12 Essential Resources for Pickleball and Tennis Club Owners

12 Essential Resources for Pickleball and Tennis club owners

Taking your club to the next level – whether you’re just starting, sustaining, or scaling your club –  is exciting. But, it is not without its own set of unique challenges.

And if you go into big business decisions and significant club changes blind, you increase your risk of failure, missed opportunities, operational disruption, and wasted resources. 

So, it’s important to research using industry resources – as they allow you to tap into knowledge and experience that might otherwise take years to acquire. This way, you can better anticipate market shifts, refine your business strategies, and implement innovative ideas effectively.

At CourtReserve, we want to see your club thrive. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of helpful resources, including articles, books, podcasts, videos, etc., to help you launch, manage, and expand your pickleball or tennis club.

Let’s get started.

Read

The following articles, books, and publications offer expert advice, real-life success stories, and practical tips from industry leaders. Whether you’re still building your club or looking to refine your operations, these resources will help you drive growth. 

1. Dill Dinkers: The Power Behind Pickleball’s Fastest-Growing Franchise | Pickleball Club Magazine 

If you aren’t familiar with Pickleball Club Magazine, it is a great business resource for those looking to launch or expand a racquet sports club. Each magazine issue and online article offers useful strategies, expert tips, and inspiring success stories – providing readers with actionable tips. 

In their September / October 2024 issue, their cover story featured Dill Dinkers – one of the largest growing pickleball franchises in the US. This is an in-depth look at the Dill Dinkers franchise and how the founders started. As such, it is a valuable resource that provides viable ideas that you can apply to your own club.

Key takeaways

  • Hire strategically for success – Hire or partner with individuals who bring diverse skills and experiences that complement your strengths and weaknesses. And, prioritize hiring essential roles like Operations, Sales personnel, and a Director of Pickleball to ensure your club is set up for operational and strategic success.
  • Have a clear vision – Define a clear vision for your club and target audience. Ensure that vision is integrated into every aspect of your business, from branding to membership models and even franchise opportunities.
  • Attend industry events – Go to key industry events to learn from experts and expand your network. These connections and knowledge-sharing opportunities can drive growth and innovation for your club.

Where to read: Pickleball Club Magazine publishes a digital issue six times a year. You can find the current issue as well as past issues here

2. The Lean Startup | Eric Reis 

This book is a popular business resource that introduces a methodology for developing a business and products in a more efficient and flexible way. The “lean” approach focuses on minimizing waste, testing ideas quickly, and learning from customer feedback to make sure that products and services meet real market needs.

For new entrepreneurs, this book provides a low-risk framework for launching products, while experienced business owners can use it to stay innovative and responsive to market shifts. 

Tim Owens, Co-Founder of CourtReserve & Old Coast Pickleball Club, recommends The Lean Startup by Eric Reis saying, 

“It was truly impactful for me. We modeled CourtReserve after principles in that book.”

Key takeaways

  • Start small, learn fast –  Launch with a simple version of your product (a Minimal Viable Product) and gather feedback quickly. This is feasible advice for new entrepreneurs who are tempted to perfect their product before launch.
  • Use data-driven approaches – Perform in-depth data analysis and split testing to discover truths about present and future prospects. Data-driven decisions should guide your business strategy.
  • Pivot or persevere – Based on customer feedback and data, you may need to change your approach. Knowing when to pivot and when to continue along your current path is a key skill for any business owner.

Where to read: There are a few different places and ways you can enjoy this book.

  • Preview the first 30 pages on Google. (See link above)
  • Watch a video summary of the book available on YouTube.
  • Purchase a physical copy or ebook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online booksellers. 
  • Borrow from a library near you!

3. These Business Strategies Are Blowing Up The Indoor Pickleball Club Market | Todd Boss for Forbes

Todd Boss, the author of this Forbes article, spoke to 13 indoor pickleball club reps about their experience in the industry. Using their experiences and approaches, Boss compiled a list of 8 leading business strategies for indoor club owners. 

This makes it a great resource for pickleball and tennis club owners as it discusses market dynamics, growth opportunities, and how to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving industry​.

Key takeaways

  • Not all pre-existing spaces are suitable – Competition is high when it comes to repurposing existing spaces. So, make sure the space is ideal for your club by considering the structural layout (example: assessing the distance between dreaded columns). And, compare the price and advantages of a ground-up build. 
  • Choose a revenue model that reflects business goals and customer needs – Select a revenue model based on your target audience, facility use patterns, and peak time optimization – balancing memberships, drop-ins, or hybrid approaches accordingly.
  • Observe local market demand when establishing food and beverage services – Base your food and beverage offerings on customer behavior. If pickleball is the primary draw, simpler options like grab-and-go or food trucks may suffice. However, if your player base is looking for a social, “eatertainment” experience, a full kitchen may be the way to go. 
  • Decide whether to franchise or not to franchise – Franchising offers rapid facility expansion, but requires solid infrastructure and experience. On the other hand, not franchising allows you to maintain full ownership and ensures quality control. Decide based on your growth goals, market demand, and operational readiness.

Where to read: You can read this article on Forbes’ website.

4. Pickleball Club Launch: Going Behind the Scenes with CourtReserve’s Founders | CourtReserve Blog

This CourtReserve blog post offers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of launching a pickleball club. Specifically, it deep dives into the development of Old Coast Pickleball, established by CourtReserve Co-Founders, Tim and Ashley Owens. 

The post covers key milestones such as planning, facility development, and community engagement. And, it highlights practical strategies for pickleball club owners – including tips on programming, member retention, and legal considerations. 

This makes it a beneficial resource for anyone looking to start a club or build one from the ground up. But, it’s also a must-read for those looking to improve their tennis or pickleball club — as it provides real-life examples and pragmatic recommendations from experienced entrepreneurs.

Key takeaways

  • Create a lasting impression with a distinct brand – Branding goes beyond logos. You must create a consistent experience across all touchpoints, including socials, websites, mobile apps, locations, and so on. This enhances brand recognition, brand credibility, community loyalty, and member advocacy.
  • Listen to feedback from neighboring residents when seeking zoning approval – Address resident concerns like noise, lighting, and traffic flow. Prepare a detailed proposal that outlines solutions for parking, signage, and other issues, and educate yourself on local regulations. Integrating resident feedback can also improve your chances of zoning approval.
  • Keep members engaged with diverse programming – Offering a variety of activities like clinics, tournaments, and social events keeps members engaged and increases retention. Engaged members are also more likely to become brand ambassadors, promoting the club and supporting long-term growth. 
  • Consider local sponsorship opportunities – This strategy helps clubs generate additional revenue, enhance member experiences, and strengthen community ties. By collaborating with local businesses that share similar values, clubs can offer added services to their members. And, partnerships help boost the club’s visibility within the community – attracting more members and creating a win-win situation by promoting both your club and local businesses.

Where to read: You can read this specific post at the link above or by going directly to CourtReserve’s blog. Here, we post content designed to help club owners launch, manage, and expand operations.

We also offer ebook resources for tennis and pickleball club owners, a webinar series (called CourtReserve Spark) for feature walk-throughs, and a help center for additional product support. 

Watch

Video content and webinars provide an engaging and effective way to learn from experts. Below, we’ve listed a selection of must-watch videos that provide inspiration and blueprints for success.

5. Watch This Before Opening a Pickleball Facility | Building Pickleball 

Building Pickleball is both a podcast and video YouTube series. In each episode, the host – Brian Lim – interviews founders, players, and other behind-the-scenes individuals from notable pickleball brands and companies. 

In this episode, Lim interviewed Pat Rolfes – Co-Founder of The HUB – a chain of successful pickleball facilities in California. They delve into the business side of launching a pickleball facility – including real estate considerations, community engagement, and balancing overhead costs.

