told me to do, and never heard anything back. I worked on my resume for, like, two weeks. I had everybody review it. I couldn't get an answer.
When I wanted to work for ScoreMore, I reached out to them on Twitter. It was a style that I knew at that point, and it was the style that they knew. I just said, "What's up, I want to work for y'all. How do I apply?" And they said to show up the next day at 3 p.m.
Later I realized the people that I wanted to work with were communicating in the style that I communicated in. To this day, a lot of my cold reaches aren't done by email. They're done on Twitter, they're done on Instagram, they're done on social media. I’ll say something as simple as, “Yo, I like what you're doing. If you're ever here in Austin, hit me up.” That's my style of reaching out. It's more natural.
However, when I was doing a lot of hiring, I always appreciated it when somebody sent me a long email, took time to make sure their words were spelled right, and the subject line said something like, “Austin, potential hire.”
The other part I realized is that there's another part of the world out there that might be scared to send those emails or scared to talk, but then they're the best at other things. You may end up working with them a few times and realize that they’re good at this or that. Sometimes it's just about showing up and being willing to do those random things and being good at it.
From ticket seller to experiential marketer
I started as a street team manager, and then I became the street team director, which meant I would pass out tickets to everyone on our team all over the state.
Then, I became a marketing manager and a box office director. Later I became an experiential manager — these are titles I would make up because I’d think, “Shit, I need to look good on this email.” Each day I’d be something different.
When ScoreMore was acquired by Live Nation, I became the Brand Partnerships Director in my final stages.
I spent ten years at ScoreMore, a company that I really loved. I think if it wasn't for COVID, I would have probably spent the rest of my life there. But I realized I wanted to be challenged again. One of the things I realized up front was that I've always loved working with people. I've always loved working around other people and kind of helping the next generation develop their spots.
In about 2019, I realized that I had been working in music for a long time. One of the things that would always happen around certain times of the year, such as SXSW or busy seasons, people would call ScoreMore because we were known as those guys in Texas who could do stuff fast. That’s when I started doing something called experiential marketing -- this is where you work with brands to create in-person experiences and activations. We started doing experiential for Spotify, Buzzfeed, and all these companies.
After COVID, I spent a lot of time in different cities and met a lot of Latin artists. I would message them on Instagram, saying, “Hey, I like what you have going on. What else do you have?” I saw what I had seen in 2012 with hip-hop music start happening in 2019 with Latin music. I'm thinking, “Yo, who are all these young kids coming and buying 500 tickets to these artists that nobody's paying attention to?” Today, those artists are number one and they’re some of the top ones in the world and their labels are some of the top in the world.
At the same time, I was executing experiential marketing campaigns and building relationships with other agencies and brands that were trying to go after these artists I knew. I didn't intend to be a middle person for that but it all kind of worked out in the way that it was supposed to.
Building a company from scratch
I needed insurance because I got a gig early when I started venturing out on my own. This was around the time when everything in the world was still closed, but Texas had kind of been open. People were starting to call me, saying “Hey, I hear you're working and the only place we could throw events is in Texas. None of our staff will fly.”
I started saying yes to things and then more people started calling. All of a sudden, I realized, "Shit, I need to get my business together.” I needed a website. I needed all the things that I'd been spoiled to have for the last decade working for a company, like an accountant team. Now it's just me. I had nothing at the time.
I called Daniel, and I called Rick, my current business partners, and I asked them, “Will y'all come work on this project with me?"
I was sitting there weeks out, and I needed to get this insurance so I needed a name for the company. I asked Google for a name. I paid some random guy off the Internet to help me come up with a name. I couldn't get anything I liked. I was on the last day and needed to come up with a name that night. I started thinking about what I've always done and what I've always told people.
One of the first things that I was told when I didn't know what to do was “figure it out.” People would always joke with me saying, “We know Ed's just going to say, ‘Go figure it out,’ once he gives us a task.’” I thought, let me just name my company Figure It Out At first, I felt kind of funny telling people the name. I started just using the acronym F.I.O., just in case because I thought that people would make fun of it.
It's crazy because now we make this merch and we just have different sayings around Figure It Out on it. People attach to the name so much that I could have never expected.
Inspiration for your journey
For people who are wondering how to get into an industry, I always try to encourage them to just do it. Just try. The worst that happens is maybe you fall on your face once or twice, but nobody's ever going to stop you.
I grew up here in Austin my whole life. My mom grew up here, my grandma grew up here. My great-grandpa grew up here. My family's seen the city grow. I grew up with a single mom. We would live homeless from time to time. I remember my family members would pay for my degree, and my diplomas and stuff like that. I dropped out of college because my situation was that either I helped pay rent or paid for more school.
Everybody's journey is so different but I'm no different than most people. At the end of the day, I'm pretty fucking normal, and I'm pretty blessed to be here. It just took a lot of hard work. It took a lot of sacrifice. There were times I didn’t sleep for three days. I missed days with my son when he was younger but I knew what I wanted and I knew where I wanted to be.
I started from nothing and co-founded one of the few Brown-owned companies out here doing it.
