Long before I ever thought about going to a World Cup match, I was constantly looking for local sports tickets right here in Phoenix. That’s how I first crossed paths with Tony Beram, who has run Western States Ticket Service out of the Valley for decades. Over the last forty years—first as a fan buying tickets, and later as a season ticket holder reselling extras—Tony became my go-to. He was always honest and fair, returning unused tickets at cost and making games affordable for my family. Forty years later, he’s still the man I call.

This summer, buying World Cup tickets for my family felt challenging and required a professional with a human touch. Soccer has become a sport that really brought my grandsons together, and with the World Cup coming to the United States, we couldn’t let this opportunity pass us by.

I’ve also been a sports fan forever, but I’m used to an old school mentality when it comes to purchasing tickets: physical tickets rather than digital bar codes, phone calls instead of online ticket sites. The process for purchasing World Cup tickets felt particularly daunting. FIFA released tickets onto the market in a complicated series of “phases,” some restricted to specific credit cards, requiring a mix of online savvy and pure luck.

That left the secondary market, where ticketholders can resell tickets at market rates—but that can come with its own risk, including scams and “speculative tickets.” If my grandkids were going to fly in from Hawaii and Phoenix to Boston, book a hotel, and take time off of work, I couldn’t risk having something go wrong with our seats for the actual game. I needed to navigate the process with someone I trusted. So, I called a friend.

We had our work cut out for us. To start, I was looking for a total of five tickets for myself and my grandkids, but FIFA only sells official allotments in sets of four. Tony navigated the secondary market to secure a set of three and a set of two right next to each other so we could all sit together.

A few days before the match, we faced another hurdle: one of my grandsons had a new job offer and wouldn’t be able to make it to Boston. Suddenly, we had an extra ticket on our hands. Tony went straight back into the secondary market and sold the extra ticket for a full refund.

Then came match day in Foxborough. A few hours before the match, our ticket barcodes hadn’t yet activated on the FIFA app. While my grandson searched online for answers, I simply called Tony. He assured me the barcodes would activate exactly three hours before kickoff. He was true to his word, and a few hours later, we walked into Gillette Stadium without a problem.

We were treated to a 5-goal thriller, including a hat trick from French star Ousmane Dembélé, as Les Bleus dispatched Norway 4-1. More importantly, my wife and I were able to share a once-in-a-lifetime experience with our grandkids.

Normally with the distance between Hawaii and Phoenix we’re focused on our careers and personal lives, but for a few hours at Gillette Stadium we were excited, happy, and together. To top off the weekend, Tony even sourced great tickets together for us to see the Yankees face the Red Sox at Fenway.

Major events are always going to come with some obstacles, but they are much easier to navigate when you’re working directly with a real person. Try getting a hold of someone at Ticketmaster when you’re standing at the gate with a barcode that won’t scan. Try to get a refund for an inflated ticket price, or for a last-minute emergency, when your only option is an AI agent on a customer service line.

The key to a great business partnership is trust. There are not too many people you can do business with on a handshake and know it’ll get done with integrity. I’m lucky that I met one of them, like Tony Beram at Western States Tickets, four decades ago right here in the Valley—someone who can help me with any event in the world with knowledge, fairness, and efficiency.

Garry Michaelis is based in Scottsdale, Arizona and advises clients globally in wealth management.