Video Transcript
(0:00) welcome to the first episode of a new
(0:02) series where we deep dive into the
(0:04) business of pickle ball facilities the
(0:06) objective is to uncover the Stories
(0:08) Behind These thriving businesses explore
(0:11) each facility’s ingredients for success
(0:14) and what makes them unique in July I
(0:17) made my first stop to San Diego to visit
(0:19) Pat Rus co-founder of the Hub this is
(0:24) spaces and I’m your host Brian Lynn dude
(0:29) this is our second time to get together
(0:30) stoked yeah first of all thanks for
(0:32) coming at San Diego versus me you know
(0:34) huffing it all the way to Austin that’s
(0:36) uh this is much nicer did you drive from
(0:39) like Nationals I did yeah we were in
(0:41) Dallas for that MLP Nationals com combo
(0:45) gig and went met with with Steve
(0:47) which was fun and then you were my first
(0:50) ever podcast Brian so you’re the man
(0:52) thanks for uh thanks for doing that I’m
(0:55) loving it yeah appreciate it thank you
(0:57) so much for taking the time to do this
(0:58) thank you for the tour of the we’re
(1:00) right now in San Diego um can you tell
(1:02) us more about like where we are and a
(1:04) little bit more about the Hub yeah for
(1:06) sure so this was our first um you know
(1:10) Hub basically we now have three building
(1:12) our fourth um three in California all
(1:15) large scale clubs the fourth is in
(1:17) Jacksonville Florida where my partner
(1:19) Ted Angelo moved to and is now building
(1:21) it there so so we are you know on both
(1:25) sides of the of the country which is
(1:27) kind of fun for us but this particular
(1:29) one is super special but real quick
(1:31) before we go any further into this
(1:32) episode I do need to make a quick shout
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(2:58) I’m playing pickleball and I just need a
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(3:01) going to play a session later on in the
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(3:22) life.com B pickle ball like building but
(3:25) just a b pickle ball enjoy the show this
(3:29) was kind of before The Craze we bought
(3:31) the land almost um almost 3 years ago
(3:34) now and so we own the land we built it
(3:37) out um and it’s just a really special
(3:40) place on how we did it as you saw as
(3:42) you’re walking through the facility it’s
(3:44) not all the courtz row after row after
(3:47) row it’s and actually this is how we got
(3:49) the name of the Hub it’s actually spokes
(3:51) out like a hub of a wheel and so in the
(3:54) center is our clubhouse and our you know
(3:58) Pro Shop and then we have a restaurant
(4:00) bar and our fire pit and Center Court
(4:03) and we elevated all that so that not
(4:06) Center Court where the Hub area is
(4:08) elevated for the Gathering Spot and it
(4:11) looks over like a hub of a wheel it
(4:13) looks over all the 26 courts and so it
(4:17) creates a really neat effect in all
(4:20) these Gathering areas and Cool vibe and
(4:23) lots of you know shade and we cover
(4:26) Center Court with the sail and it we
(4:29) love this place is is a really special
(4:31) place to us obviously it really embodies
(4:34) like the epitome of like California and
(4:36) just like the beauty of California too
(4:37) like the backdrop is just hills and
(4:39) mountains and like all the houses really
(4:41) nice at California type houses along the
(4:43) hills like it’s super nice backdrop but
(4:45) everything you’re saying about how it’s
(4:46) not just an like a place that was maybe
(4:50) previously a tennis court Center in just
(4:52) rows of Courts it has like little break
(4:54) areas little like patches of grass but
(4:56) also like you said like you got the full
(4:58) kitchen going on like you have the Pro
(5:00) Shop um what were you doing before you
(5:03) opened this place up 3 years ago so I
(5:05) was running the events in Newport Beach
(5:08) right so right now the AP is happening
(5:11) um which is the third largest Tournament
(5:12) of the year I think they’re pushing 1800
(5:14) so um I worked with USA pickleball to
(5:17) create the golden ticket series and we
(5:21) helped develop uh Newport Beach and for
(5:24) that we were running all the events and
(5:26) have the rights to the events so tons of
(5:29) tournaments tons of different things um
(5:32) charity events to organize play the
(5:35) whole thing it was really a
(5:37) communitybased club and we were we grew
(5:39) it to a gigantic Club I don’t own the
(5:41) club and so since then and Ted and I
(5:45) built the restaurant we we basically
(5:47) sold that got out of that to buy this
(5:51) land to basically start our own brand in
(5:54) our own clubs and then it’s just blown
(5:56) up from there so when we had the vision
(6:00) um it was finding the land was really
(6:03) really difficult um San Diego the real
(6:07) estate is extremely expensive as you can
(6:09) well imagine we don’t rent it we own it
(6:12) um we wanted a really substantial size
(6:16) club we believe in large clubs and so we
(6:19) are the largest Club in San Diego County
(6:22) and it gives us the ability to do a lot
(6:25) more stuff so yeah that was our goal it
(6:27) took us um little a year year and a half
(6:30) to build and then been operating just
(6:32) about not quite two years now down here
(6:34) and and it’s people love it The Vibes
(6:37) great members are cool San Diego is the
(6:40) number one vacation destination city of
(6:42) the United States fun fact and so we get
(6:45) a lot of um drop in we call them member
(6:47) for the day because they get complete
(6:48) member privileges um so we get a lot of
(6:51) that we do a lot of tournaments and
(6:53) charity events and all sorts of cool
(6:56) stuff yeah yeah back to like location
(6:58) whenever people talk about real estate
(7:00) they always say location location
(7:01) location and like this is unique because
(7:04) you’re in like the hills in the in the
(7:06) heart of California and in San Diego and
(7:08) then I’ve been to other facilities where
(7:10) I’m not knocking it but other facilities
(7:12) might be in like a shopping mall plaza
(7:15) and you’re just kind of looking at uh
(7:17) maybe just a regular stores and you’re
(7:19) just a giant parking lot right there
(7:21) doesn’t have this like unique appeal to
(7:24) it like you have here with the beautiful
(7:26) weather of course we’re in California
(7:28) too right but
(7:30) everyone always wants to know how much
(7:34) does it take to open a location like
(7:36) when do you know whether or not this is
(7:39) a good deal or a bad
(7:41) deal yeah well they’re hard first of all
(7:44) I caution everyone they’re really hard
(7:45) deals to do um capital investment is
(7:50) substantial um the thought process that
(7:53) goes into it to build them build it
(7:56) right because if you don’t build them
(7:57) right um it’s not the whole Mage like
(7:59) build that they will come you know if
(8:03) the courts aren’t correct like you now
(8:05) play quite a bit I know in in at a high
(8:07) level in the very beginning you may have
(8:10) been fine to play Anywhere But the
(8:12) better you get and the more dedicated
(8:14) you are to it which really you know who
(8:16) our members are substantially they you
(8:19) know need good courts right they need
(8:22) good spacing they need to make sure that
(8:23) the surface is correct we use acch
(8:25) surface and you know they need all the
(8:28) right things so one you got to build
(8:29) correctly which is difficult make sure
(8:32) the space is there are you building
(8:33) courts or are you building a club we
(8:35) build clubs and then the size is
(8:38) important it’s hard to run a eight Court
(8:40) Club I mean it’s you know it’s the we
(8:44) think it’s difficult you know we we run
(8:45) larger scale clubs so we can handle more
(8:47) massive people um but the real estate is
(8:50) key so and how you design it is key so
(8:55) being in an impacted area um is more
(8:58) important it’s like we can go Inland
(9:01) from here a half an hour and there’s
(9:03) tons of land and tons of things that you
(9:05) can do but no one’s going to drive out
(9:08) there to go play Pickleball um so that’s
(9:12) where the location is key but but the
(9:15) location comes with the price right and
(9:18) part of that challenge comes into the
(9:19) economics of it all so when you’re
(9:21) looking at it is you know pickall grew
(9:24) up from the streets right and so you
(9:26) were used to playing for free and that’s
(9:29) still a lot of people’s mindset I can
(9:31) buy a paddle I can go you know play for
(9:33) free in the street or get a temporary
(9:35) net set up my street I don’t understand
(9:37) you know why am I paying for a club so
(9:40) so that needs to create a whole
(9:42) different experience and it’s a whole
(9:43) different business model and that’s what
(9:46) we really specialize here at the Hub you
(9:48) know the and it’s intense the the
(9:52) policies the programs the the Staffing
(9:54) that we have what we offer here from the
(9:57) fire pit to the shade to the bar to the
(10:01) courts to the ladders to the leagues to
(10:03) we’re now affiliated with the heart
(10:05) eights and with the Barrier Breakers and
(10:07) the MLP team so all of these things
(10:10) creative what we’re doing and so I just
(10:12) caution people it’s a lot harder than
(10:15) Bill courts and they’ll come so
(10:17) long-winded answer but there you go what
(10:19) you’re saying towards the end of that
(10:21) with the amenities but also kind of the
(10:24) brand deals is that how you know whether
(10:27) or not the debt is worth it
(10:30) right so you look at debt in a number of
(10:32) different ways right so there’s there’s
(10:35) debt when like we bought land right so
(10:38) then you have that debt to say okay
(10:41) what’s the risk on buying the land um so
(10:44) that’s it’s an expensive play and most
(10:46) people don’t buy the land they go and
(10:48) they rent a building or whatever so the
(10:50) the land is a little bit different and
(10:52) you can say okay well I can sell that
(10:54) land off into the future right but now
(10:57) we took it and we invested Millions
(10:59) dollar into improving the land to build
(11:01) the business that we want to build so if
(11:04) the business doesn’t succeed then the
(11:07) improvements that you did on the land
(11:10) doesn’t necessarily make sense unless
(11:12) another operator can come in and do a
(11:15) better job but you’re kind of confining
(11:16) what the the application is versus hey
(11:20) we’re going to tear it all down and
(11:21) build apartment buildings here which you
(11:23) know which would work here um so so you
(11:26) got to look at the investment of the
(11:28) land or if it’s a bu building that
(11:29) you’re leasing the risk of that lease
(11:32) right because you know landlords they’re
(11:34) making you put your name on it like you
(11:36) know you’re guaranteeing that lease for
(11:38) some point in time and so and they don’t
(11:41) necessarily industrial buildings they
(11:42) don’t necessarily want to do a two-year
(11:44) lease to see how it goes um you’re going
(11:47) to put a personal guarantee and you’re
(11:49) going to do a long-term lease to kind of
(11:50) you know put that out there so there’s
(11:53) all that risk that gets associated with
(11:55) it then your capital investment that you
(11:57) put into it okay now I got to build all
(12:00) this stuff out that’s not cheap um now
(12:03) what’s the model and who’s going to come
(12:05) in and who’s going to pay for it how
(12:07) else can we get the ancillary Revenue to
(12:09) make sure these things you know
(12:11) justify um so again they’re really hard
(12:14) deals um the economics are challenging
(12:17) when they work they can work very well
(12:20) um I believe in larger scale deals but
(12:23) we’ve been fortunate where we’re
(12:24) self-funding these deals and we’re not
(12:27) going out and trying to raise a bunch of
(12:28) money
(12:29) and so it’s the amount that it takes to
(12:32) run a 8 to 10 Court facility labor wise
(12:36) and and policy wise and you know the it
(12:39) and you know programming and all that
(12:41) stuff is basically the same that it
(12:42) takes to run a 26 Court facility so you
(12:46) start getting economies to scale as as
(12:48) you go as you grow but the risk is
(12:52) higher from a lease or the land or
(12:56) Investments that go into it so you
(12:58) really need to make all these good
(13:00) decisions and make sure that you’re
(13:02) putting them in the right place so a lot
(13:04) of people go to malls right now they’re
(13:06) looking to the mall model because at the
(13:08) mall they think oh there’s open space
(13:11) and they can work and there’s
(13:13) parking that’s truly only part of it um
(13:17) you really in my mind you got to create
(13:20) this club atmosphere so they want to be
(13:23) part of it and when you do that which is
(13:26) hard to do then people take ownership
(13:28) they pick up their trash they they start
(13:30) engaging they tell their friends and and
(13:32) by Nature it’s a community thing and the
(13:34) community helps grow your business um
(13:37) again long winded answer but there you
(13:39) go no that was super fascinating um wow
(13:43) yeah I need to marinate on that like
(13:45) after this but that is interesting when
(13:47) you talked about uh two things was like
(13:49) one was that you don’t really you kept
(13:53) you use the word big and large like a
(13:56) couple times like large scale and just
(13:59) larger deals and then you also talked
(14:02) about the court versus the club
(14:04) atmosphere and if you were to choose
(14:06) both those words court and club and see
(14:09) which one is more synonymous with
(14:11) Community which is really like the heart
(14:13) of pickle ball I feel like Club is the
(14:17) one that’s more closely closely related
(14:21) to the word community and that makes
(14:22) sense like if you’re building a
(14:24) community
(14:25) then like you said people will treat
(14:28) this place like it’s their own rather
(14:30) than we’re just at a public court and if
(14:32) you look at public courts or just like
(14:34) Court areas it’s it just seems like
(14:36) people are just there to use it rather
(14:38) than hey we kind of we have a piece of
(14:42) this in a way you’re exactly right and
(14:45) and remember we’re competing with
(14:48) free right so there are those public
(14:51) courts out there and people are like why
(14:53) am I paying you to play Pickleball when
(14:56) I can just go down the street and play
(14:58) on these public courts and so we have to
(15:01) bring all this additional value in so
(15:03) when they soly say well these courts are
(15:05) better and I really like the vibe here
(15:07) better and they do this organized play
(15:09) and they’re structured and they have the
(15:10) social event or they whatever it is all
(15:13) the it’s not whatever it’s all these
(15:14) things you can’t shortcut on any of it
(15:17) to basically create the value of the
(15:18) club and that’s where you know they’re
(15:22) paying for basically right that’s when
(15:24) they can justify yes I will play for a
(15:27) membership and and do I I California so
(15:31) I equate a lot to the to surfing right
(15:34) so surfing’s free right buy a surfboard
(15:37) and go in the ocean and just go you know
(15:39) surf so selling into the surf industry
(15:42) is really quite interesting because they
(15:45) there’s not um a lot of opportunity
(15:48) because it’s the mindset is everything’s
(15:50) free even like parking passes a lot of
(15:52) surfers don’t even want to pay with the
(15:54) parking pass because it breaks the
(15:56) theory of I’m it’s everything free so
(15:59) pickall has a little bit of that into it
(16:03) as it grows as it develops um the value
(16:06) of the clubs if done right uh make a lot
(16:09) of sense and people are starting to
(16:11) appreciate the the differences for sure
(16:14) yeah yeah that’s awesome what do
(16:16) overhead costs look like for a place
(16:18) like this because you mentioned all the
(16:20) amenities you mentioned the Ladd’s
(16:21) leagues you also have the employees you
(16:23) have the Pro Shop um you also have
(16:25) different events that you hold yeah well
(16:28) it’s sub FAL it’s a it’s a business I
(16:30) think with all of our clubs combined we
(16:33) over aund and something employees um so
(16:36) the labors are second most you know
(16:38) costly expense and that’s tricky right
(16:41) and again California we I won’t get into
(16:44) the California labor laws but it’s not
(16:46) as favorable as you would think for the
(16:48) employer but um so you know having the
(16:52) right person and people that help run
(16:55) your Club is truly important so um you
(16:59) know the interaction with the members
(17:01) you know all those type of things are
(17:02) important and they they all work hard
(17:04) right so it’s technical um with our
(17:08) computer systems and and making sure
(17:11) they’re checked in and the billing and
(17:12) you know again like you mentioned Pro
(17:14) Shop and bar and all that kind of stuff
(17:15) and so we’re a service-based business
(17:18) you know we have to address the needs of
(17:20) the customer right running these leagues
(17:22) running these ladders we do a lot of
(17:24) duper um events and so tying all that
(17:28) together so it’s complicated um and and
(17:33) from the expense to ask your question
(17:35) labors are number one expense to it U
(17:38) besides the real estate which is that
(17:40) and then and then you have your
(17:41) insurance and and then you have you know
(17:44) your it and your web and your marketing
(17:46) and you know all the things that go
(17:48) along with that but um even our policies
(17:51) and you know we’ll see if we franchise
(17:54) in the future or not or just partner
(17:56) with people but we our policies are are
(17:58) buttoned up and it’s important to have
(18:01) that structured and and in place because
(18:04) there’s liabilities you know that get
(18:06) associated with that and and people need
(18:10) and want structure and so putting all
(18:12) that together it’s it’s not as easy as
(18:14) it sounds for sure something that you
(18:16) mentioned in that was franchises so you
(18:20) have three locations in the state of
(18:23) California you mentioned that you’re
(18:24) opening one in Jacksonville how do you
(18:27) feel about franchises as far as the pi
(18:30) pickle ball facility
(18:32) space well I have mixed feelings quite
(18:35) frankly um you know I I feel that I feel
(18:40) there’s a big rush to Market um there’s
(18:43) a big demand for courts and so people
(18:45) are trying to fulfill those
(18:47) demands um my feeling is there’s a lot
(18:50) of franchise ORS
(18:51) that haven’t been in business long
(18:54) enough to prove out their financial
(18:56) models to basically say do what we do
(19:00) because we’re profitable and we’re doing
(19:01) a great job that’s really not existing
(19:04) out there I mean there’s franchise or
(19:05) out there that don’t have facilities
(19:07) like to me that’s and again I’m an old
(19:10) man that have run businesses all my life
(19:12) so it’s it’s shocking to me that someone
(19:14) say well great I’ll invest into this
(19:16) franchise and this brand and expecting
(19:19) to get all these things of a company
(19:21) that’s never actually done it so there’s
(19:24) that’s a concern of mine um that would
(19:26) be a concern of mine for people out
(19:28) there so we are focused on profitability
(19:32) you know from a business side of it
(19:33) right the business has to be it matters
(19:36) to be profitable by the way the business
(19:38) has to be profitable it has to be run
(19:40) correctly it has to be run smooth and
(19:42) it’s got to be repeatable and so having
(19:45) three clubs now in place and they’re all
(19:48) slightly different our one in this is
(19:50) all outdoors in San Diego our one in
(19:52) Silicon Valley is all indoors it was the
(19:55) largest in the country for a while at 20
(19:56) courts indoors um potentially looking to
(19:59) expand it but and then we do have one
(20:01) that’s a fitness center as well as um
(20:04) pickle and it has eight indoors and
(20:07) seven Outdoors um but that’s a special
(20:10) facility because Fitness is amazing and
(20:13) what we do there and then the one we’re
(20:15) building in Jacksonville is kind of like
(20:17) the pon you seen it it’s a they’re
(20:19) covered quarts with Fitness as well and
(20:23) I think we’re doing 32 courts there so
(20:26) so you know we’re trying to make it
(20:30) where everything makes sense and there’s
(20:32) a reason for it and be profitability and
(20:35) cash flow positive you know right out of
(20:38) the Gator as soon as possible um I’m
(20:41) just nervous of a lot of people jumping
(20:43) into it that don’t you know that are
(20:45) going into franchises and the franchise
(20:47) Source haven’t necessarily proven their
(20:49) models out yet so those would be my
(20:51) cautions and concerns so we’re we taking
(20:53) that’s our money we’re doing it and
(20:56) we’re going down the the path of doing
(20:58) doing it right and then we’ll decide if
(21:00) we just partner with people if we
(21:02) franchise if we just keep with what we
(21:04) have you know the future is still kind
(21:07) of up in the air with with myself and my
(21:10) three Partners we have three Partners in
(21:11) the company yeah within that you
(21:14) mentioned there should be some caution
(21:16) for people that may be looking at these
(21:18) franchises be oh I would want to be a
(21:21) part of that are there things that these
(21:24) people these individuals could look for
(21:27) when they’re being approached or when
(21:29) they’re approaching a franchiser and I
(21:31) don’t know if that’s the correct term
(21:33) but if they’re approaching one of those
(21:34) facilities and like hey we want to be a
(21:36) part of this like what questions might
(21:38) they want to
(21:39) ask well I mean first of all you
(21:44) know how do you pick a
(21:46) marketplace right like you mentioned
(21:48) location location location right so
(21:50) that’s top on the list how do you find
(21:52) that how do you pick it what justifies
(21:55) that is it economics is it location is
(21:57) it both is it you know what is it you
(22:00) notice as we came up here in San you
(22:02) know we came down here to San Diego and
(22:05) we drove into the facility it’s right
(22:07) off the freeway like you don’t have to
(22:10) go find it it’s easy to get to access we
(22:13) have 1.1 million people within a 10 mile
(22:16) radius from
(22:19) us so we’re like I think in San Diego
(22:23) we’re like well we were like 26% of the
(22:25) courts now we’re like you know less call
(22:28) it temper I don’t even know what it is
(22:30) but the point is we’re a big facility
(22:32) the largest facility in San Diego and
(22:34) we’re easy access to it and so are as
(22:38) you saw here as you’re walking the
(22:39) facility there’s a lot of people here
(22:42) yeah the draw is Big it’s only I mean
(22:45) most of these people were here by 9:00
(22:47) a.m. yeah for sure yeah right and you
(22:50) missed the people that left because
(22:51) they’re here at 7
(22:53) but but but you know the point is is
(22:56) that the location is key so that be the
(22:58) first thing how do I find the location
(23:00) how do I do the economics to have that
(23:03) make sense because a location in
(23:05) downtown Austin which would be I’m
(23:08) assuming impossible to get um that’s got
(23:11) to be more expensive than you know 30
(23:14) miles outside of Austin right so you
(23:17) can’t charge the same in downtown Austin
(23:20) so how does that financial model work um
(23:24) when you’re looking at at these things
(23:26) how much more is it to to do a larger
(23:29) facility and then how do I justify the
(23:31) risk and how do I mark it out to the
(23:33) community to make sure that this is
(23:35) actually going to pencil because as soon
(23:37) as you ink that
(23:38) lease they’re making you put a personal
(23:40) guarantee on it I mean not always but
(23:43) 99% of the time so these are Big risky
(23:47) deals for a lot of people and people go
(23:50) into it with a lot of passion a lot of
(23:51) oh I’d love to be in this industry it’s
(23:54) really fun and and it is you can change
(23:57) a lot of lives can impact a lot of
(23:59) people meet a lot of cool people but
(24:02) it’s hard and I also caution people on
(24:04) if you love pickle ball and you play it
(24:07) and you love it you want to P don’t get
(24:10) into working in pickleball because you
(24:11) won’t be playing pickleball much anymore
(24:14) so it’s all consuming to to do you know
(24:17) facilities for sure like this especially
(24:20) yeah don’t make emotional decisions
(24:22) especially when it comes to something of
(24:23) this magnitude which I just kind of
(24:25) gathered from you it feels like you
(24:27) always said business you you in the
(24:30) first time we talked you said something
(24:33) about business you had this quote it’s
(24:35) like a phrase it’s like you like always
(24:38) make like B basic business oh uh yeah
(24:43) basic business rules apply yeah yeah
(24:45) that’s it that’s yeah and and don’t
(24:47) forget that basic business rules apply
(24:50) like try to take your emotions out of it
(24:52) a little bit I know everybody loves it
(24:53) and there’s a lot of opportunity I get
(24:55) all that it’s really hard and Capital
(24:59) intensive and and um again basic
(25:02) business rules apply look at the whole
(25:04) thing as a an objectively as possible
(25:07) from a business perspective not just oh
(25:08) I want to do it so bad it just be great
(25:11) it’s like buying that house that you
(25:13) love and you want to do it so bad then
(25:14) you get in it’s like oh my God there’s
(25:16) termites and leaky damage like I had no
(25:18) idea this this cost me another $100,000
(25:20) and I I I shouldn’t have been so
(25:23) emotional about it basically yeah I
(25:25) didn’t make that mistake at all
(25:30) twice not definitely not me yeahuh I
(25:33) hear you um yeah one question I did have
(25:37) actually someone had asked this in the
(25:39) comment section um when I had mentioned
(25:41) that I was going to be out here and
(25:42) talking about facilities someone
(25:46) asked about key
(25:48) responsibilities for employees and then
(25:51) I’m going to ask a kind of change that
(25:53) question a little bit if you were to
(25:55) hire make your first hire what would be
(25:58) the first role that you would hire
(26:01) for so we have uh a role um try to
(26:07) remember the title um because I I let um
(26:12) one of my employees create the title
(26:13) herself and she’s an amazing person Miss
(26:15) Teresa um and it’s called Community
(26:18) engagement director and basically she
(26:20) does a ton of programming she does
(26:23) socials she she makes the Hub a club
(26:28) um because she’s so engaging with the
(26:31) community and the community of our
(26:33) members and does all of our
(26:36) programming and make it so it’s fun to
(26:39) be you know a member of the Hub right
(26:42) and so and she’s happy and she’s here my
(26:45) my partner Ted used to call her um
(26:48) probably aging myself Julie McCoy from
(26:50) the loveboat right the the cruise
(26:52) director basically and so that’s a
(26:55) really key person um that’s here a lot
(26:59) and she’s engaging with the members and
(27:01) everything that now that could be the
(27:02) owner um it could be the manager it
(27:05) could be a lot of different people but
(27:07) um for us that’s really important uh to
(27:10) have that person you know on the back
(27:13) end the accounting you know the policies
(27:15) writing the legal stuff I mean that’s
(27:18) that’s not nearly it’s super important
(27:21) but the face of the club would be the
(27:24) first you know person I hire that’s
(27:26) going to represent your Club you know
(27:28) the way you want it represented
(27:29) basically yeah interesting and not just
(27:32) the owner I I said it could be the owner
(27:34) it certainly needs to be the owner yeah
(27:37) but it needs to be someone that’s not
(27:38) the owner that sometimes um is also more
(27:41) approachable or they would tell someone
(27:43) else that’s not the owner something that
(27:45) would then get back to the owner which
(27:47) is really helpful you know I mean
(27:49) criticism isn’t all you know bad it’s
(27:51) good to take you know hear things from
(27:54) other people through other people for
(27:55) that matter yeah it’s kind of why people
(27:58) I feel like it’s the premise of that
(28:00) show like undercover bosses right right
(28:02) like you’ll hear a lot more from people
(28:05) that have like their boots on the floor
(28:06) and not someone who’s like a little bit
(28:08) higher up so like people are yeah like
(28:10) you said you learn I love that show
(28:13) actually I should do that goatea or
(28:17) something hey I’ll I’ll start the
(28:18) content
(28:20) series the virtual pro shop let’s talk
(28:23) about that cuz you do have um your hands
(28:26) in co-founding pickle ball suit
(28:28) Superstore and of course that’s very
(28:29) very relevant in this whole thing cuz we
(28:31) went to the Pro Shop there and physical
(28:34) Pro Shop is great right it it definitely
(28:36) looks very appealing but then not every
(28:39) business can afford that and sounds like
(28:42) you and Steve rack have come up with a
(28:44) solution called the virtual pro shop can
(28:45) you tell us a little bit about that yeah
(28:48) yeah for sure so so in Ted Angelo um my
(28:52) partner here in the hub so we had talked
(28:54) about it you know a while ago and then
(28:56) Steve rack who’s the CEO and co-founder
(28:59) of of um the three of us co-founded
(29:02) pickle ball Superstore and so he brought
(29:05) technology to the table with his gig
(29:08) affiliate program which is as you know
(29:10) an affiliate program but it’s linked
(29:12) into the code so as soon as you connect
(29:16) us with a customer you are forever
(29:18) linked to that customer it’s not cookie
(29:20) based so it becomes very sustainable for
(29:22) people so with that concept or with that
(29:26) technology we can do other things and
(29:29) one of the things that we’ve created is
(29:31) this virtual pro shop so the problem
(29:32) with proops Pro Shops essentially and
(29:35) again we’re large scale Club so it’s
(29:37) it’s a little different we can support
(29:39) support it financially but it’s a big
(29:40) investment you get a lot of turn of
(29:43) product of the paddle that’s hot six
(29:45) months ago isn’t hot today and God
(29:48) forbid Yola comes out with something but
(29:50) you I’ll cut that and not joking um so
(29:55) but the point being is that you know
(29:57) it’s hard for the these operators to
(29:59) basically you know invest 50 plus
(30:01) thousand into a per shop and really what
(30:04) you are is a convenience store you know
(30:06) we sell a ton of water and Gatorade and
(30:09) protein bars and weights and grips and
(30:11) glasses and balls and you know that’s
(30:14) really a ton of it we do sell paddles as
(30:17) well for sure um we do a lot of rental
(30:19) paddles and things like that so when
(30:22) you’re trying to carry all these Brands
(30:24) it’s just really difficult and somebody
(30:26) comes in with a new brand saying oh
(30:27) really like that so we created what we
(30:29) call a virtual pro shop where we demo a
(30:32) bunch of paddles like here in San Diego
(30:34) I think we demo like 80 paddles too many
(30:38) um and then but we don’t carry 80
(30:40) paddles that would be insane but if
(30:42) someone really wanted to try something
(30:45) and we have it for them to try which is
(30:46) part of the club experience right I want
(30:48) to try this new paddle and everything
(30:49) else right so that’s Again part of this
(30:51) experience that we do and we and we rent
(30:54) that and we demo it a members I think
(30:55) it’s $5 for a non-member it’s
(30:58) and they can change them out midday they
(31:00) can do it all day it’s it’s fun if they
(31:03) want to buy it and we don’t carry it
(31:05) then they scan the code it goes right to
(31:08) pickall superport embeds the code embeds
(31:10) The Hub with them and so they uh get a
(31:14) discount
(31:16) Superstore sells it and ships it to them
(31:18) directly and the Hub makes the
(31:20) commission on that on that panle and
(31:22) then we’re forever connected so again I
(31:24) mentioned San Diego being the number one
(31:26) vacation destination so imagine someone
(31:28) coming in from Austin right and now you
(31:31) demo something you’re like oh I’ve never
(31:32) seen it anywhere I’m going to buy that
(31:35) you buy that through and then you leave
(31:37) and you never come back to San Diego
(31:38) it’s a sad day for us but uh we are
(31:41) forever connected and so if you ever go
(31:43) back and buy balls or glasses or weights
(31:46) you know we’re making revenue on the
(31:47) fact that you came into the hub for one
(31:50) day to come visit so it’s really
(31:53) impactful um and it helps manage uh the
(31:58) clubs um Pro Shops especially for
(32:01) smaller you know courts like you know 10
(32:04) 12 Court facilities um and the
(32:06) Investments that they’re making already
(32:08) it’s hard and then I’m not dealing with
(32:10) you know 40 different vendors either I’m
(32:13) dealing with one vendor so it it’s it’s
(32:15) a really a neat program for sure yeah
(32:18) yeah very interesting I I can see that
(32:21) solving I I think it’s a it’s a solution
(32:24) I think physical inventory is
(32:28) with the Advent of technology and
(32:30) leveraging Technology I don’t think
(32:32) having physical inventory is something
(32:33) that’s like super super necessary at
(32:35) this point for like brick and mortars so
(32:37) the virtual pro shop is such a unique
(32:39) and good solution um yeah I mean you
(32:43) still want to have product there so we
(32:44) still carry the fast mve because people
(32:47) are still impulsed by people like I got
(32:49) to have a paddle now right and so and
(32:51) and it’s again back to the club it’s
(32:54) part of the club atmosphere it’s part of
(32:56) having that ability to do it and we have
(32:58) sponsors you know carbin for example and
(33:00) you know other you know Brands and so
(33:03) you know they support us we support them
(33:06) and so we want to carry their products
(33:07) so so there’s a a balancing act to all
(33:10) of it but but the pr shops can be tricky
(33:13) and and in a cash suck so you got to be
(33:16) careful with it yeah I would name them
(33:18) Brands but there are some brands on the
(33:19) walls where you’re like well these are
(33:22) going to be sold at a loss like these
(33:25) just because paddle technology moves so
(33:27) fast like oh well this paddle is no
(33:28) longer relevant right we have some on
(33:31) our wall still from you know two years
(33:33) and we’ll fire sell the stuff off and it
(33:34) still doesn’t move you know it’s just
(33:36) it’s just you know what do you do with
(33:38) it right so um and a lot of time we
(33:41) donate them or give them away to you
(33:43) know kids that are coming in or whatever
(33:44) but anyway you get it it’s it’s it’s
(33:47) tricky yeah definely for sure and and a
(33:49) lot of time spent on it yeah um well
(33:53) this concludes the session man I mean
(33:55) you answered a lot of the questions with
(33:58) uh such great detail I really appreciate
(34:00) it i’ certainly learned a lot I’m not
(34:03) opening facility up anytime soon but
(34:05) people these are things that people were
(34:07) asking about in the comment section in
(34:09) previous videos I made and I just didn’t
(34:11) have a I didn’t have the proper followup
(34:13) for it but now I do thanks to you so I
(34:15) appreciate that do you have any other
(34:17) announcements future projects that you
(34:19) guys are working on anything else you
(34:20) want to talk about before we end this
(34:23) well we’re always working on something
(34:24) right so um you know I appre appreciate
(34:28) that like I said in our other podcast
(34:30) you know it’s an entrepreneurs
(34:31) playground right now so so there’s a lot
(34:34) of opportunities not just with the club
(34:36) space but with you know paddles with
(34:38) with lots of different things so um but
(34:41) you know I think the next step is let’s
(34:43) get Chi to Silicon Valley and then let’s
(34:44) get you to Alam at the Hub there and
(34:47) then you know I’ll have to trick over to
(34:49) Florida we’ll we’ll do one there too BR
(34:51) let’s make the circuit yeah but we’ll
(34:53) start with your with your San Diego
(34:56) there you go your your San Diego Hub
(34:58) stop and thanks for and thanks for
(35:00) coming brother yeah yeah thank you um
(35:03) remember General business rules still
(35:06) apply there you go that always sticks in
(35:08) my head yeah thank you man I appreciate
(35:10) it yeah thanks bro

Key takeaways

  • Location is crucial – Although cheaper real estate might be available farther away from an active population, the convenience of being centrally located attracts more players and drives consistent foot traffic. Choosing a location that balances affordability with accessibility is key to ensuring long-term success.
  • Build a club, not just courts – Create a community-focused environment where players feel a sense of belonging. Offering amenities such as a restaurant and lounge areas enhances the customer experience – making your club more than just a place to play. It also encourages loyalty and repeat visits – contributing to your club’s sustainability.
  • Invest in quality infrastructure –  Build your courts and facilities correctly from the start with proper spacing and high-quality surfaces that meet player expectations. Poorly designed or constructed courts can drive members away, whereas a well-built facility makes them more likely to return.
  • Develop multiple revenue streams – Consider diversifying your income to stabilize revenue and help offset the high costs of running a club. Think beyond court bookings such as events, leagues, pro shops, and additional services like food and beverages. 

Where to watch: You can watch this video resource on Building Pickleball’s YouTube channel using the link above. Or, you can listen to it in podcast form on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

6. Wolverine Pickleball / Leslie White and Christy Howden, MI | Start Up

Start Up is a local public television program presented by Detroit PBS with 12 seasons, 100 episodes, and more to come. This series follows host, Gary Bredow, as he interviews small business owners across the United States to uncover what it takes to create a business from scratch.

In this episode, Bredow sits down with Leslie White and Christy Howden, Founders of Wolverine Pickleball in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Their business grew from converting school gymnasiums into temporary courts to establishing a successful eight-court facility. Now, they are building a massive 17,500-square-foot pickleball complex. 

Their story offers inspiration and recommendations on expanding operations, fundraising, and cultivating customer loyalty.

