Meet the Geeks! It’s Lex Simpson!

In our ongoing “Meet the Geeks!” series, it’s time to introduce you to our West Coast Client Manager, Lex Simpson! He’s the bestest in the westest! Alongside getting to know Lex a bit better, you’ll also learn about how easy it is for our pub clients to work with us due to our dedicated client managers. Let’s get to it.

Lex Simpson has been with Geeks Who Drink for the past decade, and it’s all because he said yes to a date. “Someone took me to a quiz and it was a lot of fun,” he said. “I think the Quizmaster announced that they were looking for a host at the time,”

As a longtime actor and theatrical performer, he was enthusiastic about the opportunity to be on stage, and not just because the Quizmaster doesn’t have to memorize a lengthy script. After hosting Geeks Who Drink quizzes for several years, Simpson applied for a corporate gig, and has since become the company’s West Coast client manager. We recently talked to him about, you know, what that actually means, what his day-to-day responsibilities are, and why you — yes, you, with the t-shirt — should work with us.

What does a client manager do, exactly? I do a little bit of everything, from setting up the AV [equipment at a Quiz venue], connecting them with all of the promotional materials, and managing them afterwards, after we’ve got them up and running. I work primarily with the farthest west coast venues, in Nevada, California, Washington, and Oregon.

What are your interactions with the venue owners like? When we bring a new venue in, I’m their first point of contact with any questions or concerns. From there, we’re providing all of the [quiz] materials, we do all of the Quizmaster training and staffing, and we give them all of the promo stuff we need. If they don’t have a sound system, we’ll provide one, or if they don’t know how to maximize their existing system, we’ll send someone out to check on it. And if they have any issues after all of that, our customer support is there to help them out.

You weren’t joking about that ‘a little bit of everything’ part. Yeah, we take a lot of the issues out of their hands. The only thing they really need to keep up with are any cancellations, or letting us know that they’ve got a private event or a holiday event coming up.

Why should a venue that hasn’t worked with Geeks Who Drink give us a shot? It seems like a lot of bars set up their trivia nights to be kind of in the background, whereas we set it up to be an event. I think that’s something that really connects with the people who come out to play. It sounds…I don’t know, maybe arrogant to say that the Geeks Who Drink experience is totally different, but if you’ve ever attended another [pub quiz], it’s not the same thing, from the types of questions we ask on down. On top of having us to set things up and keep them running smoothly, the venues are also getting, quite frankly, a superior product.

Do you still work as a Quizmaster? Sort of. I haven’t done it as consistently as I’d like in the past couple of years.

Literally nothing has been consistent in the past couple of years. What was the best aspect of being a regular Quizmaster? The teams. You’d see the same people every week consistently. And you’re technically working, but part of the job is meeting people, and you see some of them…well, for lack of a better expression, you see them grow up. Some teams followed me from one venue to another. Some players on one team got married, and another was full of scientists and PhD professors who always talked about what they were working on. It was a real quiz community.