Video Transcript
GARY: Next on Start Up, we head to Ann Arbor, Michigan to meet up with Christy and Leslie, the founders of Wolverine Pickleball, a destination for pickleball enthusiasts of all ages and skill levels. All of this and more is next on Start Up. ANNOUNCER: The first time you made a sale online with GoDaddy was also the first time you heard of a town named Dinosaur, Colorado. MAN: We just got an order from Dinosaur, Colorado. ANNOUNCER: Build a website to help reach more customers. WOMAN: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, one more. ANNOUNCER: Learn more at GoDaddy dot com. ANNOUNCER: Wearing a lot of hats can bog you down. Thryv, the all-in-one small business management software can help you manage every aspect of your business, from a single screen with one log in and one dashboard. Thryv is a proud supporter of Start Up. AMANDA: I call myself, like a feel-good beauty company. After 20 years, I’m still doing this because I love what I do. ANNOUNCER: More than 60% of sales in Amazon’s store come from independent sellers like Amanda at Mojo Spa. Amazon, a proud supporter of Start Up. ANNOUNCER: Small businesses are at the heart of Michigan’s downtowns and neighborhood business districts. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation offers programs to both new and existing businesses. With an abundant workforce and access to statewide resources, Michigan welcomes businesses from around the world. ANNOUNCER: Spectrum Business is a proud supporter of Start Up. Providing connectivity for small businesses with internet, phone and mobile solutions available. Information available at Spectrum dot com slash business. ♪ GARY: My name is Gary Bredow. I’m a documentary filmmaker and an entrepreneur. As the country continues to recover from extraordinary challenges, small business owners are showing us why they are the backbone of the American economy. We’ve set out for our 11th consecutive season, talking with a wide range of diverse business owners to better understand how they’ve learned to adapt, innovate, and even completely reinvent themselves. ♪ This is Start Up. ♪ Pickleball was invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington by Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCollum, who were trying to find a new game to entertain their families. They modified existing sports like badminton, tennis and ping pong to create a game suitable for all ages. As of 2023, pickleball continues to grow in popularity in the US, with an estimated four million players and counting. It’s played in all 50 states and is popular among both younger and older generations. Many schools, community centers, and retirement communities have introduced pickleball courts to meet the growing demand for the sport. Today, I’m heading to Ann Arbor, Michigan to meet up with Christy and Leslie, the founders of Wolverine pickleball. From what I know, they wanted to create a local facility where pickleball enthusiasts could play, learn, and be part of a like-minded community, and, apparently, the business has grown in ways they could have never imagined in the beginning. I’ve always wanted to play pickleball, so I’m excited to try it out and hear their incredible story. ♪ Why is it called pickleball? LESLIE: So there’s two stories behind that. So, they never really figured out what the true story is, and it’s kind of okay because it’s fun to have that mystery. One of them, there were three families who started Pickleball in Bainbridge Island. Out in Bainbridge, there’s a lot of crew, rowing teams, and there’s a pickle boat, and they’re kind of the leftovers from all the other teams and they’d put them in, it was called the pickle boat. GARY: Okay. LESLEI: And so that was the group, that- because pickleball has so many different sports, you know, in it. GARY: It’s a grab bag of sports. LESLIE: It is. Exactly, and then the other story, which is the one I kind of like, is that one of the owners had a dog named Pickles, and they would be out there playing, and they would say, “Where’s Pickles’ ball?” Because they would use the dog’s ball to play with it. GARY: I like that. LESLIE: I know. I like that one too. GARY: I’m gonna go with that. I love dogs, you know? LESLIE: I know. GARY: What do you love most about this sport? I love the community, the people, getting out there. There’s so many adrenaline rushes in pickleball, far more than in tennis, volleyball, any other sport I’ve ever played. You just- there’s so many put-aways that you just get that adrenaline rush over and over again. GARY: I assume this is a second career? CHRISTY: We kind of say it’s our second act GARY: Second act. Okay. CHRISTY: Just because I’m an empty nester now and so is Leslie. So, now, it’s our time to devote to really building a big business. We both had lifestyle businesses while we were raising our children and had careers before that, but now it’s taking all those experiences, all those connections that we have, and it’s kind of all coming together with pickleball to create this great new business that we’re just having so much fun doing. GARY: What was your first, I guess, exposure to pickleball? CHRISTY: In 2017, I actually had to learn to play pickleball on my New Year’s resolution list, and it was just like I had heard about it. I was a tennis player and it was just like I always look for quirky stuff to put on the resolution list and that was it. So, I was looking for places to play, and it was hard to find back then. Like, just couldn’t find it, and then Leslie, my business partner, said, “Hey, we’re playing by your house. Come over and play.” So, I showed up to play, played there, and just wanted more, and that’s how Leslie and I started teaming up and trying to get more people to play pickleball. GARY: So she hadn’t played at that point? LESLIE: She had not played at that point. GARY: Wow. Okay. LESLIE: Yup, and I’d only been playing for a couple of weeks before that. GARY: Okay. LESLIE: So we were both brand new to it. GARY: Nice. LESLIE: So, and I would have to drive all over because back then, like, there were only the senior centers and one would have it on Monday and Wednesday, and then a different senior center would have it on Tuesdays and Fridays. So, I was driving all over Michigan to find a place to play every day. GARY: Got it. LESLIE: So, um- GARY: Sounds like an addiction forming. Yeah? LESLIE: Yes, it didn’t take long. GARY: Tell me about that first conversation of, “Hey, you wanna- you wanna do this?” CHRISTY: I- I think it was just we started going to pickleball events together, playing pickleball tournaments, and were like, “Oh, we could do this better. We could do that.” Just like, seeing the problem… GARY: Got it. CHRISTY: And we wanted so much more pickleball. Less than a year after learning how to play, we were like, “Okay, we’re gonna take this super seriously.” And started offering our own learn-to-play classes so that more people could learn. We were running tournaments. Just building up our email list. We were converting school gymnasiums into pickleball during off hours. GARY: So you didn’t have your own facility? It was more just an organization around all things pickleball at that time. CHRISTY: Yes, so we worked with a couple of different school districts in the community ed program. So, really grassroots. We bootstrapped this from the beginning. You know, we used to think it was amazing when we had 12 people in a round robin. We were so thrilled. GARY: Yeah. CHRISTY: And then we were running couple hundred- person tournaments, GARY: Hmm. CHRISTY: And then, during COVID, we found a warehouse. So, that was part of the silver lining of COVID. We found this empty warehouse and we cleaned it up, and with the help of our community, we DIY’d it. We created four courts. We’d send an email out every morning and say, “We’re working on the courts. Who can come out to help?” And they’d come help squeegee and lay the found- the floor and painted the walls, and in 10 days, we had four pickleball courts. GARY: In 10 days? CHRISTY: In 10 days. GARY: So, did you buy this building or was it a lease? CHRISTY: No. We’re leasing the building right now. GARY: You still have it. CHRISTY: We still have it as we are transitioning to building the new facility. GARY: What goes into fabricating, making, building a pickleball court? CHRISTY: It’s a concrete floor and we had to clean it and fill all the cracks and the gaps and everything. GARY: So just smooth concrete? CHRISTY: Smooth concrete, and then we put on seven layers of like kind of acrylic with- and then silica sand in there. So we were in there, 55-gallon drums. I mean, when the guy delivered me all these 55-gallon drums and piles of sand and my eyes were like this big, looking at it, he’s like, “You watched the YouTube videos, right? That I sent you?” And I’m like, “Multiple times.” He’s like, “You got this.” And I’m like, “Okay, let’s get out there.” And we squeegeed it and figured it out. GARY: Talk about having the- the four-court at that time. LESLIE: Mm-hmm. GARY: Was it a- a functioning sort of viable business at that point? LESLIE: Yes, yes, very much. We were packed pretty much from- GARY: Outgrew it. LESLIE: Yup. We outgrew it pretty quickly. So, when the- the other side opened up, we jumped on that right away. GARY: How quickly did the- when you expanded into the eight-court… LESLIE: Mm-hmm. GARY: How quickly did that fill up? LESLIE: It was full right away. I mean, we’re- we’re jammed again at eight courts. I mean, we need our 12 courts soon. GARY: Is revenue determined just on hours? How many hours out of the day can you book the court? How does it work as a business? CHRISTY: So, they play per session that they come to play. We have it where people register by themselves, and I have all the other people of the same skill level, and then we organize the games. GARY: And you get thrown in when it’s your turn? CHRISTY: Yes, exactly, and we keep it moving. So, it’s really a dynamic situation, but people can rent courts and bring in their own people and have a good time. We do parties. We do tournaments. Just a variety of team bonding things, a variety of pickleball activities. GARY: Talk about the community. What makes this community so special and different? CHRISTY: I mean, pickleball brings out the best in people. You’re there to have fun and play a game, and so everyone comes in with that mindset. GARY: Yeah. CHRISTY: And then when you have your time to sub out, you just have a buddy there to start to chat with, but I think that just breeds just breaking down the barriers of conversation and people get to… GARY: Yeah. CHRISTY: Know each other for who they are. It’s wonderful for multi-generations to play. Like, my kids that are in their 20s will play with 60 and 70-year-olds and get into trash talking, and seeing people active in their 60s and 70s, and what a wonderful life… GARY: Yeah. They have, and then the 20-year- olds keep them young with just keeping them on their toes with what’s going on. ♪ GARY: Were you already familiar with the sport before that? MARCIA: Just had started playing pickleball, maybe like six months, and then COVID hit, and then this became my savior. I’m a nurse. I work in the ICU, and when I started coming here, like I said, during COVID, this was our outlet to not think about COVID and just be normal, and we could just be ourselves and not think about all the death and dying that happened with COVID, which was a horrible thing. So, this was our saving grace, 100%. GARY: A lot of it seems like it’s a social event as much as it is a sport. MARCIA: A hun- It’s 100% social. I have met so many friends. GARY: Wow. MARCIA: And you just- you meet new people every day, and you support one another when you’re going through things. GARY: Yeah. MARCIA: And it’s just a great, great community. GARY: If it’s just one person alone, should they feel intimidated coming out? MARCIA: No. GARY: Just stepping in the door? MARCIA: You know what? Wolverine, everybody embraces everybody. I cannot say enough about this place, but if I saw somebody come in and they were kind of by themselves, I would say, “Come on over. What’s your name and what are you doing?” So, yeah. LESLIE: People would come in to us and say, “Thank you for opening this, “because we had nothing. We couldn’t do anything during COVID.” GARY: Yeah. LESLIE: And that was kind of where we started realizing that this is so much more important to people than we know it. GARY: Yeah. LESLIE: Like, it was fun for a business for us, but we really started recognizing how important it was to the entire community. They thank us all the time. “Thank you. This saved me.” GARY: Wow. LESLIE: “This saved me. “I lost my husband two weeks before I discovered you guys, and this got me through that.” And other people saying, “Thank you. “I’ve been sober now since I started learning how to play.” And just those stories. We’ve had cancer people that the community really gathered around them, and they all came together and played and got them through their cancer. I mean, the stories, we could go on and on and on. GARY: What makes pickleball so therapeutic? LESLIE: It’s so social. I mean, people all come together. They’re- they’re friends. We have people who met through Wolverine, and then now they travel together. People connect. They make friends instantly. GARY: Yeah. LESLIE: I mean, it’s- we’ve had a few romances start there, so, it’s, you know. ♪ GARY: What made you really fall in love with pickleball? LAURA: The camaraderie, the support, the positivity. Everybody’s in a nice mind space. There’s such a great vibe. This is my safe place. It’s been not quite a year now, but tragedy struck. I lost my best friend and sister at her own hand, and I was completely blindsided. Never saw it coming. Once I was in here, I could completely forget about it for at least a couple hours. GARY: Yeah. LAURA: It didn’t matter that I went back to my car and broke down as I’m planning a funeral, but in the meantime, I just kept telling myself, “One step at a time, one day at a time, “one thought at a time… GARY: Yeah. LAURA: And one pickleball play at a time.” It was the only way where I could just clear my mind for a couple hours… GARY: Yeah. LAURA: And emotionally get through it. So, I’ve been coming ever since, playing ever since. It saved me emotionally. I just can’t imagine… GARY: Wow. LAURA: Not having this to rely on. GARY: What would you say to somebody who has never played pickleball before? LAURA: It’s so welcoming. GARY: Yeah. LAURA: You know, you take the learn-to-play, everyone will welcome you, and if you start at the maybe 2.0 level or 2.5, those people are in the same group with you, and, you know, just don’t feel intimidated. ♪ GARY: After years of anticipation, I finally get to play pickleball, and I couldn’t be more excited. I got to change into my pickleball attire, grabbed my paddle, and made my way out onto the court. Time to show these guys what I’m made of. LESLIA: There’s two main rules that are the first two rules you learn that are very important. GARY: Got it. LESLIE: The first rule is this area right here, this is called the non-volley zone, okay? GARY: Okay. LESLIE: What that means is you cannot be in here… GARY: And hit? LESLIE: And take the ball out of the air. GARY: Really? LESLIE: Right. GARY: Okay. LESLIE: So, you can go in here. If the ball is gonna bounce, we go in here and we can hit it out. We want to get back out. GARY: Okay, so as long as it bounces in this area, it’s fair game. LESLIE: Yes, yes. GARY: Got it. LESLIE: The second rule is the two bounce rule. So, when the person serves over here, they go diagonal. GARY: Okay. LESLIE: It bounces. That’s bounce number one. They return it. That’s bounce number two. GARY: Got it. LESLIE: After that, it can be taken out of the air. GARY: How do you score a point? LESLIE: So, you score a point only when you’re serving. Okay? GARY: Okay. LESLIE: So, the team who’s receiving, they have to knock out server one and server two before they get to serve. GARY: Got it. LESLIE: Then when they’re serving, that’s when they can earn points. GARY: All right. I think I understand the rules. Let’s play. LESLIE: All right. Let’s do it. GARY: All right. ♪ ♪ ♪ Talk about when- when the- the eight-court facility, when you noticed that it sort of started to run its course. CHRISTY: Our parking lot was the biggest issue. We had to have buffers of time in there for people to leave the parking lot so more people could come in, and people didn’t wanna leave. So, it’s like, they’re obsessed. They wanna be there. People would just stop by and say, “Who’s playing?” I mean, we needed more- GARY: There goes the neighborhood. Rowdy pickleballers at it again. CHRISTY: I know! So, we needed- we needed more space in that way, and also to offer more amenities. We’ve been a BYOB facility since the beginning. We just knew there was so much more we could offer with pickleball if we had a bigger facility. GARY: Tell me about the new facility. How did you find it? You guys are buying it? Building it? Renovating it? CHRISTY: Building it. GARY: Building it? CHRISTY: Yeah. GARY: From the ground up? CHRISTY: Yes. We dove in the deep end of the pool with this. We found a piece of land. We had to change multiple zoning laws to let us in there. GARY: Wow. So it wasn’t zoned commercial already? CHRISTY: It was an industrial area, so we needed to get it zoned so that we could do indoor recreation there. Then we needed to get it zoned so that we could serve alcohol there. GARY: Okay. CHRISTY: We wanted to get a liquor license. GARY: Wow. CHRISTY: So then we had to get a liquor license as well. GARY: So it’s gonna be a bar too? CHRISTY: Yes. Self-serve beer, wine and cocktails. GARY: Self-serve? CHRISTY: Yes. It’s amazing. GARY: Pickleball in an empty warehouse space is one thing, but now you’re- you’re tackling a whole other business, the bar business. LESLIE: Mm-hmm. GARY: Is that intimidating at all? And what are some of the challenges around now serving alcohol to people? LESLIE: It’s a little bit intimidating, but the way we are gonna run it with the self-pour wall, that takes a lot out of it. We don’t have to worry about quite as many employees, and they come in, they give us their card, they get one of those RFID bands, and you can go up and you get charged by the ounce. You self-pour. So, we really only have to have one person there overseeing it. GARY: Wow. LESLIE: Everything is done online. There’s no cash exchange. It just makes it so much easier than actually owning a bar and having to worry about staff and people, and really, the pickleball community, they love to have a beer after they play, but it’s not your typical wild and crazy… GARY: Right, they’re not gonna sit around and binge drink ’til 2 AM after a pickleball game. LESLIE: Correct. Correct. GARY: At least not all of them, right? LESLIE: Because they wanna play the next morning, so they’re not gonna overdo it. GARY: Right. Let’s talk about funding. I mean, obviously, buying land, building your dream facility cannot be cheap. CHRISTY: No. It is not. The entire project is about seven, seven and a half million dollars, is I think where we’re gonna end up. GARY: Oh my gosh. Wow. That’s a lot of pickleball. CHRISTY: Yes. It is. So, we had to raise two and a half million dollars to qualify for a small business loan that we’ve got with it. So, we have- GARY: And then you’re gonna finance the rest? CHRISTY: Yeah, with the Small Business Administration. GARY: Wow. CHRISTY: So, yeah, it was very challenging because there’s no models for what pickleball is doing around the country. So, we went through a lot of banks on that… GARY: Yeah. CHRISTY: Before we found our local regional bank that saw the vision and got it, and we raised our money- was actually from our community. CHRISTY: You raised two and a half million dollars from your community? CHRISTY: From my community. They believe in it. GARY: How does that work? CHRISTY: We put it out there. We put it in our newsletters. People see what we’re doing on a daily basis and they’re betting on us. They know- they know what pickleball’s growth is and the potential for it. GARY: Yeah. How many investors does it take to raise that money? CHRISTY: We actually have 25 investors. GARY: 25? Okay. I’m assuming somewhere around $100,000 each. CHRISTY: Yes. That’s what we did. GARY: 25 people for 100 grand each, and then are they now equity? Locked-in equity partners, or how does their return work? CHRISTY: Oh, they are actually investing in the real estate because that could collateralize their investment. So, it’s a real estate investment for them, but I think the- even more amazing with our investors is that the vast majority of them are all women investors. GARY: All women investors? So, this is a women-owned and run operated business, all funded by women? CHRISTY: Mo- mostly women. We have some husband and wives and we have a couple of just solo male investors as well. GARY: What was it that made you interested in this opportunity from a business level? BARBARA: First off, it’s a real estate investment. GARY: Okay. BARBARA: All right. So they’re buying land, and it’s never bad to have land. GARY: Of course. BARBARA: And then from starting playing in November of 2020 and watching pickleball grow, I mean it- from 2020 to now, it’s just exploded, and I think their concept behind it and their excitement, their genuine excitement to get this thing off the ground and going, I think really pushed a lot of people to say, “You know what? This would be a good investment.” GARY: I guess, what is your long-term hope out of this investment? What do you hope to gain? BARBARA: Certainly, you know, I would like the return on my money that they have said… GARY: Sure. BARBARA: They’re gonna do, but more than anything, I wanna see the success of the two women that are creating this. The women-backed community needs to stand behind itself, and these two are showing that they have all the guts and- and tenaciousness to go ahead and make this a facility that will serve our community for a long, long time to come, and they’ve already created a family atmosphere here with their mixers and birthday parties and everything else that they provide. GARY: Yeah. Speaking to another investor that may be watching this episode. What advice would you have before investing in any business? BARBARA: Before you invest in any business, make sure you do your due diligence, that you understand the business that you’re getting into. GARY: Mm-hmm. BARBARA: That, if they have- you know, that they have a business plan, that they have something that they’re following, and that it makes sense. ♪ GARY: From a couple $100 investment to a $7 million, like, massive commercial pickleball compound. CHRISTY: Yes. It is amazing. We can’t believe what we’ve built in just a few years. Sometimes it feels like it took so long- GARY: It’s crazy. CHRISTY: And now it’s going so fast. GARY: How many courts is that gonna house? CHRISTY: It’s gonna have 12 courts, and then we’ll have a lounge area. We’ll have corporate party rooms. We’ll have the self-tap beer wall, of course. GARY: Incredible. CHRISTY: Pro shop, and then outside, we’ll have bocce, cornhole, and we’ll have six sand courts, so we can do sand volleyball and beach tennis on those. GARY: Gosh. This is the place to hang out. Where’s the pool gonna go? All right, let’s go walk around the site… CHRISTY: Okay. GARY: And you can show me what the vision is. CHRISTY: Absolutely. ♪ ♪ GARY: That’s incredible. How excited are you about this? CHRISTY: We are just smiling nonstop. We go to the site… GARY: Yeah. CHRISTY: Every day. We are just so excited and our community is so excited. They drive by on a daily basis or sometimes weekly, and take pictures. GARY: Yeah. CHRISTY: And just can’t believe it’s coming to fruition. GARY: What is your long-term vision? CHRISTY: We do plan to expand and bring our business to other places. We get calls on a weekly basis of people- GARY: So, other cities? CHRISTY: Other cities. Even more in the state of Michigan. GARY: Wow. CHRISTY: So we’re figuring that out. We kind of mastered our system here. GARY: Mm-hmm. CHRISTY: And think we can replicate that pretty well in other locations. GARY: Do you have any advice for folks that are maybe at home, making an excuse for why they shouldn’t chase their dream, you know, after having one full career or having kids out of the house or something like that? LESLIE: Well, I think, second time around, what’s most important is finding something that you’re passionate about. GARY: Mm-hmm. LESLIE: So, it doesn’t really feel like you’re starting all over again. You’re just following something you love to do. It doesn’t feel like I’m working. We can put in 10 or 12 hours at the warehouse, and it doesn’t feel like we’re there that long. GARY: It’s a dream come true, though, right? LESLIE: It is. It is. Absolutely. ♪ GARY: I am completely blown away by Christy and Leslie and what they’ve been able to do with Wolverine Pickleball. From a small warehouse space to a 17,500 square foot new construction pickleball complex, what they’ve been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time is truly remarkable, and the first word that comes to mind when I think about their story is community. It’s community around America’s fastest-growing sport. Community around individuals that are focused on health and wellness. Community around people that may feel a bit isolated and need to find their tribe, and the incredible community that rallied together to get their new space built. There’s power in numbers, and anything is possible when you have two passionate entrepreneurs like Christy and Leslie leading the charge. I’m so excited for these two, and I can’t wait to come back without the cameras and dive headfirst into my new favorite sport. For more information, visit our website and search episodes for Wolverine Pickleball. Would you like to learn more about the show or maybe nominate a business? Visit our website at startup-usa.com and connect with us on social media. GARY: (gasps) What happened? PASCAL: I put the bird strikes on. GARY: Oh! WOMAN: Yay. (laughs) GARY: Thank you so much. WOMAN 2: You’re welcome. WOMAN 3: Next on Start Up. (laughs) WOMAN 4: Gary Bredow, superstar. Okay. GARY: With no nose. He’s gonna go tell all his buddies like, “You wouldn’t believe…” ANNOUNCER: Spectrum Business is a proud supporter of Start Up. Providing connectivity for small businesses with internet, phone and mobile solutions available. Information available at Spectrum dot com slash business. ANNOUNCER: Small businesses are at the heart of Michigan’s downtowns and neighborhood business districts. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation offers programs to both new and existing businesses. With an abundant workforce and access to statewide resources, Michigan welcomes businesses from around the world. ADRIENNE: There is a challenge every day when you’ve got a small business. It’s a little nerve wrecking, but it’s also fun. ANNOUNCER: More than 60% of sales in Amazon’s store come from independent sellers like Adrienne at Blue Henry. Amazon, a proud supporter of Start Up. ANNOUNCER: Wearing a lot of hats can bog you down. Thryv, the all-in-one small business management software can help you manage every aspect of your business, from a single screen with one log in and one dashboard. Thryv is a proud supporter of Start Up. ANNOUNCER: The first time you made a sale online with GoDaddy was also the first time you heard of a town named Dinosaur, Colorado. MAN: We just got an order from Dinosaur, Colorado. ANNOUNCER: Build a website to help reach more customers. WOMAN: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, one more. ANNOUNCER: Learn more at GoDaddy dot com.

Key takeaways

  • Establishing a strong community is key – People come for the sport, but stay for the relationships they build. This social aspect not only drives participation but also fosters loyalty. Focusing on community-building activities (such as mixers, tournaments, health & wellness events, etc.) creates a solid foundation for growth. 
  • Adaptability and innovation drive growth –  It’s important to be resourceful and flexible. Remain open to evolving your business model based on changing demands and seizing opportunities that come from unexpected challenges.
  • Fundraising and community investment powers expansion – Wolverine Pickleball raised $2.5 million from their community. And their investors, primarily women, were not only motivated by financial returns, but also by the chance to support a project they believed in. So, consider engaging your community in investment opportunities, especially if your vision resonates with members.

Where to watch: You can watch Start Up episodes, including this one, on the PBS website

7. Social Media Strategies for Tennis Providers | USTA Webinar 

For those who may be unfamiliar with the USTA (United States Tennis Association), it is the governing body for tennis in the US. This organization promotes the sport at all levels and organizes major events like the US Open. 

On their website, they offer a variety of content including webinars. These webinars cover everything from helping players strengthen their game to business strategies for tennis and pickleball club owners. 

For example, the USTA webinar mentioned here is focused on effective social media strategies. The presenters discuss things like creative ways to stand out on socials and how to maximize your reach in the competitive online space.

Video Transcript
0:01 all right good afternoon everyone um we’ve got another minute or so before 0:05 we’re gonna get started so we’ll go ahead and let our participants trickle 0:08 in and then we’ll we’ll start things off right at two o’clock thanks for being 0:12 here all right good afternoon everyone and 0:40 welcome to our may edition of the 2024 cta parks webinar series uh my name is 0:46 emilia store and i’m a manager for the usta’s tennis venue services team and 0:50 we’re just so glad you could join us this afternoon uh 0:53 we’re at 2 2 p.m eastern so i’d like to go ahead and kick things off 0:57 we’re excited for today’s session we’ve got some really great presenters and 1:01 we’re going to be digging into the social media strategies for tennis 1:04 providers um before we get started i’d like to go through a couple of 1:08 housekeeping items um so just a couple of things one we are 1:12 recording today’s session so within the next few days that recording will be 1:16 posted online at usda.com webinars and then also within the next couple of 1:21 days all of the registrants for today’s session are going to get a pdf copy of 1:25 the slides as well as the recording from today’s session and then any of those 1:29 resources that we discussed during the call we’ll go ahead and email those out 1:32 to you so keep an eye out um for that message and do feel free to share that 1:36 with anybody else from your organization who might not have been able to attend 1:39 today’s session all right so next uh this session is 1:44 going to be available for ceu credit that’s continuing education units so 1:49 immediately following um the webinar session you’ll be automatically taken 1:53 over to a survey page where you can provide your information just to get 1:57 credit for attending and all you need to do is put your name your email and then 2:02 which which organizations you’re affiliated with so that’s the uspta ptr 2:07 or nrpa and just a note for anybody watching the 2:10 recording that ceu credits only available for those who are attending 2:13 the live webinar and then the last note any everybody 2:17 today on the call is muted but there are a couple of ways you can communicate 2:21 with us during the session today so at any time you can submit your questions 2:25 to presenters through that q a box which is down kind of in the bottom sort of 2:28 middle of your screen and then once you do submit your questions we’ll be able 2:32 to answer those either live or just go ahead and type your response 2:36 if you’ve got any other comments or suggestions feel free to use that chat 2:38 box to share those and you know we just like to keep this keep this conversation 2:43 interactive as interactive as we can so we’ll try to field your questions as we 2:47 go but those really are the best ways to communicate with us during today’s 2:50 session so here you’ve got our agenda for this 2:54 afternoon we’re going to kick things off with our 2:57 social with our ceu learning outcomes after that we’ll hear from several 3:01 members of the usta’s social media team on sort of the ins and outs of different 3:05 social media platforms and really just the best practices for your social media 3:08 strategy and then at the end we’ll hope to have 3:10 some time for questions but like i said please use that q a box as we go to uh 3:14 just field those all right so then before before we get 3:19 started i’m going to go ahead and launch a poll for you 3:23 let’s see and we just want to get a feel for who 3:27 all is on the call this afternoon so the poll should be popping up 3:32 right now and if you would just take a second to 3:35 fill this out we’d like to get an idea of who was on 3:37 the call um it helps our presenters just tailor their tailor their presentation 3:41 to the audience today so the first question is going to be um you 3:46 know which which type of organization are you affiliated with so are you a 3:49 park agency maybe you’re a cta um or or something else maybe it isn’t 3:55 listed if you could just let us know in the chat 3:57 that next question is going to be more about what your role with the 4:00 organization is and kind of what interested you in being 4:04 in attending today’s session so you know do you manage your organization 4:07 social media presidents maybe you’re looking for ways to leverage social 4:11 media to promote some sort of upcoming event or maybe you’re just looking to 4:13 brush up on you know some of the latest best practices 4:17 uh anyways whatever brings you in today we’re glad you’re here and we hope this 4:20 will be a valuable session for you so let me go ahead and 4:26 in the poll it looks we got several responses 4:29 and we can check our results so looks like we have more more ctas in 4:35 njtls than parks this time lots of folks from from the usda staff 4:41 and several others who are going to let us know in the chat 4:44 and then thanks to those who filled out those the short answer questions um 4:47 appreciate the info it helps us you know kind of know what’s going on and help 4:50 plan for future sessions all right so next up is our ceu 4:56 learning outcomes so as those come up uh 5:00 there’s the the three outcomes on the next one 5:03 so we’ve got here we go 5:08 all right so number one i’m looking to learn ways to craft your brand to 5:12 develop distinct identity for your organization 5:15 we’ll also look at discovering strategies to stand out from the crowd 5:18 and capture attention on social media and finally dig into tips and tailored 5:23 advice for maximizing impact on the various social media platforms so 5:27 hopefully those will be some of your takeaways 5:29 after the session today and 5:32 without further ado i’d like to introduce our presenters this afternoon 5:35 um alyssa is a manager for our usda national 5:39 and u.s open social media and amanda is usca northern’s manager of marketing and 5:44 communications i know they’ve got a lot of great content planned for you so i’ll 5:48 go ahead and turn it over to alyssa to get us started 5:52 awesome all right we can go ahead and kick it 5:55 off to the next slide it’s great to be here with everyone i 5:59 think to get us started we’ll just take a quick walk through of all the 6:03 different social media channels and kind of what their purpose is and what 6:07 audiences go to those channels um what they’re looking for when they when they 6:11 log into those apps so facebook host content that’ll drive meaningful 6:16 conversation and engagement instagram delivers high impact content 6:21 to our most engaged audiences that’s where we personally see some of our most 6:26 engaged content and our highest performing things there um but they have 6:30 shifted to focus to full screen full phone vertical content um to break 6:35 through that algorithm youtube essentially is a video search 6:39 engine um where folks can go to learn tennis see matches see highlights 6:44 see interviews it’s basically the google version of video 6:49 twitter now x reaches audiences in the moment i think 6:53 that’s where most folks go to see like live sports results news things it’s 6:57 where you can see things happening in the moment in real time 7:01 and then finally tick tock another fully vertical platform that 7:05 starts trends and leans into trends and then those trends then trickle over into 7:10 the other platforms um as time progresses but that’s a really trend 7:14 focused platform we can go ahead over to the next one 7:20 so kind of setting the stage here for evolving social media strategy um so we 7:26 lean into platform specific creative and content to be successful 7:31 uh you’ll see different audiences across different platforms and folks go to 7:35 different platforms to experience content differently so we’ll never post 7:40 the same exact piece of content whether that’s a photo a video um graphics the 7:46 same thing across all of our channels just because people are digesting 7:50 content differently on each platform currently vertical content is key and i 7:56 say currently because platforms are ever changing you never know what kind of 8:01 algorithmic change they might make in the back end that favors one content 8:05 over the next but right now vertical content is key and that is content that 8:10 takes up the majority of your phone screen so it is content that’ll take up 8:14 all of that real estate to get you watching that video or engaging with 8:18 that photo and like yeah like tik tok reels and 8:22 youtube shorts those are all great examples of what vertical content is 8:27 um right now we’re creating engaging snackable content especially short form 8:32 the attention span of folks is decreasing i think we just heard from 8:37 one of our platform experts that the um 8:41 the perfect time to get someone’s attention on a piece of social media 8:46 content is like 1.5 seconds so you have 1.5 seconds to get someone’s attention 8:51 onto your piece of content before they they scroll away to the next one so 8:55 really gotta grab them right from the beginning 8:58 um to boost content to reach different 9:01 audiences and increase current fan reach if you’re not adding um amplification 9:07 dollars to your content the things that are going out on your page are only 9:10 really reaching three to five percent of your audience just because of the nature 9:15 of the algorithmic platforms so that’s why boosting your content is so 9:19 essential to reaching new audiences um of course find moments and engage 9:25 culturally and lean into trends like i mentioned trends really start on 9:29 tick-tock and then kind of fade over into the other platforms and that’s what 9:33 folks are going to social to see they’re see they’re going to see entertaining 9:38 funny content they want to 9:41 you know be entertained and find something that they’re 9:44 excited to engage with of course as social 9:49 managers and producers we have to be nimble and willing to adjust our 9:53 strategy at any time because you never know 9:55 what might be performing best on a certain channel at any given time 10:00 just because of the back end algorithmic changes that could be 10:03 happening you know outside of our control 10:06 and then of course just to uh keep yourselves prepared always develop 10:11 a year-round content strategy to have content prepped or have things on your 10:16 radar as you’re as you’re going through you know seasons and and events that are 10:21 changing throughout the year just to have ideas on your radar and have 10:25 content that’s fulfilling your channels year-round 10:29 go ahead on over the next one all right now here’s where we uh bust 10:34 some myths about social media so first we’ll go into what social media is 10:40 so let me move my uh 10:43 camera there it’s blocking some of the words all right so social media is a 10:47 strategic channel that should be integrated at the ideation point so 10:51 we as social media producers and managers always want to hear the ideas 10:56 right from the beginning because we’re the only ones that are thinking about 11:00 what that content could look like through and through only a social lens 11:05 and that looks very different from other content that’s going on email or 11:09 in venue or you know anywhere else where there’s digital screens so we are 11:13 thinking social first always um social media is a slow steady roi 11:19 you’re not gonna get an immediate roi unless you are spending um with 11:25 amplification dollars on the platform um 11:29 it’s an evolving space as i mentioned it’s always changing so we need to be 11:33 nimble it’s a place where you listen to what 11:36 your fans want and need it’s one of the very few places where you can get direct 11:40 feedback immediately about something whether that’s positive or negative so 11:45 you might post a piece of content thinking this is exactly what folks want 11:48 to see and then all the comments are saying well this is obvious like we 11:52 already know this like give us more information and it’s like okay we can 11:56 pivot next week like let’s post something different that gives these 11:59 people what they want to see so you can really use that direct feedback to your 12:03 advantage it’s an acquisition tool especially 12:07 because these platforms are so algorithmic based like 12:11 reals for example is very discoverable so if your content is driving engagement 12:16 driving video views it’s going to be served to people who are not following 12:21 you we had a video last week that we posted and 95 of the users that engaged 12:27 with it did not follow us so that’s a great opportunity to showcase tennis to 12:32 folks who do not follow you who are not a traditional tennis audience and get 12:36 new players involved in the game of course you want to be authentic 12:42 in this day and age folks are so keen to sniff out in authenticity so you want to 12:47 be authentic about what you’re putting out on your channels 12:50 and it’s a place to increase brand presence reach new audiences 12:54 very competitive our team says um you know every morning we go to battle with 12:58 the internet basically so any piece of content that’s out there we are up 13:02 against so we want to make sure that the content we’re putting out is is very 13:06 unique and really connecting with our our core tennis 13:10 audience but also opening uh doors for a broader audience to engage with it as 13:14 well and then finally it’s a community your 13:17 folks are in the comments they’re interacting with you you’re really 13:21 building relationships with people digitally 13:25 over the next one all right now social media is not my 13:29 favorite slide so 13:31 social media is not a megaphone for for messages or flyers 13:35 um like i mentioned where you have 1.5 13:38 seconds to get someone’s attention for your piece of content i think flyers 13:42 traditionally have a lot of text on them a lot of information and you just aren’t 13:47 connecting with someone on social channels with all of that information at 13:51 once you need to grab their attention with something that’s really going to 13:55 interest them then you can start layering in all of the information or 13:59 use amplification dollars to directly send them all of that information 14:04 one size fits all so just because something works on tick 14:08 tock doesn’t mean it’s going to work on facebook just because something works on 14:12 facebook doesn’t mean it’s going to work on tick tock so you really need to 14:16 look at who your audiences are across social media channels and 14:20 make your content specific to how people are digesting content there 14:25 it’s not an overnight solution i know a great example that you know i’ve 14:30 experienced i’m sure amanda’s experience and a lot of folks on this caller 14:32 experiencing you know if you’re looking to 14:35 build attendees for a quick event that you’re having this weekend 14:39 posting it on your social channels is not going to be a direct um 14:43 a direct return for engagement there or getting folks to that event 14:49 it’s really a place where you’re building relationships or 14:52 use amplification dollars to drive um event information directly to people 14:58 it’s not permanent and standardized again like i’ve mentioned several times 15:02 already it’s always evolving we must be nimble and prepared to change just 15:07 because we like doing something or it’s performed in the past doesn’t mean it’s 15:11 going to keep performing so we need to be able to be nimble and be willing to 15:16 change how we’re doing things to make them perform on the platform 15:20 it’s not a catapult to other places so we don’t want people who are coming to a 15:25 certain platform and engaging with content there just to be sent somewhere 15:28 else so sent to a website sent to a youtube video sent elsewhere they’re 15:33 there on that platform to engage there and not be sent elsewhere i’m sure many 15:38 of you have seen if you’re on instagram now they’ve done it really the past year 15:41 where if you click on a link it will inform you you are about to exit 15:45 instagram so they really want you to stay on the platform and engage on the 15:49 platform rather than go elsewhere so that’s why we want to keep people 15:53 engaged where they are digesting content it’s not your family refrigerator to 15:59 announce organizational success that’s what linkedin is for linkedin is 16:03 for professional development it’s for organizational changes and celebrations 16:08 folks are not on your social channels to learn about staff accolades and things 16:13 like that that is for a linkedin um i’ve mentioned it’s not for immediate 16:17 roi it’s for a slow change and it’s not for the interns amanda and i have made 16:22 careers out of this as as many people have 16:26 and it is a strategic well thought through um plan that we’re 16:31 executing day to day on all of our social channels 16:35 and then finally it’s not an afterthought you want your social media 16:38 team to be involved from the beginning you want to be thinking about social 16:42 from the beginning about every event um every initiative that you’re doing think 16:47 about how it could activate on social not just all the way at the end when the 16:51 event’s about to go live oh let’s also put this on social so you want to be 16:55 thinking about social from the beginning i can head to the next one 17:01 all right social video do’s and don’ts just because video is really king right 17:05 now across social channels um we wanted to call out videos specifically so do’s 17:10 i mentioned before you have one to three seconds to get someone’s attention on a 17:14 video so you don’t want to start with a slow pan over your courts you don’t want 17:19 to start with a screen like a black screen 17:21 or graphic on text you want to get right to the action really quick get someone’s 17:26 attention so they stay there and they watch the rest of your video 17:30 you want to be authentic you want to lean into trends whatever’s happening 17:34 right now on tick-tock and then makes its way over into instagram reels those 17:38 are the trends you want to be leaning into 17:40 um color outside the lines like have fun with it like we 17:44 it’s social media we definitely want to have fun with with what content we’re 17:47 putting out there experiment analyze you never know what’s 17:51 going to reach your audience until you try so our team um we always say every 17:56 day like we’re open to testing like why not let’s test it so never shoot 18:00 something down just because you are unsure try it out and see what happens 18:04 and then you have learnings for next time 18:06 and of course make every second count in a video 18:09 you never want to have dead time in your videos because what’s going to happen 18:13 your user that’s enjoying that video is going 18:16 to scroll away scroll away to the next video so you want to keep them engaged 18:19 throughout the entire thing and not have any kind of dead space or dead time 18:25 don’ts aim to go viral if it happens it happens 18:28 and i’m very happy for you but it’s not gonna be something that you can plan for 18:33 don’t be salesy um again in this day and age folks are very 18:38 keen to sniff out inauthenticity or ads so 18:43 they are always looking for that stuff and once they see that it’s salesy 18:46 they’ll scroll away scroll onto the next thing 18:50 don’t make videos overly lengthy don’t over produce 18:55 right now the content that’s performing the best is content that looks like it’s 18:58 made by me and you it’s made by your average user it’s made by your friends 19:02 so that’s the kind of the type of creative you want to lean 19:06 into is things that look like their creator made 19:09 and then like i mentioned before don’t start videos with scenics that’s really 19:14 a sticking point for me don’t start with scenics because what are users going to 19:17 do scroll away again all right over to the next one 19:23 all right social media best practices just generally um 19:28 well-produced content performs better on social when it’s authentic and 19:32 formatting matters it’s very important so consistent sizing um we lean into 19:37 four by fives personally on our channel but one by one also works we really just 19:41 want to avoid 16×9 those wide images or wide videos because we want to take up 19:47 as much real estate on someone’s phone as we can because or else they’ll scroll 19:52 away and on to the next thing where they have a lot of visibility over what the 19:55 video is or what that image is make your video pop bring someone in 20:00 right from the beginning um look for collaboration so this one’s 20:04 my favorite we do a really great job of it both on the usta side and the us open 20:09 side of finding whoever else in the social sphere might benefit from our 20:14 content whether that’s you know celebrities players facilities our 20:19 sections anyone that also has buy-in to that piece of 20:23 content that it could serve them well as well you add them as collaborator on 20:28 instagram and now how do you do that it’s basically when you go to tag 20:32 someone in your video it comes up as collaborator and you can click 20:37 collaborator and add them as a collaborator instead now you can do it 20:41 cold and those people will get a notification 20:44 that they were added as collab on your video or you know you could work with 20:47 them over email like hey i have this great video you know you’re in it as a 20:51 player or it features this facility we’re gonna send over this collab to you 20:55 you know will you be willing to accept it or be prepared to accept it 21:00 um and then what is your brand make sure you’re showing you’re hardworking 21:03 entertaining accessible showing good sportsmanship just making sure that your 21:07 content is on brand and that you’re proud of what you’re showing 21:11 over the next one all right we’re over to amanda now 21:18 alrighty um thank you alyssa my name is amanda 21:23 stewart i am the manager of marketing communications in one of the sections i 21:28 am over in usta northern so basically we cover minnesota and north and south 21:33 dakota in a little bit of western wisconsin but my main role at our 21:37 location is i really kind of dive into that social media aspect of things so we 21:43 can go to the next slide because 21:46 alyssa painted a really good overview of just social media in general but now 21:50 we’re going to kind of go a little bit deeper into like 21:53 what is organic posting and what is paid posting so basically organic posting is 21:59 i would say a lot of the time of what you see when you’re just kind of 22:02 scrolling either on tick tock reels whatever it is it’s basically just your 22:06 free content that you’re sharing on your different profiles uh 22:11 generally it’s more limited reach like alyssa said earlier you’re probably only 22:15 going to hit about three to five percent of your following 22:19 but um if depending on what your content is if 22:23 people are searching for those things it does have the opportunity to get pushed 22:27 organically through the algorithm and that’s where you can see some of your 22:30 things sometimes go viral whether that’s with a 22:33 collaboration with someone or just something that’s information that people 22:37 really want to hear sometimes as long as people are engaging with it the more 22:41 engagement you get the more generally it gets pushed through the algorithm so 22:45 this is just kind of like your everyday posting it could be photos videos memes 22:49 that you do things that you’re adding to your stories 22:53 generally organic posting is something especially at our section we focus on 22:57 doing regularly because we want to be 22:59 consistent with our audience we want our audience to know that we’re there we’re 23:03 communicating with them they can engage with us sort of thing 23:06 and it’s not just something it’s just like you’re gonna post and then you’re 23:09 gonna leave it and then you don’t come back for it for the day like especially 23:14 something i post i go back i read through comments i’m responding 23:18 to comments the also the different kind of platforms 23:21 want to see you engaging with your audience using the platform that stuff 23:25 also gets pushed through the algorithm better because they’re like oh people 23:28 are wanting to hear from you you’re engaging back with them sort of thing so 23:32 that is also really important you don’t just want to throw stuffing on social 23:36 media and just like leave it there you want to make sure you’re still 23:38 responding to posts comments engaging with your audience um because then that 23:43 kind of feeds really back into that authenticity piece that alyssa mentioned 23:47 also um your organic posting is also kind of 23:50 like your foundation of like digital 23:53 marketing it’s really nurturing that connection with your audience um you’re 23:58 establishing your voice as a brand what your personality is like things like 24:03 that you’re really building that relationship so for example 24:07 um on our usta northern page like our audience knows that when you’re coming 24:11 to our page you’re gonna get content specific to our section whether 24:15 that’s our players or people in our office you’re going to get information 24:19 about tennis knowledge but then you’re also going to get humor like that’s what 24:22 people kind of come to our page for so you really want to kind of keep that 24:25 consistency so people kind of know what you’re all about 24:29 um now again the kind of flip side of that 24:32 thing too is it’s great to post consistently 24:37 all that sort of stuff but you are kind of limited to the algorithm like not 24:40 everything is going to blow up the algorithm is ever changing so like lissa 24:44 said we always have to be nimble posts in different um platforms are 24:49 always changing things that they’re focusing on and it’s it’s not that what 24:53 you put out there is bad it’s just sometimes you gotta get back to the 24:56 drawing board maybe restructure it a little bit but 24:59 organic posting is important because again you’re building that relationship 25:02 with your audience now flipping to paid posting now this is 25:08 more targeted to like a specific audience so this is if we’re hosting an 25:13 event or something’s kind of going on in your section or you’re trying to get 25:16 people in your community to join you in on some stuff paid is really important 25:21 because it allows you to really specifically target 25:25 certain people in areas that you’re looking for it can be um people 25:29 demographics area codes like all these different 25:33 things different interests people’s heads when you’re putting in money it 25:36 really offers you that ability to kind of push through and get in touch with 25:40 some of these people that you might not always be um in contact with 25:45 so ads and paid social are really important 25:48 because again you’re going to reach your targeted audience it’s going to help you 25:51 kind of reach your kpis and it’s ideal for call-to-action 25:56 messaging so if you want someone to do something 26:00 an ad is really important because then they can kind of click sign up right 26:03 here or register now brings them right back 26:07 they’re getting everything that did we lose 26:14 amanda go by memory they’re getting everything that they need right there 26:17 that’s kind of i was at the end of that anyway so that helps me out 26:23 okay um actually you can go to the next slide 26:27 anyway i was done with that one apologies lost interest no you’re fine 26:33 okay so targeting capabilities so again like i said there’s so many 26:38 different things you can do on social when you’re targeting different people 26:42 you can go by interests you can go by demographics you can go um 26:48 people that are kind of visiting your sites things like that um 26:53 there’s so many different things you do but it’s only truly dependent on like 26:57 what your goal is and what your outcome is that you want to be reaching so like 27:02 i said if it’s an event your target audience might look 27:05 different from something else that you’re doing within your section there’s 27:08 so many different things that are going on that one thing is going to work for 27:13 every little kind of thing that you want to be doing so you really just want to 27:16 take an account of who’s your audience what are we trying 27:20 to get them to do and that’s going to really help you kind of specialize like 27:24 where you want to start pushing your money towards and the people that you 27:27 want to be reaching um 27:31 you can switch to the next one so yeah this is kind of the part 27:39 where listen i will leave it 27:42 up to you guys to answer any questions that you may have things 27:46 like that because again social is very ebb and flowing it’s ever-changing 27:51 there’s not one right or wrong way to do things so 27:55 if you have any questions we’re happy to answer them to the best of our 27:59 capabilities all right well folks type some questions 28:05 i had a couple that that popped up um you know just kind of thinking through 28:10 what you were saying i mean like how how big is the team i mean how 28:15 i guess at the national level it’s probably maybe a different answer than a 28:18 section level but within a cta or even like a park agency you know how many 28:22 people do you think they should dedicate to 28:25 you know managing their social media presence 28:29 yeah i can speak for for our side like we have right now there’s my director 28:33 above me myself and then i have two producers and a coordinator but 28:38 we’re handling both the usta brand and the us open brand 28:42 so i would say as long as there is one dedicated person that thinks socially 28:48 exclusively i think that’s a great start that way they’re able to bring social 28:53 ideas to the table look at all your events and all of your campaigns and 28:57 think through that social lens and as long as they have a seat at the table 29:01 i think it’s going to be successful um i agree at a section level obviously 29:07 we are much smaller than national level so i really on my social 29:14 team and marketing it’s really just me and then i do have a counterpart under 29:17 me uh and like alyssa said i am the sole person that’s really dedicated to 29:23 the strategy the content and things were coming out but i enlist my entire office 29:28 we have an office of 18 and i think i’ve gotten them on that kind of playing 29:32 field of like alyssa said thinking socially like they’re coming up with new 29:37 ideas they’re bringing things to the table i’m 29:40 kind of narrowing it out being like can we put this into a strategy things like 29:44 that so it really kind of is a full team effort but it really is important i 29:48 feel like to have at least one person dedicating their time because again it’s 29:52 not something that like you’re gonna post and let it be like you need to be 29:56 engaging on it too you can’t just ignore what you’re posting and ignoring your 30:00 audience no i think that’s a good point just 30:03 being able to keep up with the comments and and see how it’s you know what 30:06 people are saying getting that feedback is is important stuff that you know i 30:10 think i forget sometimes all right looks like we’ve got a few 30:14 questions coming through the chat so i’ll go ahead and read some of these um 30:18 first one does the usta have a library of photos um that they could have access 30:22 to for social media monica that might be a question for you 30:30 yes we do um we can share a link to 30:35 our brand guidelines and some of those those images but i also encourage you 30:39 guys to connect with your your local sections um 30:44 they like amanda everyone has a marketing 30:49 representative that can help also connect the dots with some of those um 30:53 those requests and in the group chat i did respond we do have a best practice 30:58 guide which you can access currently through our national in our national 31:01 tennis month page um but we can share that 31:05 and we are happy to kind of put together some 31:09 some of the educational resources like uh we’re all part of the um 31:14 uh a a and some other like advertising or marketing organizations that have a 31:20 lot of different courses and things like that that you can take advantage of 31:26 perfect i think that addresses the second question as well 31:30 let’s see this next one any guidelines um for what age group leans towards 31:35 which platforms like which i guess are there are there certain 31:38 platforms that that work better to target different audiences 31:43 yeah i mean generally it’s going to be unique to your account um 31:48 as to what your age breakdown is per platform but i can speak generally i 31:53 think there there is that stigma that tick tock is for the gen z but we are 31:57 seeing that more and more millennials are getting onto tick-tock 32:02 and our currently our millennial audience 32:05 matches our gen z audience on tick-tock so we’re not only exposing tennis to new 32:10 players there but we are constantly communicating and educating 32:15 the millennial audience on tick tock as well 32:18 um instagram 32:21 typically millennial audience and then facebook age is up for us but for us 32:26 facebook also engages folks outside the us so we have a lot of people just 32:30 looking for general tennis content whether that’s you know tips or they’re 32:34 hearing about um american tennis players they’re following us on facebook so but 32:38 it really is unique to your own account as to who is engaging with you or 32:43 following you on which platform i would agree and at a section level two 32:48 um i would say we send a trend pretty similar to what alyssa said too i would 32:53 say our facebook generally goes to kind of more our middle age later more 32:57 audience but it is kind of universal across the board 33:01 and i think the nice thing about social too is 33:04 it kind of almost really is turning into like a google aspect of things like 33:08 social platforms are really big like search 33:11 engine options for people now they’re going on there to learn things to engage 33:15 things get quick easy answers so that’s also something to consider when you’re 33:20 thinking of content or something that you want to develop it’s like what are 33:23 we teaching our audience what do we want them to get out of our platform sort of 33:27 thing people are really going to social channels to learn those things 33:33 and amanda is that kind of where the hashtags can come into play to 33:37 yes that’s where hashtags can come into play um because then people right away 33:41 are knowing what your video is about what’s going to kind of talk about what 33:44 it’s going to assume 100 and is there a best practice with how 33:49 many hashtags you should have or if you like that 33:55 or i feel like that’s also another myth 33:57 alyssa you can back me on it too like some people i feel like when social 34:00 media was the first thing they’re like yes use all the hashtags so many then it 34:05 got to be like oh only use five but to me like it really does not matter like 34:10 as long as your hashtags are like relevant to kind of what your video 34:14 is talking about to the consumer it’ll get the point across 34:19 yeah i agree i would add as long as it’s not um disrupting your users 34:24 experience on your content so it’s not like 20 30 hashtags like this looks like 34:29 spam i’m gonna swipe away as long as it’s not disrupting um your content or 34:34 doing it a disservice pl include as many as you think are relevant 34:42 so i wanted to go back to some of the events we got a question about you know 34:46 is our facebook events one of the best ways to kind of get people to sign up or 34:50 to know that that you’re hosting some kind of tennis event 34:54 yeah facebook events are definitely key um and i’ll hand it over to amanda cause 34:58 she has more experience about this than i do yeah 35:01 we do facebook events but there’s two things you can do at facebook events 35:05 because you can just do a generalized facebook 35:09 event that kind of again just kind of goes to your audience and things like 35:12 that um generally i will always boost if i do do 35:17 a facebook event i will always boost it because again that’s going to reach 35:21 a wider audience maybe people that are not following our page and things like 35:25 that especially if it’s an event kind of open just to the general public you 35:30 don’t need a specific ust membership to be doing anything 35:34 i’ll always put money towards it because it allows me to target other people that 35:38 we might not have gotten if it’s just a regular standardized facebook event 35:45 and then i mean what are your thoughts on on how 35:49 how far out to create the event i’ve noticed that some places like 35:52 restaurants that do a trivia every tuesday they’ll they’ll set them up and 35:56 it’s like for the next year and a half like what are and it’s it’s a 36:00 reoccurring thing like what are you what are the best practices about how early 36:02 you should start to to create those um 36:10 you know it truly is dependent on the event if it’s something that you are 36:14 consistently doing if you want to pump it out for the year absolutely go for it 36:18 because people are always going to know hey it’s on this date 36:22 this day this time sort of thing some events are aren’t always reoccurring 36:28 uh so usually it’s truly is kind of 36:31 dependent on the event sort of thing so i feel like that’s kind of 36:36 a little hard to navigate and answer but usually if it’s like a specific event 36:41 that i want people to be signing up for um sometimes i’ll do it a couple months 36:45 in events then i’ll kind of go back to it maybe cup pump a few more dollars 36:50 into it like as it’s coming like a month or a couple weeks out sort of thing just 36:54 so people get a reminder because people do like to plan ahead but 36:58 for the most part unless it’s like a reoccurring thing i never really 37:02 generally do it for the year i’ll probably go like a month and a half in 37:05 advance or so sense 37:09 somebody else mentioned another platform meetup.com for hosting events they’ve 37:14 been using that for five or so years you’ll heard of that 37:18 i have not been either 37:22 i’ve never used it as well all right so somebody else asked um are 37:28 facebook events shareable or only land on the original page 37:33 so you can share events yes if they’re open to the public um when someone posts 37:38 it if you want people in your organization so for example we have 37:44 our hit to be fit cardio day as an event um coming up this sunday and everyone in 37:50 our office has kind of shared it out to their pages as well so you can share 37:53 them they can be shared into groups too right 37:58 amanda yes they can i think groups is another another thing 38:02 that we should um talk about too it’s it’s a great way to engage a core 38:07 audience if you have folks that are very engaged looking for upcoming events or 38:12 want to chat about i need a player to go hit with on thursday or i’m looking for 38:17 courts what courts are available or i just moved to this town what court 38:20 should i go to thinking about creating a group 38:24 as opposed to your page and putting content there to really have that back 38:28 and forth conversation with your core audience 38:33 i like that i think there’s a huge community aspect to social media and 38:37 just being able to kind of facilitate that online that’s great 38:42 it’s got a bunch of stuff coming in now so people talking about using 38:46 thatmeetup.com several people that that have used that and like it um 38:51 here’s one are social media sweepstakes a good way to grow your followers like 38:56 participants need to comment like tag a friend that kind of stuff 39:00 i think a sweepstakes is tough if it’s not amplified or using paid social just 39:05 because it appears addy to your followers like 39:09 you’re trying to get someone to do something or force them to do something 39:13 and that’s tough to do organically i’ve done many sweepstakes and many campaigns 39:18 in the past where we are asking our our followers to do something or participate 39:22 in a trend and it’s tough it’s really hard to get them to do something without 39:27 that amplification dollar aspect added to it 39:30 and i think also on that like especially through instagram there’s a lot of like 39:35 special wording and things that you kind of have to taggle on to that and 39:41 we usually steer away from that stuff too because again if you’re not pumping 39:44 money into it it’s usually not very successful but i just feel like there’s 39:48 a lot of hoops and hurdles that you kind of have 39:51 to go through to get something started like that 39:54 on the legal side of like instagram and things like that 39:57 that’s a good point so when we talk about some of the the 40:02 more like paid um types of posts i mean are there 40:08 what does that budget look like i mean is it very expensive to to put some 40:11 dollars towards you know getting more attention or or is it you know are there 40:15 lower lower i guess price points as well 40:20 um again i feel like it is truly dependent on your 40:25 organization just budgets and things that you have but i think a common term 40:29 people here in the social world a lot is you got to pay to play if you really 40:34 want to reach a larger audience you you do have to 40:38 pump some dollars into it for sure but i mean same thing on meta business suite 40:43 which is facebook and instagram is really helpful because 40:46 if you’re targeting something or putting money into something and you kind of 40:49 move the toggle around it’ll tell you being like 50 bucks will give you a 40:53 general range it’ll reach like 5 000 to 10 000 people sort of thing so it’s 40:58 really just dependent on what you feel like is going to be 41:01 beneficial for what you’re trying to get out of 41:05 yeah that’s a good point and i was just gonna add that’s always good to test 41:09 right to see like okay if i spent this much and it all depends again on like 41:13 what you’re trying to accomplish because if it’s an event that only can hold like 41:17 50 people like you want to reach a higher audience but you also don’t want 41:22 to go you know reach too far where like you can’t um you’re not going to have 41:26 the the the supplier or whatever so it’s always good to just 41:33 test and i like monica brings up a good point about testing if 41:38 this is something new that you’re going to start implementing like paid social 41:42 and stuff like that like testing it out first start with like a lower amount of 41:46 money like 20 50 bucks see where kind of like that gets you and then you can 41:50 always go back and re-stretch as me like yep this worked well i’m gonna kind of 41:54 pump a little more money into this vice versa you never want to just throw a ton 41:58 of money at something without like having a strategy towards it 42:05 fair enough um 42:08 so you mentioned the the meta business suites i’ve heard of that one and some 42:12 others like hootsuite or you know can you talk a little bit about some of 42:15 these tools to sort of manage you know the top like the scheduling of 42:20 posts or you know kind of engagement across platforms 42:25 yeah currently our team is with hootsuite um 42:28 we’ve been with sprinkler in the past i think 42:32 um there’s another one before that so we’ve jumped from platform to platform 42:35 just because of their different offerings and what they’re able to do 42:38 for us in the back end so for us both calendarizing our content and getting 42:43 the metrics off of our content is very important that we’re we’re able to kind 42:48 of report what our efforts do so we’re able to showcase 42:52 some some roi for the content that we are making and how that’s helping for 42:57 different initiatives but yeah calendarizing your content is very 43:01 helpful and then the reporting side again is the other side of it but within 43:06 the platforms you’re able to do that as well so it’s not like you need to buy 43:10 into a tool to be able to calendarize your content 43:16 good to know when it when it comes to the kpis i mean 43:20 what what do you think is a good way to go about 43:23 you know kind of starting to set those goals for your organization like if 43:26 you’re sort of starting from scratch and have really just mostly focused on 43:30 organic posts like what do you think is a good a good way to start setting those 43:33 targets and helping to grow your platform or grow your reach 43:37 i think if you take a look at maybe what content was traditionally on your 43:40 account and just get a like a quick uh look at how things were doing and then 43:47 really any growth is is positive so then just keep growing if you’re getting you 43:52 know you’re used to getting 10 comments on something and now you start getting 43:56 15 you start getting 20 regularly that’s that’s growth and that’s um something 44:00 that you can be proud of and you know that you’re growing your your audience 44:04 you’re growing the engagement at which they want to you know be looking at your 44:07 content and you’re growing that relationship too 44:13 i just got a couple more questions and let’s see so 44:16 somebody asked um how do you send invites for events out to your followers 44:21 on facebook i guess you used to be able to do that 44:25 usually when you set an event like after it’s posted and 44:29 kind of things to your page if you kind of scroll down where it’s like comment 44:33 or like or anything like that there is like a share little arrow that you can 44:38 you can share it that way well thank you 44:43 somebody else just noted that they signed up for a 30-day trial for canva 44:47 are there any any tools or or other apps like that you’d recommend for creating 44:52 content uh i would 44:55 go ahead amanda i was gonna say probably my number one favorite content creating 45:00 tool that i use is cap cut at the moment it’s a super 45:04 user friendly way to edit videos they have a ton of already like pre-made 45:10 templates and things that you can use too i think it’s it’s a good place to 45:14 start to fiddle around if you’re trying to play around with things like i said 45:19 very user friendly but there’s also a lot of like template options 45:22 automatically on the app and capco is affiliated with um tick tock and things 45:27 like that so when you’re done in capcom you can automatically just upload it to 45:31 your tick tock account from there yes i also endorse capcut c-a-p-c-u-t 45:39 cap-cut um very helpful and um 45:44 helpful for diving into that trending content too as you’ll see a lot of 45:48 videos and creators using cap cut to make things then it’s just that much 45:52 easier for you to dive into that trend too but our team also uses um slate it’s 45:58 a tool that a lot of teams and leagues use to make vertical content and they 46:02 are always expanding their offerings so we have loved using that platform but 46:07 then we utilize whatever is inside the apps too so instagram has a ton of 46:13 offerings inside the app for video creation or things that you can add with 46:17 text on top of your videos as well as tick-tock too 46:21 also the algorithms love that when you’re building stuff 46:25 in the app itself interesting 46:29 so i’m trying to think you mentioned the captions like that 46:32 that seems like something that would be important to include on videos you know 46:35 just from an accessibility standpoint do you do that on most videos or kind of 46:39 what are the best practices there we put captions on every single 46:44 video where there is a person talking to screen if you see a video where a 46:48 person’s talking to screen and there’s not captions on it that means you know 46:51 we made a mistake but it should be on every single video that goes out the 46:55 only places we don’t do it is if it’s like an announcer talking in the 46:59 background or it’s kind of like inadvertent um 47:03 like environmental voice coming through on the background we don’t include that 47:07 just because it’s not particularly important to the video but 47:11 anytime someone is speaking to camera it’s always there 47:15 i’ve noticed that a lot more in the last few years especially that just about 47:18 every video i see has has captions in it yeah your average user isn’t really 47:23 watching with sound anymore so me personally if i see a video come through 47:27 and it has captions i’m swiping past it because i’m not gonna stop turn my sound 47:32 on turn the volume up like be that guy in the room where now my video is 47:36 blasting so i’m moving on so including captions is very important for for 47:40 engagement and yeah i think social platforms are 47:44 catching on to that too so i know tick tock odd if you’re speaking tic tac will 47:48 automatically add captions for you now sort of thing but other like instagram 47:53 and things like that you still have to add them 47:55 on your own interesting 47:59 all right we’re getting to the end so any any final questions be sure to put 48:02 those in the chat um and we’ll probably spend maybe another five or so minutes 48:07 so if there’s anything else you’ve got the 48:09 experts on the line um ask them all your social media questions um but if there’s 48:13 anything afterwards too that you think of well we can share you know our 48:16 contact information and you know get in touch but um 48:21 you know what i guess the one of the the things that came up 48:24 before we started this was you know just how to stand out there’s so much going 48:28 on there’s so much noise online you know how do you stand out and 48:32 you know get people to engage with your your accounts 48:37 i think amanda can speak to that because she does a great job of leaning into her 48:41 local community local courts and making those trends and like relatable tennis 48:46 things but specific to her region yes so well when it comes to like trends 48:52 and same thing this is why it’s really good to have a designated person kind of 48:57 do your content utilize your channels because i always do set aside some time 49:01 every week to kind of just scroll dig through social media and 49:06 things like that to kind of catch on to trends and stuff like that and if there 49:10 is something that is noticeably a trend i always just kind of ask myself be like 49:14 how can i tennis by this like can this be related to tennis like sort of thing 49:18 if it’s not fine like i don’t need to force it like sort of thing but if i can 49:23 come up with something that is relevant to tennis in my audience and i know 49:28 i think it does help that i do come from a tennis background too i’ve played my 49:32 entire life so that’s kind of helpful to know like 49:36 what kind of my audience likes from a humor perspective too and things like 49:39 that from playing for so long but that’s kind of the mentality i do it sort of 49:44 thing and plus again we’re the northern section we are cold 49:49 eight months out of the year like sort of thing like i know that stuff really 49:52 hits with our audience of things with snow things and inside when it comes to 49:57 it’s finally nice out like things that we can actually do like i really play 50:01 into our region because i know 50:04 it’s really relevant to our audience that’s right i think we have the 50:09 opposite problem down here in florida it’s just always hot operating 50:15 um someone else is going to add to that too i know we talked a lot about leaning 50:19 into trends but i think events too um and i guess this became a trend too but 50:24 just for example uh both alyssa uh and amanda did a great job during the 50:29 eclipse like really leaning into that and how do you like tenno tenify tennis 50:34 by that um you both did a great job you know 50:38 capturing that uh so again thinking of what are those um 50:42 relevant events that are happening and again how can you make it relatable to 50:47 your audience and your brand and your your product um 50:51 yeah that’s another another great way and i think to your point earlier to 50:54 amanda the humor aspect of it like i think now you know i i personally go on 51:00 social media for like just like to see 51:04 um get influence or whatever of you know what’s going on or you know whether it’s 51:09 closed but the the entertainment aspect of it um you know just seeing funny 51:15 things that you can share with people so again like you wouldn’t think because a 51:18 lot of times you know people want to just focus on like what what do we want 51:23 to share with the audience because it’s a program that’s important to us but we 51:27 have to think more um about the consumer and what they’re trying to they want to 51:31 you know they want to learn about or or how they want to 51:35 consume their content so adding you know humor 51:38 um still getting your message across but doing it in in a light way um 51:44 it’s just a a great way to stand out because you’re 51:47 not just seeing like the regular thing you see something that’s going to pop 51:51 and it’s going to make you want to stop and like watch the video or read the 51:54 caption that’s a great note about what people 51:59 want to see monica i think it was hootsuite did like a big review of 52:03 social from 2023 into 2024 and one of the biggest takeaways for our team was 52:08 it was upwards of 50 some percent of social users don’t want to see brands on 52:14 social media so we have to look at that like they don’t want to see from you 52:19 know companies they want to see content that looks like it’s from you and me 52:24 and speak to them on a one-to-one level don’t speak to them from the brand speak 52:28 to them like a person um like we always say we talk in our social media like 52:33 we’re talking in the group chat and we’re that guy who is really into tennis 52:37 like that’s how we communicate with our social audience um kind of on their same 52:42 level as opposed to a brand talking at them 52:46 i 100 agree with that and that’s really that on authenticity piece that like if 52:52 you’re authentic like people automatically are going to get sucked in 52:55 they’re going to be like they’re connecting with you 52:58 they want to hear what you kind of have to say like same thing if anyone me or 53:02 office anyone from our office is speaking or 53:05 doing something in the videos that’s how we are like in real life too sort of 53:09 thing and when we’re meeting members it like that that’s how they know and 53:13 honestly i think it’s been better to connect with our audience one-on-one 53:17 when we are kind of out at different tennis clubs or events and things like 53:21 that it almost makes us more approachable and people coming up to us 53:24 and asking us one-on-one questions or like wanting to like get involved with 53:29 more things that we’re doing so that’s that authenticity piece is really 53:33 important i love that 53:37 all right two two final questions here um 53:41 one how much is too much when it comes to posting like how often just too often 53:48 thankfully with the algorithms really posting too much 53:51 doesn’t hurt you unless you start seeing that affect your content if you start um 53:56 seeing your engagement go down seeing your comments go down we um we’ve kind 54:01 of taken the approach that you know once we post it’s hitting the algorithm so 54:05 it’s not like as soon as we post something every single person’s gonna 54:08 see it in their feed if there’s like a big moment or an event that’s happening 54:11 we might post two three four or five times all at once and then it’s hitting 54:16 the algorithm you might not see that for two days so it really 54:20 isn’t that big of a problem unless you start seeing a direct impact on your 54:24 content what’d you say the algorithm is it’s 54:29 like this black box and you just put stuff in and hope that it reaches the 54:31 right person that’s that’s stressful um and then i guess the last question 54:37 here um when it comes to what accounts you you follow like is it 54:42 important to try to follow a lot of like similar accounts or others in this space 54:47 like you know what i mean does that help kind of 54:51 help the algorithm know who you’re trying to reach like like you know 54:54 following the other grand slams for instance or a bunch of other tennis 54:56 accounts like would that be helpful to you to boost your reach at all 55:01 i think it’s also helpful to engage with content that’s like yours or engage with 55:06 other social content so whether that’s going to players in your section or 55:10 players close to you in your courts and engage with their content or let them 55:14 know like hey like we have that too or hey you 55:17 should try and come out come over to our courts then you’re gonna start getting 55:21 into that um mix of content that those players are also getting served and it 55:26 just helps you out as well so it’s really building yourself in that 55:29 community i would agree i think it helps you get 55:32 into that community and like meeting different people still kind of within 55:37 that tennis niche and obviously like that’s a great opportunity to start 55:41 talking to those accounts too about collaborations or like things like that 55:46 alyssa brought that up earlier like you can invite people to collab on your 55:50 posts and it’s like it’s always something fun to do because you never 55:53 know you’re gonna reach new audiences that way i mean a perfect example if 55:57 something’s relevant to someone that i know whether it’s a different section or 56:01 even a tennis icon like we at our section we did a post about billie jean 56:06 king like around christmas i invited her as a collaborator i shot my shot and she 56:10 actually accepted it so that now lives on her page as well so it’s like you 56:14 truly never know and it doesn’t hurt that’s awesome i love that 56:22 all right well i think that’s all i think we got to everybody’s questions um 56:25 you know thanks to the audience for being so engaged this is a really great 56:28 q a here at the end um but i’d like to go ahead and thank both 56:32 of our presenters again uh alyssa amanda great job monica thanks so much for for 56:36 helping set this up and and you know helping field some of these questions as 56:39 well um 56:41 for all of our attendees don’t forget that we’re going to be sharing out that 56:44 pdf copy of the slides as well as the recording of today’s session and then 56:49 you know some of the the resources and things that were discussed those 56:52 templates and whatnot we can share share links to those for you as well 56:56 this session is available for the ceu credit so just as soon as the session 56:59 ends you’ll be automatically taken over to um the survey where you can provide 57:03 your information to get credit for attending and you just need to put your 57:06 name your email and then check off which of those organizations you’re affiliated 57:10 with and then last thing just to look at our 57:13 next webinar that’ll be in june june 20th so we’ll be talking about 57:19 recruiting adults into tennis i think we’ll do a lot of the the adult red ball 57:22 and just look at some of those more intro programs social programs and 57:26 you know really looking forward forward to that one so please be sure to invite 57:29 all of your friends your colleagues and everybody else to register 57:32 and um just so one last thank you to all of our attendees and our presenters for 57:36 their time and all of you for your engagement and just keep an eye out for 57:40 that email and don’t forget to fill out your ceu requests 57:43 thanks everyone have a great

Key takeaways

  • Tailor your social posts and focus on authenticity Tailoring posts to each social platform ensures higher engagement and better results. This way, you connect effectively with different demographics, boosting reach and engagement across all platforms. Additionally, authenticity is key to making social media a space for meaningful interactions rather than just promotional messages – building long-term loyalty.
  • Consider paid ads for targeted reach – Investing in paid social media ads allows you to target specific demographics. This helps boost visibility to new, relevant audiences – making it essential for growing membership, driving program registrations, and promoting your club beyond your current followers.
  • Maximize video content Prioritize video content, as it drives higher engagement across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Short, captivating videos grab attention quickly – making it easier to showcase events, programs, new services, or player highlights. 

Where to watch: You can watch this webinar and all other USTA webinars on their website

Listen

Podcasts are a fantastic way to gather information while on the go. 

And in the ever-evolving world of tennis and pickleball club management, staying informed is key. So, we’ve curated a list of podcasts that cover everything from financial modeling to operational success and marketing strategies. 

8. The Pickleball Brief Podcast | Robert Allen and David Feldman

The Pickleball Brief is a monthly podcast for pickleball industry professionals and business owners, hosted by Robert Allen and David Feldman. Each episode covers important topics like facility design, growth strategies, and supplier sourcing – offering insights into the business side of pickleball. 

Featuring expert guests, the podcast provides actionable advice for those looking to start, grow, or invest in a pickleball business. So whether you’re new to the industry or aiming to expand, this podcast delivers the tools and knowledge needed to gain a competitive edge.

There are over 15 episodes of The Pickleball Brief podcast available. For this reason, we’ve narrowed it down to two episodes that would be beneficial for pickleball and tennis club owners to listen to:

Audio Transcript
Welcome to another episode of The Business of Pickleball. I’m Robert Allen. My name’s Dave Feldman. Howdy. How you doing? Good. Dialing in from sunny Southern California today. I am in beautiful Idaho. It’s kind of sunny. Weather’s getting better, a little bit. Slowly but surely, we’re getting there. Spring has sprung, for sure. I still have some snow in my backyard where the sun doesn’t get, but we’re getting there. I’m going to fertilize my lawn this weekend, I think. Get ready. That sounds exciting. Yeah, yeah. Fun stuff. I’ve been here and I’m heading to Arizona next week and then you and I will rendezvous in Phoenix the following weekend. I’ve done the West Coast tour. I’ve been meeting with manufacturers and some club facility owners and some pros and then you and I are going to hook up there. I’m going to do more of that in Arizona next week and then you and I are hooking up in Phoenix and we’re going to get to see some really cool people and some of the franchise concepts and just meet some other good pickleball people. Yeah. I’m excited about it. We got some good appointments lined up, so we’re going to be meeting some good players, but we’re also going to be, I’m sure, playing a little pickleball, which will be something we have never done before, but we will soon. Yeah, that’s true. I have a very tan face right now because I did it all day yesterday and the day before. So getting to compare and contrast the Kentucky pickleball players with the Southern California pickleball players. Yeah? How do they compare? You know, there’s really good players in both places, for sure. There’s a lot more publicly available courts here, so a lot of like tucked away little single courts or double courts I’ve found in these nice locations in South Orange County and surrounding areas. I was down in San Diego for a day, got to see some stuff there. So yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of options here. Yeah. We actually went, they, they put the nets up at our local pickleball court. So I have, they were actually built last year for brand new, really nice pickleball courts just run, I guess, by the city, literally two minutes away from my house. And, but they take the nets down during the winter. So you can’t really use it. I mean, the weather’s bad enough that you couldn’t anyways, but they put them up. So we went and played pickleball there. I don’t know, yesterday, day before yesterday. And it was nice. It was fun, but I’ve been playing at our club so much that I think I’m getting spoiled. It was kind of playing outside, playing in the weather. There was like some wind and breeze and the courts are nice, but there was just a bunch of other factors, like people around and kids were playing and doing stuff. And I was like, thinking to myself, I miss my nice private pickleball club. You get spoiled, you get used to going to a place like that. And you start getting kind of spoiled, I think. Yeah. Pristine conditions make for a much nicer game, for sure. So yeah, so let’s talk about a few things. So we’ve had a few guests since it was just you and I, and was really stoked to connect with Dr. Gordon Jones. We had a good conversation with Cameron and his team over at Pickleball Insurance Program, which was great. We also got to, which is not yet released, but we had a really solid conversation with Garrett Cipher, Cipher Pickleball, and his shoes and some of the other products he’s bringing out. We’ll get to talk about that. So there’s been a lot of stuff happening. But I wanted to circle the wagons just to bring everybody up to speed on some of the progress we’ve made on the program and with our platform and what’s being birthed right now with what we think is, without being too hypey, going to be a massive game changer for the marketplace. In particular, you know, anybody who’s looking to get into the Pickleball facility, private club membership model world. I don’t know if that’s a thing. I just made it up. But there’s so many factors and variables that go into putting together a model that gets you out of the door and into the business. And then there’s all, you know, we always talk about the platform of the facility being literally like a content platform that you then have to fold in all these different revenue streams based on, you know, how much space you have, what the zoning and the regulations are in your local area, what your background and expertise are, who you can get in terms of affiliations or partnerships. But I’m gonna let you talk about that. So I’ll just flip it over to you. But yeah, you’ve, you’ve been working like a madman on this stuff. And it’s just what I’ve seen the first versions of it. It’s just awe inspiring. So I know I’m sounding hypey, but I’m not kidding. Like when you guys see this, you’re going to be blown away. What’s happening right now with what David’s been putting together, it’s not just his opinion, either. This is all coming together through a variety of conversations with a number of already operational partners and people that are in the field doing it. But I’ll let you talk about it. I’ll shut up now. Yeah, no, for sure. This so it’s a pickleball club financial model, the PCFM is what I’m nicknaming it. Again, I agree, like not to be hypey, but this is unlike anything that’s out there. I was a financial analyst, you know, I am a creative, I, you know, obviously, I have a background in marketing and writing for the last eight years. But before that, little, you know, little did many people know, I was a financial analyst for 13 years. So I have this has been bringing me back to my roots of like, crunching numbers and making financial analysis tools and working in Excel and like doing all sorts of stuff like that, which has been pretty fun. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been kind of fun. But I’ve been building this out. Like you said, there are a ton of factors to go into this. There’s so many factors that have to be considered. And every time I think like, somebody in it, it uncovers 10 or 15 other things like where I’m thinking, Oh, man, I got to get that in the financial model, too. And so I looked around. I did some legwork and tried to find out like, you know, what are other people doing? You know, if you’re trying to build a club, and you’re just randomly googling, pickleball financial model, what comes up, you know, what’s out there for people to use? Like, what are people using? And I don’t say this, again, to sound too full myself or anything, but there’s literally nothing out there. I mean, there’s a couple little dinky, very, very bare bones, financial models that you can download or something for 50 bucks or 200 bucks or something. And, and, and, and, I mean, those things are just, I don’t know how to explain it other than they’re worthless. I don’t say that to be mean to the people that developed them, but like, they’re pretty much, they’re not really going to give you any true value. And anyways, the point is, we realize that there’s something that needs to be developed here. And if, and the margins, when you’re talking about building a pickleball business, we’ve talked to enough club owners to know that it’s not, if you build it, they will come business model. You have to pay attention to the numbers. You have to pay attention to all the various components. You have to plan out meticulously all of your revenue streams and your costs and your expenses. You have to get granular to the point of like where you’re located, what state you’re in, how big is your market? All these factors go into this that other pickleball club, any club, tennis club, I looked at all models, you know, not just pickleball, but I, you know, starting up a gym, starting up a tennis club, starting up a, you know, what financial models were there out there? There’s so many, the margins are so thin in pickleball right now. It seems, it seems like it’s like a no brainer, but like I mentioned, we’re talking to a lot of clubs where the margins are not as thin or not as fat as they were hoping. And I literally talked to a club owner the other day where he’s like, man, I thought this was going to be a cash cow. When I got into this, I thought we were just going to clean house. And he’s like, yeah, and it was, it’s not as good as I thought it was going to be. They’re running on some pretty thin margins and trying to think of ways they can innovate. That’s the other thing about our models. We’re trying to incorporate all the different ways and give you the ideas of add-ons or innovations or different pricing models, different ways you can price different things. You can potentially add in to your club model business plan to make the numbers work, to improve the numbers, make it look better for investors. I don’t know. That was kind of a lot. That will potentially be done in stages too, but it’s good to know the sequence and what your options are. Another thing you were just talking about, which is interesting is market size and like the total audience of people. There’s like strata of the number of players in your market. There’s a number of players that will, or, you know, casual rep players that are more competitive that will actually, and then there’s like another, the cream on the top is the people that are willing to pay and pay consistently to play at your facility. And then we’ve had some other great interviews too, but, you know, conversations about retention and making sure that, you know, all the options are there to keep those people in your monthly recurring revenue model on a consistent basis and extend and, you know, enhance and hopefully further develop them across into other services. So all that stuff, David has been able to take and incorporate into this model. We’re going to do a private beta of this to show it to a few select people that helped contribute in the middle of April. And we don’t have a full release, release timeline on it yet, but I’m guessing not, not too far after that, after we incorporate some of those changes, maybe like May or June, something like that. I was going to say also to your point earlier that this was not developed in a silo. We did get a lot of input from other, you know, current club owners and real estate, you know, commercial real estate professionals, different people like that to get assumptions. And we’ve, you know, we’re pulling in data from, you know, reputable sources as far as like, you know, commercial, the cost of commercial real estate construction, warehouse construction, that stuff, you know, pulling in stuff from like Cushman Wakefield or whatever. But, but the point is, is this is what differentiates this model from, like I said, those cheap gimmicky models that you would potentially just download or something is this has assumptions built into the model that are vetted, informed assumptions, meaning what is the average attrition rate that you’re seeing? What’s the average, you know, profit margin that you’re seeing on your, on your retail? What’s the average? So a lot of these numbers or these underlying assumptions that are built into the model, you don’t have to go out and figure that out yourself. We’ve already had the discussions and these are built. We at least provide a starting point too. Cause I mean, you can obviously change it. I mean, if you think, well, that’s the good thing about this is like, if you think, you know, that I, I say that you’re only going to grow your membership at three, based on what we’ve seen in other clubs, your membership is going to grow at 5%, you know, every year or whatever. I’m just making some random thing up. But if you disagree with that and you think you’re going to be very aggressive and you can want to put it into seven, 10, 15%, you know, go for it. That’s what the model allows you to do. It allows you to create different scenarios. We’re going to obviously have different options for you to look at best case, worst case, most likely case scenarios so that investors can come in and say, okay, well, what were your assumptions? What if I change this to worst case scenario? What, then what does it look like? So, you know, we’re going to have scenario analysis, all that sort of stuff in there. The assumptions are built in so that you, so you can pretty much go off of a lot of stuff that we have in there, but obviously you can customize it to your specific situation or your specific preferences. That’s essentially what a financial model allows you to do. So, but it has those underlying things, those underlying data points in there. So if you aren’t unsure or if you want to do a quick look based on general, you know, industry benchmarks, then that information will be built into the model. Yeah, it’s funny because the financial overlay in any business environment is like the sobriety test, right? It’s like, are we really creating value and building something enduring or are we just flailing around in the land of hopium and happy years? I mean, you know, there’s always a honeymoon suite or a honeymoon period with any new venture or anything like that. And then the reality sets in when you start to get traction and you run up against what the market’s telling you. And then do you have the ears to hear? And then do you have the tools to measure? And that’s where a tool like this, I think, is the cornerstone of your operation. You have to be able to go back to something that can help you run analysis and give you financial clarity on a way forward. There’s going to be a lot of things included in this, like David was saying, that you probably didn’t think about when you first said, let’s start a business in pickleball. So super, super stoked about this. And when you, the other thing is we’re making it so that it can accommodate multiple business models. One of the bigger ones included is the entertainment model. So it’s got within the pickleball financial, the pickleball club financial model, it’s got a whole, basically a whole restaurant food and bar financial model built into it too. Based on those industry standards. It represents an entire set of systems, processes and operations, you know, operational realities, like a function in your business. Now that I just said that that’s totally obvious. But when you really look at it that way, and you think about it that way, those are all the things that you need to be thinking about inside of your business. And those are the things that we talk about. So by the way, if you’re not subscribed to the newsletter, our digital newsletter, please consider that it’s nominal for the value. And if you’re not doing research, you know, you should consider subscribing just for that alone, just to support that. So thank you to all our current subscribers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate you very much. All right. So I want to talk about like kind of some of the things that might be on the horizon in terms of content and what we’re talking about, you know, in the next few months. Obviously, you and I are doing the trip to Arizona to Phoenix, it’s going to be great to connect up and actually go boots on the ground in some of these bigger facilities. We’ll do like a review of it when we’re done, probably take some video of that and capture some conversations. And we can do like a retro on that. But what do you have on the docket for like things that we’re talking about in the future? It’s one of your major expenses. I mean, you’ve got your you’ve got your lease. And you’ve got your labor to basically run the club. Those are two big expenses. So we’re going to talk about how you can manage that properly. Coming up in April, we’re going to be really diving into marketing and promotion. So that’s going to be one thing we’re going to deep dive in, give people some ideas on marketing promotion. And I will say this, just so people don’t think we only speak to club owners and people that are starting clubs, we’re going to dive into marketing and promotion, not just for clubs, but for coaches, for consultants, for manufacturers, how they can be getting in touch with and marketing and marketing their products to clubs or play, you know, the end users. So we’re going to explore all facets, industry facets of marketing and promotion. So that’s going to be coming up in April. And then following on on that in May, actually, which is even more deep dive into the pro shop retail, and that sort of thing. So those are some of the big topics coming up over the next couple months. And I’m sure as we go now, you know, Robert and I are going to be in Arizona over in the next week, we’re gonna be meeting with a lot of people, things are gonna be coming up. So watch us on social media, too. We’ll try and drop some gems and some some gold nuggets from what we’re picking up and what we’re seeing on social media as well. Because we do have somebody helping us out with social media. So we can hopefully be a little bit better, more proactive on there, you’ll see us more often. True, true, true, true. You can’t just run a ragtag and expect to be successful. So I know a lot of clubs are living this reality right now. They’re seeing it. They maybe didn’t have as solid of a financial model as they should have had going into it. And so when they actually get into it, the reality is smacking them in the face. And they are starting to see that the little things do make a difference, how efficient they are at managing their costs, how well they did at negotiating their lease, how well they’re managing their labor, you know, how innovative they’re being in their marketing campaigns. These little tiny things are making the difference between the people that are going to be here in two years and the people that are not going to be here in two years. These conversations are coming up. They’ve been generated by my work on the financial model, but I just think that’s an important point to send out to the community. People that are considering franchises, people that are considering opening up a private court or private club or even cities or, you know, city officials, anybody that’s, or a country club that’s thinking about adding pickleball in. You got to think through it and think how it’s really going to, how you’re going to manage it and be dialed in. Otherwise you might get caught with your pants down. Let me say one thing on that. Cause I agree with you a million percent. And if you, it’s all about balance. You have to maintain a certain blind optimism about what you’re doing and developing and creating in the marketplace. And you also have to have the good information in your back pocket that you look at and refer to often and apply. But what I wanted to say about that was like, if you look online, it’s crazy. The amount of hype about around pickleball. I mean, it is out of control. I mean, people are creating social media posts about people that said things about anonymous quotes about the growth of pickleball. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that’s happening. It’s just like, it’s just like mushrooming out of control in terms of the hype train, which is good. It goes wide before it narrows down. There’s always quantity before quality. So we’re in that phase of the kind of explosion mode. But if you’re an operator that’s getting into it or about to get into it, and you can keep a level of realism about what’s really happening and look at what’s already being experienced in the field, not like somebody talking about, you know, some beautiful model, but somebody who’s actually been in the field up against it, you know, bumping their nose and their head and their forehead and their toes. And you can learn from that. That’s the value. Well, I mean, ultimately, that’s the value of pickleball brief, because we’re kind of standing is that I think about other franchises, like, I’m just thinking that what came to mind is Chick-fil-A and how Chick-fil-A requires that the owner be like an owner operator. And the reason they’re doing that is because they know that if they have the person in there that’s financially invested, that’s in their boots on the ground managing things, things are going to go better, obviously, versus just somebody that’s a hands-off investor that’s just going to invest and hope that it goes for the best. I think the stage we are in pickleball right now with all the different options that there are, there’s different add-ons, there’s different ways you can run tournaments, there’s different apps you can use to manage leagues, there’s different business models that you can utilize, there’s different ways to manage your labor. There’s all these things that if you have a hands-on person in there, like you said, you mentioned like having this blind optimism, which I would also say is passion. You know, if you have somebody in there that really has the passion to make sure it works, regardless of if they made some mistakes planning a year earlier, or if their lease is a little bit higher than they wanted, they’ll still figure out ways to make it work. They’ll be innovative. They’ll figure out ways to make it work. But people that aren’t in that situation, people that are, you know, maybe investing, hoping to be more hands-off, that’s where potentially something like Pickleball, Club Financial Model, or our newsletter, or like us being the watchdogs looking at stuff like that, you could glean some information on there so that you can push that down onto the people that you’re managing. Because otherwise, you’ll run into problems if you’re not on there. Let’s circle back one last thing and then we’ll wrap up. And I think it’s exactly the point you were just making is that, you know, why we started Pickleball Brief was because we saw the amount of growth and the trajectory of it. And there were people kind of rushing into it, kind of like equated to a lot of other booms in the past. And, you know, obviously it’s unique. It’s got its own set of factors. But we wanted to be the resource that would help businesses because we’re totally pro-business, pro-free market operation. I mean, like we are all about entrepreneurship and building businesses. We wanted to be a resource for people to hold handrails, for them to hold on to, to navigate this ascension, which is what it is, you know. And to have a solid footing for moving forward as a business, to succeed and endure, to actually be around in that three to five year window and beyond. Because the statistics are, if you just look at business statistics in general, you probably don’t want to ever get into business. But that being said, Pickleball, you know, if you combine your passion with some solid operations, a good product and service and good, you know, marketing and good everything else, who wouldn’t want to be in that business? I mean, it brings a lot of value to the world. So that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. Both Dave and I are extremely passionate about the sport. We love the industry, love the people we’re meeting. It’s cool to see all the stuff happening that’s happening. We want to be an integral part of its development. Yes, I definitely wasn’t trying to be a Debbie Downer today, but I just want to make sure everybody’s going into this eyes wide open. I feel like that’s a responsibility, you know, that I have. We’ve literally had conversations with people and watched them go through the entire cycle. Yeah. Yeah. Before they were super optimistic and wide-eyed, or not even wide-eyed, just like bright-eyed, bushy-tailed to like, okay, now we’re going to try this. Yeah. And, you know, I just, in our last Pickleball, in our, not the brief, but the update, I put the link about that club going, basically going out of business up in Washington. It was a big, giant club they opened up like a year ago. They were all excited and fancy. Now they’re transferring over to go-karts because Pickleball just wasn’t working out for them. So, not that I’m, you know, I’m 100% pro start a club, but I just want people to, and this is any business. There’s a set of tools that are available to everybody. It’s like a palette, right? It’s like a palette. And then you just have to know what your options are and then in what sequence, it’s like when somebody paints a painting, you don’t just, you know, you got to know like how to combine colors on the palette to get the outcome you’re looking for. It’s the same thing with what your local market is, who your player base is, what your financial resources are, the square footage of your facility, what your retailing commitment looks like. I mean, there’s people that are completely leaving retail off the table right now because they just haven’t got into it yet, but there are solutions for that coming right now. So, what do you need to know about that? Like, that could be a huge revenue stream if you manage that correctly. A lot of people don’t even have a store on their website. Why? You know, so there’s a lot of stuff where we’re working with other individuals that are creating that stuff for you guys, but we’re up against it. I actually got to take another call with a new guy out of New York who’s building something pretty cool. David. It’s been a great session. You know, I’m super blessed and I say, hopefully I say it enough, but without David, Pickleball Brief is not Pickleball Brief, period. Seriously. Such an incredible resource for the entire industry. So, I’m grateful to have you as my partner. Likewise, Robert. Likewise. We both have the gray hair to show you. You know, you were the brainchild behind the initial idea, so I’m just grateful for the opportunity to tag along.

Key takeaways

  • Financial planning is a must – Margins can be thin in the pickleball industry – making it essential to have a well-structured financial model that accounts for local market size, revenue streams, and costs like labor and leasing. Many club owners overlook granular financial details, which can lead to difficulties in achieving profitability.
  • Plan for long-term sustainability – Many enter the racquet sports business with high expectations, but the reality of managing costs and market competition can be challenging. So, it’s important to focus on long-term sustainability by being diligent about financial planning, understanding market dynamics, and continuously evaluating your business model to stay competitive. This will help you proactively avoid pitfalls and thrive in the evolving pickleball industry.
Audio Transcript
Welcome to the Business of Pickleball, the industry insider podcast that keeps you one step ahead. If you’re running a pickleball business, knowledge is power. And this podcast is where you’ll find relevant insights and information, along with interviews of industry leaders that are boots on the ground building pickleball businesses. Ready to get started? Let’s jump right into today’s episode with your hosts, Robert Allen and David Feldman. Club owners, are you struggling to figure out the perfect programming for your members? What about securing sponsors for your clubs and tournaments? Or even deciding what software is out there and what you should be using? And manufacturers and service providers, are you struggling to scale your business in the increasingly competitive pickleball market? If any of this sounds familiar, the Pickleball Brief Business Summit is your solution. Scheduled for October 17th and 18th, this virtual B2B event will deliver actionable strategies from leaders who are succeeding in today’s competitive landscape. With 13 plus expert presenters, we’re tackling your toughest challenges head on. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to gain insider knowledge and actionable strategies. Spots are filling up fast. Mark October 17th and 18th. Down on your calendar and register now at summit.pickleballbrief.com to secure your place. Again, that’s summit.pickleballbrief.com. Invest in your pickleball business’s future today. All right, everybody. Welcome to the Business of Pickleball. Pickleball by Pickleball Brief, our podcast today. Excited to have everybody here with us today. As usual, I have my good friend and co-partner in Pickleball Brief, Robert Allen. Howdy. Say hi, Robert. Thank you. Yeah. And our guest today is a good friend that I’ve had for a while. He is somebody I’ve known for a while, but his name is Ben Johnson. And I’ll let him introduce himself more in a minute here, but has a really solid background. I’m going to let him go into his background as well. He’s an accountant. He runs a real estate fund. He’s an EOS implementer now. So he’s doing a lot of cool things that I think will be very valuable to our listeners who are entrepreneurs that are running businesses and managing people and trying to figure out how to successfully operate a business. We all got into this pickleball world because we love pickleball. And some of us are good at running businesses and some of us are learning. And he’ll have a lot of insight into that. But I guess I will say welcome, Ben. Say hello and maybe start by just introducing yourself to our audience and kind of telling us a little bit about your background. Sure. Hey, thanks. Thanks, Dave and Robert, for having me. And it’s a pleasure to be here. Get to hang out with you, Dave, again for a little bit. We’ve had some fun over the years. In terms of pickleball, I’m very much a novice. Whenever I do play, I have a tendonitis in my Achilles. And so I pay for that for the couple of days. So I’m probably not going to be adding any value from a pickleball perspective, but I’m a EOS implementer now and spent time in the private equity world over the last 15, 20 years and kind of in the buying and selling businesses space, mostly on the buy side. And then running entrepreneurial businesses as a CFO and a CEO, kind of a finance guy by trade. And now I’m just really passionate about helping business owners and their leadership teams live their best life and get what they want out of their business. I spent probably 20 years in the grind in New York and San Francisco doing really interesting stuff and paying for it in lifestyle. And I think I’ve learned the value of, of being an entrepreneur, having the freedoms that come along with that and wanting to have a good life as well as, as having a, having a successful business. And so I’m, I’m really passionate about that for myself and helping others to, to be able to accomplish that in their life as well. Yeah. A lot of our audience is club owners and operators. They’re operating one, maybe starting to expand possibly operating multiple locations, but they’re managing people. They love pickleball, but they are finding that the entrepreneurial journey is very time consuming. It’s very overwhelming. It’s pulls a lot of punches and you, you know, lots of turns and twists in the road. And if you’re not careful, like you said, you probably can’t get to a point where you’re overwhelmed that you, your life, your sanity might suffer a little. So I don’t, I don’t know. It’s a good news that that’s not unique to pickleball owners like that. That’s all entrepreneurs. You know, all entrepreneurs have like 156 issues rolling around in their head all the time and trying to make sense of that and trying to harness the, the energy of their people and get it wrote, get it all pointed in the right direction. It’s not easy to do. Yeah. So you were talking a little bit, cause we, we talked for quite a while before we actually jumped on and started recording, but you were talking a little bit about how you’re getting people on the same page, some kind of fundamental management or operational strategies. You know, we were talking about even hiring people, how you’re, who you’re hiring, how you’re hiring. I don’t know, just start telling us some of the things that you’re doing to help people out there that might be struggling. Like, what are you seeing and what are the tools that are helping? Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting. We live in a kind of a interesting here in the United States, at least interesting labor market. Everybody sort of feels like it’s hard to find good people for their organization. People that care enough to show up and, you know, do a good job. And it’s like the common theme, no matter what company you’re talking about, everybody’s dealing with that problem. And really, I think it comes down to being a purpose driven organization and having a clear purpose and having a clear understanding of who you are as a company, and then attracting people to the company that, you know, share those values. And when I say values, I don’t really mean moral values. I mean, business values. So, you know, there’s a handful of maybe three to five characteristics that describe you as the owner of the business and maybe your leadership team that describes why it is you’re successful and the way that you do business. And there’s really no right or wrong answer to that. The trick is just understanding yourself well enough to know what they are. But once you know what they are, then you can go about finding people that share those core values. So, as an example, my favorite core value is abundance. I’m an abundance guy. That’s one of my core values. Like, I want to get to the top of the mountain with all of my friends that help me along the way and that are on the team. Like, I want to get there and succeed as a team together, which is sort of like opposite to scarcity, which is human nature. Human nature is, hey, I want to take as much from me as possible. That’s not me. I’m an abundance guy. And so, when I’m growing a company and like I want to surround myself with people that also are abundant minded, that are kind of of the opinion that rising tides raises all ships and we can look at our relationships in the long term instead of just short term transactions. So, what I have to do is be good at finding people that feel the same way. And it’s actually interesting. It’s less about you determining whether they feel that way and it’s more about you describing to them clearly how it is that you feel, what your core values are, so then they can self-assess. They can decide whether they fit or not. And what I teach all my clients is the anti-self. So, after you describe your core values, you help them understand what it means to be a right person in your organization, then you give them an out. And you just say, listen, this company isn’t for everybody. Like, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you resonate with these core values, then when you come here, you’re going to be at home. You’re going to love being here every day and we’re going to do great things together. But if you don’t, if these don’t resonate with you, you should go find your tribe. Like, go find the place that does fit your core values. Do yourself a favor. Don’t come because it’ll just cause a bunch of trouble for you and for us and it won’t end well. So, giving people that out from the beginning, painting the picture clearly for them and then giving them an out lets people honestly assess whether they belong. That’s really the best way that you can determine it in the half an hour that you have with the candidate. And then once you have them, then you got to reinforce it. You got to build it into your culture. A constant discussion of what the core values are and a constant pointing people back to when they are exhibiting those core values well. So, when you recognize somebody does something well, you got to tell them that in terms of the core values. Hey, you just really exhibited abundance there. That was awesome. That’s why you belong here. I’m so happy you’re here because of what you just did. That’s awesome. There was a study a long time ago that said that in order for people to hear something the first time, they have to hear it seven times. Nowadays, the new science says they need to hear it somewhere between 35 and 85 times. Just because, yeah, there’s so many messages, so many different ways that we get distracted. We’ve got to hear important things often for it to really sink in. So, you’ve got to not just hire based on those core values. You need to reinforce them constantly. But when you do, then you can fill your organization with people that actually love to be there because of who they are and who you are. And then when you couple that with purpose, you couple that with, hey, the reason we chose to make money this way is because of what it does for our community or what it does for people’s wellness or what it does for giving people a way to enjoy their competitive spirit. Whatever it is that’s the reason you picked pickleball as opposed to other gyms or Subway sandwich stores or whatever you could have done is important. And it’s important for people to understand that. And then the right people, the people that fit those core values, if they then also resonate with the purpose, then you have people that you’re not having to beg to come to work. You’re not having to pay them more to do their job. They’re there for a reason and they love it. Yeah, I know the initial question was around hiring and building a team. But as you were talking, my mind kept going to this idea of this is applicable to a membership model as well. Members of the club, members of the club, letting people self opt in to the values of the club, positioning your club and your club membership in a way to saying, hey, this is who we are. This is how we do things. This is why we’re different. This is our values. This is our when you come to such and such pickleball club. This is the way this tribe operates. And let people self opt in or self opt out and even like give them an excuse like, hey, if you’re not the type of person that likes to, you know, whatever, do this and this and be this way and not be overly competitive, but still have be competitively fun, be welcoming to other people. If that’s not you like, hey, that’s fine. Go down the street like it probably better if you didn’t come here and let people and then that would foster even the community sense within the club membership as well. Like so that I guess my point is I can see that what you were just talking about is not only applicable to employees, which that would bleed over into the membership. Obviously, if you establish that correctly, because I even think it even bleeds over into manufacturers, too, because I think of conversations that we’ve had with Robert, like we’ve had conversations with Johnny Jerbo from own pickleball. And like he thinks about that the same way of like kind of creating these values and like who his people are and who the people that buy his products, who they are. And he establishes who he is. And then he says, if that’s not you, that’s fine. Go buy a go buy a different paddle. But like this is who we are at home. And so I think of these you’re kind of resonating from a employee in a in a club and or customer. You could use the same filter on your customers or members. I love that. And the principle totally applies. And they are they definitely are transferable. One distinction I would draw there, though, is that the core values that define the culture of your company, like the employees, don’t have to be the same values as resonate with your customers. So let’s take SpaceX for an example. So SpaceX employees are going to be people that are engineering minded. Probably a lot of them are super passionate about space and probably entrepreneurial and very interested in in disruption of how things have historically been done, at least when it first started. Right. That you’re taking geniuses from NASA and you’re taking them into an entrepreneurial world that took the right employee to do that. Right. Not just the typical government worker is going to resonate with SpaceX. Well, SpaceX’s customers are governments. Right. And so what’s going to resonate with them is cost. Right. And safety and reliability. You know, maybe those are the three things that make SpaceX unique and best in the eyes of their customer. Now, some of those are similar, like the pursuit of space travel. Maybe there’s a passion in the employee base and in the customer base that’s similar, but there’s other things like the entrepreneurial spirit that’s not required on the customer side that’s really, really important on the employee side. So I guess my point is that same framework and structure can apply, but there can be two different and oftentimes are two different sets of characteristics that describe the ideal employee that fits your culture and the ideal prospect that wants to buy your product. And in fact, the way that we teach you, we just try to make everything as simple as possible and what we do. But, you know, what we try to do on the customer side is get really clear about who the ideal prospect is. So the demographic, geographic and psychographic characteristics that describe that ideal prospect so that you can be really efficient in the energy and the money you spend to attract those, that ideal prospect. And then what you say to them, you boil it down into three uniques, three things that make you unique and better in the eyes of your customer, right? That’s where the filtering mechanism comes up. So if your pickleball club is very much based on tournaments, so it’s very competitive, it’s very professional, and it’s got like really the best in the area, you know, like that’s your marketing plan is trying to get all the really best players to come and play in your club. Well, that’s going to be a different strategy than another pickleball facility down the street that’s more like, no, let’s just cater to the people that are just getting introduced to pickleball, right? And let’s make this be a kind of a no judgment zone taking from Planet Fitness, right? Like let’s make this a place where people can fall in love with this sport that we all love. There’s room for both of those, but it’s really important for a business owner to understand where they fit. Like what is their ideal prospect and then what makes them unique and better in the eyes of their ideal prospect? That’s really valuable. I feel like a lot of club owners from who I’m talking to, they get into pickleball and they want to open a club because they love pickleball and they want to open a club, but they maybe struggle to think through differentiating how they’re going to differentiate themselves. When I say differentiate, I mean like really differentiate yourself, like really focus on like, this is who we are after. And in fact, we might even tell somebody that’s on the other end of the spectrum, like this probably might not be the club for you. I think everybody’s just kind of thinking, I’m going to buy a bill or I’m going to lease a building. I’m going to build some courts and I’m going to open the doors and I’m going to program. I’m going to have some tournaments and some round robins and some open play and I’m going to make a cool website and people are going to show up. And generally, I think for some people that has been, that has been working, but as we see a decline, eventually, I mean, we can’t have like the demand or the popularity of pickleball can’t exponentially parabolically just skyrocket forever. Like it has been, there’s going to be a leveling off at some point and that, and as the tide lowers a little bit and some rocks get exposed, that’s when the people that actually, that were just kind of like, just casually going by like, oh yeah, we got some courts and people show up and we play. And that’s what we do versus people that were very strategically planning and putting processes in place. And this is where you can maybe talk processes and all that sort of stuff too. But anyways, yeah, I think you got to think through it more than like where you want to be, who you want to be talking to. Hey Ben, I’ve got a question. So just maybe we were talking before about the fact that everybody has a process, whether they’ve written it down or defined it, know about it consciously or unconsciously, they’re running a process. And I always think about the entrepreneurial journey, like from amateur entrepreneur to, you know, seasoned veteran business owner, investor type. I always think of Kiyosaki’s cashflow quadrant. I’m sure you’re familiar, you’ve probably seen that, but where you move through that journey. So thinking about that, what are your thoughts on, what are your ideas on how somebody who’s maybe new, like super passionate about pickleball made the investment is up and running. And they’re like, holy crap, this is like really challenging. And I’m having to make a lot of, a lot of adjustments quickly because there’s a lot of cash involved. How would you encourage them to think about a process to help get their hands around that and be able to process what’s happening to them real time? Yeah, that’s, that’s an awesome question. So I think you’re right. Everybody has a way of running their life and running their business, whether they recognize that or not. Let’s just call that an operating system. We all have an operating system and there are good operating systems that are effective. And then there’s self-defeating operating systems. There’s inefficient operating systems. But if you use a good operating system that’s effective, things are easier, you react to problems quicker, you solve those problems quicker, and you buy yourself more freedom, specifically freedom of time. But that also leads to freedom of resources. So to me, the thing that I think a lot of people are missing and that I was missing for a long time in my life was the part of the system that has to do with discipline and accountability. Lots and lots of people are good at vision. It’s fun to think about how the future could be. And not everybody’s forward looking, that’s fine. But most business owners are. Most entrepreneurs are. Like they had a vision for this great future that they were going to have and they just want to make it happen, right? So vision’s not usually the missing component. The missing component is the day-to-day discipline and accountability to actually achieve the vision. And so when I think about that and I think about like, okay, well, what are super fundamental basic things that if people do, it helps? And frankly, this is what’s helped me in my life is to periodically, I live in a 90-day world. Every 90 days, sit down and look at all the things I could do for the next 90 days. And from that list of things that I could do, pick the highest priorities, maybe the three to seven most important things that I’m going to spend, that I’m going to prioritize for that next 90-day period of time. So those are my highest priorities. And having clarity about my highest priorities is super valuable. But if I don’t check in on those priorities from time to time between now and 90 days from now, the chances that I actually achieve them are super low. So the other thing that is super important is to have a weekly mechanism to check back on those priorities to see how I’m doing and remind myself, oh yeah, that’s what I said was the most important thing. I got to get myself back on track and giving myself time and space to solve the things that are getting in the way for me accomplishing those things. So setting big priorities each quarter and then checking in on those on a weekly basis and solving the obstacles that are getting in the way, that really increases the chances of achieving that vision. So if you’re asking me, I’m a new pickleball operator, what could I do that I may not be doing right now? I would install some simple practices to get more discipline and accountability for yourself and for your team. Because when you think about taking it just from you and actually taking it to your three or four or five people on your team, so once a quarter you’re sitting down, you’re figuring out how last quarter went, you learn from it, make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes, recheck your vision to make sure you’re still on the same page, and then make your plan, decide on your priorities. And then once a week, you’re checking in on that together and solving issues, man, you’re going to get there. You’re going to have a much better quarter than if you don’t do that. So is that kind of where you’re going? I mean, is it really that different for manufacturers or like, let’s say a quarter installation company? Is it really all that different? That’s a good question. I mean, do you see any variations in that or any adjustments or is it fairly similar? Yeah, I mean, what’s different is the problems, like the actual things that are getting solved are very different industry to industry. But the mechanism of setting quarterly priorities and then checking in on that every week and solving the things that are getting in the way, that’s applicable to every industry. And in fact, it’s applicable in your personal life and in your family, I found. Just taking and deciding what’s most important and then holding yourself accountable to that. The other thing that can be helpful, I think, for gym owners and for manufacturers is maybe identifying a handful of metrics to look at each week. So in addition to checking in on your priorities, if you’re also looking at maybe five key measurables that help you to know if your business is on track. So if we’re talking about the club level, maybe it’s member visits last week or maybe it’s upcoming certain tournament. Like maybe you have a goal to have two tournaments every 30 days. And so it’s all right, tournament’s scheduled. That’s better because that’s forward looking. Then every week when you get into your meeting, you check in on your priorities, see how you’re doing on those. And then you look at your scorecard and you say, okay, well, I wanted to have two events scheduled in the next month. I only have one. That means this week we need to get on getting that second one scheduled. Like that’s the key to scorecards, in my opinion, is to have metrics that are looking forward that give you time to react. Then they become helpful. They’re not taskmasters. They’re helpful assistants that are reminding you of what’s important. So we get down, we sit down in the meeting. It’s like, oh yeah, we got to get one more scheduled. Okay, let’s make sure to focus on that. Bill, are you going to take that? Okay, great. That becomes a to-do. And then the next week we check back in on that to make sure that Bill actually did that. And if he didn’t, then we make sure we figure out why and solve that problem. But I think that’s maybe another part of discipline and accountability is just kind of identifying those key forward looking metrics that can help you make sure you’re keeping your business on track. I’ve heard the same thing about like what you’re saying, like look forward, set the goal, check in every month. For somebody that struggles to do that or somebody that knows that that’s what they should be doing but still doesn’t do it, what’s your answer? What’s your thought? Like what – is it a factor of like there’s something you can do to force yourself to do that? Or is it a factor of maybe that’s not for you? Maybe there’s another way if you’re – if you really are struggling with like following that model. So is it you force yourself to do it anyways or is it like maybe that’s not for me? I don’t know. I’m just like – I’m thinking as you’re saying that, I’m thinking to myself, I know this but I don’t always do it. What’s the thought process on that? Yeah. So Dave, you’re a visionary. Like you’re an idea guy. You’re a big thinker. You like to have big relationships. You like to be figuring out how to make the world a better place. And you also know how to get crap done. Like I know you. Like you can crank and you can do hard work for sure. But I think your happy place is like solving the world’s problems. And what’s super common is that entrepreneurs are more on that side of the scale. Like they’re more risk takers. They’re more problem solvers. They’re less strong at like executing systems consistently and with discipline. And it’s why when you’re building your team, you need to think about having other people on the team that are good at that, that will hold you accountable and that will bring some of that discipline to the team that you lack. So part of it is being cognizant of what you’re good at, what you’re not good at, and making sure that you build a team that has at least one person that’s going to hold you accountable because it needs to happen, right? I need it too, right? I just hired an assistant for this exact reason because I’m not very good at it either. Like I teach this stuff myself to other people and I try to use it myself, but I am not high on follow through. Like I’m an idea person. I’m a problem solver. And so I need people around me that are going to complete that circle and hold me disciplined and accountable to the system. So that’s one thing. Thing number two that comes to mind is at first, when a visionary is using a new system, it’s hard and they don’t totally see the value at first. And it’s really easy as a visionary person to just move on, move on to the next thing. Oh, that didn’t work. I’m going to do something else. And so we lose interest in that because frankly, we just didn’t give it enough time to prove out the value. But what I found is that for people that will stick with an operating system, one operating system and actually use it for months, what happens is it actually becomes their safety net. It becomes the place they fall back to when things aren’t going well. It’s like, man, we just had the worst week ever. We lost 100 members, two events canceled, and I lost my best employee. Like, holy cow, what am I going to do? Oh, I’m going to have my level. I’m going to have my meeting that I’m going to check back on my priorities. I’m going to recheck my vision. I’m going to make sure that I’m checking in on all those things. And I’m going to work together with my team to come up with a solution. We can do this. And because you’ve done this for a few months and you’ve iterated through it, you realize the value of it. So eventually, I guess it becomes the place you fall back to. It becomes your safety net. The last thing, this one is particularly helpful for me. I’ve found that people that demand a lot of themselves can also become very frustrated when they don’t perform well. And so one of the reasons we give up on things is because by trying to do it again, we have to remember our failures. So what I’ve adopted is what I call day one. And this is from Amazon. It’s one of their core values. I’ve kind of made it my own. But for me, every day is a new day. I do not have to bring any anchors from the past with me. So all my past mistakes are just in the past. I can do nothing about them. So I leave them in the past. But I do get to start each day with the wisdom that I’ve gained up to this point, as little a wisdom as there is. At least I get to have that with me. And the other side of day one is as much good as I’ve done up to this point, today’s a new day. And I got to earn it again. I got to start over and I got to bring my best today. So day one is this balance of forgiving myself of the past, not worrying about if I didn’t do it well in the past. I get to start fresh again today and then a remembrance of like, yeah, but I got to earn it again today. I got to bring in those 10 members today that I committed to do because I know that two are going to leave. And I know what my long-term goals are. I actually have got to bring it today. I can’t rest on my laurels. So I guess I would say that’s the other thing is. So in summary, you got to build a team where at least some people are good at discipline and accountability and will hold the team accountable. Over time, the system becomes your safety net and you actually go back to it. If you’ll trust it long enough, that’s what it will become. And then in the meantime, you got to give yourself grace and you got to bring it every day. And that balance helps to kind of like get past the mental block that comes from feeling like, oh, well, maybe it’s not for me. It is for you. It’s for everybody. Like everybody, you have a system, you’re just falling back to the system that you’re comfortable with, which is accomplishing what it is accomplishing for you. And you’ll have to decide whether that system’s effective or whether there’s parts of what I’m talking about or what you learn in other places that you want to incorporate into your system. Hey, Ben, one thing that I think is interesting along those lines and related is like, let’s say you’re going through those cycles and something’s not working. You accumulate enough direct experience and data to say, objectively, if somebody were to look at it, they’d say, that’s not working. But then you or somebody on your team is like, no, we’re going to, this is the way we’re going to do it. And kind of holding on, what’s that called, sunk cost, I forget what it’s called, bias or fallacy or whatever it is, where people just keep throwing, you know, good money after bad. And you got to pivot. And especially the way things are moving so fast right now. We talked to a really interesting guy today who was able to make some adjustments very quickly in his business because of that openness in the leadership team. And maybe speak to that, like, because there’s a lot of people that are having to adjust very quickly based on what’s actually happening in their unique situation. There’s certain factors that are similar, but then markets are different. How big the market size is, how many people are competitive players versus like casual players versus, you know, whatever. There’s all these different factors. So you got to find your sweet spot and you got to iterate. So my point on that is just how do you handle that mindset of being open to change and evolving quickly? Yeah, I think that’s an awesome question. And I mean, a couple of things come to mind, again, kind of thinking about a system. First of all, if you’re just an individual operating a business, it’s pretty easy. You just need to get yourself on board with that change, right? But that’s not the case for most of the people that are listening to this. You’ve got a team. You’ve got a bunch of people that have gotten used to doing things in a certain way. And so you’re going to face resistance. Change is hard. Change requires people to do more work or to do things differently or learn. And all of those things are uncomfortable and inherently they’re going to try to fight that. You’re also going to have differences of opinions. Like not everybody’s going to agree that that’s the right way to do things. So kind of going back to that weekly meeting that you’re having, that’s one of the purposes of it is to hear everybody out. Like, hey, here’s the problem. We have an issue. The issue is our food service business is underperforming. We’re just not selling the volume of food through this facility that would justify paying for the people that are making it. And so we’ve got to come up with solutions here. When you’re in a situation like that where you’ve got the right players at the table, then you’re free to have an open, honest, vulnerable conversation. And I think that’s part of what needs to happen is that there has to be a culture where people are actively listening to each other, open to have their minds changed. But also if they have something to say, they say it. There’s no consequences for being honest. You need people to be able to say that and vulnerable means that as a team, you own the results. So even if your part of the organization is failing, you’re willing to speak up and be vulnerable and saying, yeah, you know what? The food service business really is failing. I need your help. Hopefully it was the person that runs the food service business. That’s actually bringing that issue to the table, to the leadership team. And they’re saying, this isn’t working guys. We got to figure this out. That’s the kind of culture that needs to get established. But when you do have that culture and you do have a place where the right people, the people that help you lead the business are then sitting down together, well, the answer is always in the room. You know, you’ve got the answers there. If you will clearly understand what the issue is and then talk about possible solutions, that’s when you can pivot. And you need to. In entrepreneurial organizations, you have to be able to pivot quickly. And you can’t get anchored. You can’t anchor to sunk costs. Like they are what they are. You’ve got to give yourself the freedom to move forward. Kind of like day one. You just have to be able to approach each day fresh. And luckily you have a team around you that’s going to help you make good decisions. The other thing that I would really discourage people from doing is ruling by consensus. This is not a democracy. Businesses aren’t democracies. Should never vote. So the leader of the business should have open, honest, vulnerable conversations with the team. They should listen. But somebody has to make a decision. And that person that needs to make a decision is the person that owns that part of the business. So that, going back to our example, that person that runs a food service business, they brought the issue to the table. It’s their issue to solve. So once they’ve heard a solution that they think is the right solution, well, then somebody agrees to take an action to solve that. But they decide when it’s solved, okay, I think that’s the right answer. We’re going to move forward. And as a leader, you trust them to do that. Now, if they’re consistently under-executing, it might mean you have the wrong leader. They’re not in the right seat in the organization and you may need to make a change, but hopefully they are making good decisions. Now, sometimes as an owner, you’re going to see that they’re making real, really bad decisions. So you got to deal with that. But better to create a culture where they’re empowered to make those decisions and they’re also held accountable for those results. I kind of went a couple of different directions on that and sorry, but did that kind of answer your question? Yeah, solid feedback, solid. When somebody doesn’t perform, you’ve got to, what I was saying, I like that idea about what you’re saying that you have to empower people to do the things and you let them do that and you have to let them make their mistakes and do things, even though you don’t want to let them make mistakes, I’m guessing as a leader, obviously, because that means money for you, especially in these clubs that have thin margins. Like the margin for error and letting people just go is thin. But if you don’t do that, the alternative is everything flows up to you as the leader and you’re overwhelmed with everything. So the alternative is maybe talk about this. This is when you were talking. This is what I was thinking is like there’s this thin line, a balancing act between making, empowering your leaders or your team to do what you need them to do and creating a culture that allows that so that you can step away or step up and have a bigger vision or whatever you’re trying to do. And letting that happen, knowing that there’s going to be some bumps versus not doing that, creating a team of yes mans or yes sirs. And then you have everything on your plate all the time and you’re running around pulling your hair out. I don’t know. Like, how do you, I don’t know what my question is even, but like, that’s just a thought. Yeah. I think I know where you’re going with this and it’s super common, right? Like it’s really hard as a business owner where you’ve put your money on the table, your reputation on the table, you’re sacrificing things at home to be able to try to make this dream become a reality. And then somebody says, Hey, you need to trust your people to like do the work. It’s really hard for you to like actually let go of that and hand it to them unless three things are the case. Well, actually four. First is they’re a right person for your organization. You know, that they’re aligned with your culture. You know, they’re a right person and they belong in your organization. But then from there with respect to what they’re responsible for, they really need to get it. Like they need to understand it inherently how to do that. Well, like that role that you’re asking them to do, they need to want to do it. It needs to be something that they actually want to do with their time. And they need to have the capacity to do it well. And when I say capacity, what I mean is the time capacity, the physical capacity, the mental and emotional capacity. And you’ve got to make a determination before you’re willing to like let go and let them take it. You need to feel comfortable that, yeah, they get it. They get how to do it well. They really want to do it. And they have the capacity to do it well. There’s nothing structural that gets in their way of doing it well. Well, then you as the business owner are going to be a lot more comfortable letting them take it. So I’ll give you an example. I just hired an assistant to help me run my practice. And I’m really, really bad at things like scheduling and managing email communication and just the logistics, the backend administrative work in my business. I’m bad at it. It takes a lot of energy and I unconsciously avoid it because I hate it. And I finally realized like, okay, well, I’ve got to let go of that vine, but that involves communicating with my clients. That involves like my reputation. And if we don’t do this well, that could impact my practice. So I had to find somebody that really does get, want, and have capacity for it. I found a gal, her name’s Heather, and she has done this before. She’s done this actually for eight years for other people that do what I do. She actually has seen it done really well by people in my industry doing exactly what I do. And I’ve had fantastic feedback from the people that she’s worked with on how well she did. So I know she gets it. Then it was about, well, do you want it? Like, and I went through the vetting process of, okay, let me help you understand what I need you to do. And she was able to convince me that she truly wants that in various ways. She was able to show me, yep, she wants it. And then it was capacity. Okay. This is how much time I think it’s going to take. This is physically what it’s going to take. We kind of went through all that stuff time-wise and everything like, okay, this is what it looks like to be a good practice or business managers, what she’s called. And I have full confidence that she does have capacity for it. And because of that, I’m finding myself very quickly handing it off to her. I’m letting her email my clients. I’m letting her help to make sure that my business runs the way that it’s supposed to in the background because she gets it, wants it, has capacity for it. So I’m not saying, hey, delegate to people that don’t get it and just let it go. That’s a disaster. You shouldn’t do that. But you should be finding people. You have to have a very clear picture of what you need them to do. Break it down into four to seven roles of their job and be able to describe those very clearly and then find somebody that actually gets, wants, and has capacity for those things you need. And I guess that’s the other, I should talk about that for a second. So getting clarity about what you need is actually a lot harder than it’s actually where a lot of the work gets done. If you get clarity on specifically what you need that role to do, you are so much more likely to find the right person for it because they can then understand what needs to happen. They can self-assess. And also you getting that clarity helps you to know what you’re letting go of. If you keep ambiguity in what they’re going to do, well, you’re setting everyone up for failure. So get clarity about what you need, what you need their seat on the bus to be responsible for, and then go out and find somebody that GW sees those roles. And then you’re going to feel really comfortable letting go like I have been to Heather. I mean, like you said, all these practices that we’re talking about are easier said than done because everything that you say, I think to myself, yeah, I know that. I know that. I know that. But then I look at myself in daily practice and how I’m managing people, our team, my life, everything that I’m doing. And I think, okay, I could, you know, there’s room for improvement here because it’s true. I have a question. Ben, is there ever a time when there’s no room for improvement? Never because businesses change, markets change, people change. Like there is always, always room for improvement. So like, I don’t think that’s the right. You’re setting yourself up maybe Dave for unhappiness by like feeling like if there’s room for improvement, that’s failure. That’s totally not true. You’re making progress every day and you got to, that’s part of the mentality I think we all have to have as, as business owners, especially in a, in an industry like pickleball, that’s so new and you’re facing new problems every day. If you don’t pause every week or so, sometimes every day to just look at the gains, look at like, okay, this is the progress we’ve made before we tackle the problems. Let’s recognize the progress. There’s a great book. It’s called the gap and the gain by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. It’s a really good one for any entrepreneur to read because it may, it helps you to realize that in order to really lead well, you’ve got to be able to clearly see the gains as well as what you lack. If you only live in the world that you lack in, you’re going to be unhappy and you will not succeed nearly to the level that you would if you can have a good balance between the two. So what I would say, Dave, is that what you just said, that was gap thinking. Gap thinking is important because you’ve got to be able to see the room for improvement. You need to then balance that with some gain thinking to help you to fully understand where you’re at. Like the progress that you guys have made, you guys have built this organization really quite quickly into something that’s very valuable for your listeners. And it’s, it’s very meaningful, right? So recognizing all that before you then tackle the, the tough stuff puts you in the right frame of mind. And by the way, in your weekly meeting, do that first, one personal, one business piece of good news. Those two things helps to bring the team together, helps everybody stay on the same page about what’s going on and start the meeting in a good headspace. If you ever get to that meeting or you’re sitting down and you’re like, okay, I want to live in the gain. I just can’t think of anything. The next best thing is to think of something you’re grateful for. It does the same thing to your brain. Negativity cannot exist in a grateful mind simultaneously. And so by, by thinking of something that you’re grateful for, you all accomplish the same thing and allow yourself to get into the right mentality to then lead in the best way possible. Good stuff. Amen to that. It’s great stuff. Yeah. What, what are you saying in that other than amen? So I think we’re starting to wrap up here. I think we’re going to start winding down, but I don’t know if any last questions from Robert or any last thoughts from Ben, maybe, I don’t know, Robert. Yeah. So in your practice, you work with quite a few clients. You look at a lot of businesses, you see a lot of different situations based on the youth of this industry. And obviously there’s a lot of enthusiasm in this first push, this first wave of like new entrepreneurship for these facilities. What do you think when a lot of stuff is being created, some of it almost instantaneously is the most important thing for these entrepreneurs to be thinking about as a leader when all hell breaks loose and, and things don’t go exactly the way that they had anticipated. I guess it’s kind of a further refinement of the original question. Like what tools can they use as an individual to reframe obviously the gratitude and the positive thinking stuff is really important, but if you’re the person with everything on the line, how do you recommend they sort through all of that? What tools, what resources do you think are available or that you would recommend somebody to dig into? So a couple of years ago I launched a private equity fund and it was the most hectic demanding time of my life. And even though oftentimes I would be home with my family around dinnertime, my body was there, but my brain was not. Like I was thinking about the deal and because it’s part of launching the private equity fund. I was also doing the first deal that was going to launch the fund. Trying to hold that thing all together took everything I had and it was a kind of a dark time for a lot of reasons. So kind of from that frame of mind, what would I have wished I knew better then that would have helped me through that? And it’s going to sound simple, but there’s a thing called clarity breaks, which means that you take yourself away from the day to day. You take yourself away from your workplace, your home to a place where you can be quiet and not be distracted. And you bring to that clarity break a question, maybe your most burning question. You turn off your phone. You don’t bring your computer. This is not a time for AI to tell you what to do. Like this is a time to just let your brain start working on some of these really tough problems. And maybe it’s only an hour, but in that hour, if you bring a legal pad and a good question, you can get amazing answers to those questions. You really need that as a leader. If you’re not taking a clarity break, who the heck is? Like who is answering the most important questions if you’re not? Like you need to invest that time into getting clarity, basically walking up to the top of the tower, to see what’s coming, you know, solving those biggest problems. And really the answers are in your head. If you will just give yourself a chance to listen to what your own brain has to say about these things, you will get insights that will amaze you. I’ve solved some of my biggest problems in the last couple of years, whether that’s business or family in clarity breaks. So I’m super grateful for that tool. So there’s others, but that’s probably the one that bubbles up the most that I think most people don’t do. Right. We get so in the weeds, like especially as startups and pretty much every, almost 90% of our listeners are startups in one form or another. And in a startup, when you’re wearing so many hats and you’re doing so many things and you’re in the weeds every day, just trying to, I got to get this done. I got to get this done. I got to get this done. I got to get this done. What you said just really resonated with me, like this whole, like, well, if you’re not thinking, if you’re not taking an hour to sit down and think who is, that’s a great thought. You got to build that into your calendar and you got to treat it sacred. Like you actually schedule. You also have to kind of know that you’re up against it and now would be a time to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Because sometimes the reaction is, what’s the saying? Don’t just do something, sit there the other way around. You know, people say that the other way, but it’s true. I mean, a lot of times it’s like, I’ll just double down on more inefficient behavior and force my way into some solution, which doesn’t work. The interesting thing I found, everybody does clarity breaks in their own way. I found that my questions actually usually don’t come in my clarity break. My questions come at random times. So I have a place where I’m collecting my questions. So then when I get to my clarity break, I can go back to my questions and decide, all right, this is the one I’m tackling. And so it’s good to just have a, like a one note or whatever on your phone where it’s like, all right, here are my clarity break questions. And then when you actually get to that time that you’ve scheduled on your calendar, you’re in that peaceful place, then you can pick your, before you turn your phone off, pick your question. That’s good. Well, last thoughts from you, Ben, we’ve really appreciated you having you on here. And of course you can probably in your last kind of closing thoughts, let us know a little bit about more about your company too. And how, if people want to get all of you, feel free to share that. And we’ll put that in the podcast notes as well. So the people can contact you if they want to learn more about what you’re doing or get your help in a form or another, but maybe wrap it up with any closing thoughts that you have that would be very valuable takeaways. I know we’ve already got a whole stack of them, but any last valuable takeaways for our listening audience and then we’ll wrap it up. Yeah, no, this has been great guys. It’s been fun chatting with you and thinking about your listeners and what they’re facing. And yeah, I mean, one of the things I have in my office is that quote from Theodore Roosevelt about the man in the arena. Like that’s what a lot of these guys are that are listening to this. You know, you’re trying to, you’re trying to start a pickleball business in a place where some people don’t even know about that yet. And it’s, it’s getting more, more well-known, but still like turning a business into a reality is like that you’re the man in the arena. If there is, that’s, that’s what you are. And it’s super, super valuable that people are willing to do that. You know, I’m, I’m grateful for the person that built the climbing gym two miles from my house. It’s changed my family’s life. My daughter in particular loves climbing and she would have never been introduced to it. Had somebody not been willing to take that risk and introduce that to our community. So super pumped that there’s, there’s people out there introducing pickleball to places that that’s not available. And it’s meaningful to the people that, that are going to enjoy it. So like, it’s worth all the hassle and all the crap that you have to wade through to make this thing work. And I’m happy for what you guys are doing for the, for the community of kind of getting resources out there that, and kind of sharing information that, that makes it easier for people to get to success. So anyway, love it. People can email me. I’m ben.johnson at EOS worldwide. If they have any questions or there’s anything I can do to answer stuff that we’re talk more about the stuff that we talked about today, or also one recommendation is a lot of what I talked about is in a book called traction. And if anybody wants a copy of that book, I’m happy to send you one that in a lot of ways that can get you there, especially with a small team, lots of times you don’t need a coach to help you do it. When it’s just three or four of you, the principles are super valuable though. So just getting the book in your hands and reading it, I think you can make a ton of progress and I’m always here for questions, but yeah. So if anybody wants a copy of traction, just let me know. If anybody has any questions again, just let me know. Yeah. Thanks guys. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you, man. We appreciate it very much. And we’ll have links to everything in the show notes, as David said earlier. So we’ll be able to find him both on your website and on LinkedIn as well. Awesome. Yeah. Appreciate it, Ben. Thanks for coming on with us today. Thanks to everyone, Robert, as usual. Join us next time. Check out pickleballbrief.com for more resources and information on how to help run your club and reach the success that you’re after. We’re here for your success as well. We’re just trying to grow this industry. We do have a purpose of expanding the sport of pickleball. That is our focus. That’s our drive. We believe in it. Like most of our listeners here do as well. So one of the coolest things about the pickleball industry is that everybody I found is so abundance. Like Ben said, like there is a very tangible abundance mindset within this industry so far from everything that I’ve experienced over the last year. So appreciate everything that everybody’s doing. Thanks for joining us. And until next time, have a great day. Thank you for joining us on The Business of Pickleball. We hope you found today’s episode packed with valuable insights and actionable advice. To stay even more informed and ahead of the competition, subscribe to Pickleball Brief at subscribe.pickleballbrief.com. Access our in-depth monthly briefings and updates along with our Pickleball Club financial model, industry supplier database, information on upcoming events, and more. Until next time, keep innovating and excelling in the pickleball industry. See you in the next episode.

Key takeaways

  • Hire with core values in mind – Hiring based on your core values ensures that employees naturally align with your club and overall vision. This fosters a cohesive culture and long-term success. The same principle also applies to members. Attract those who resonate with the club’s values for a stronger community.
  • Keep yourself accountable – Establish quarterly priorities and review them regularly to maintain focus and structure. Visionary leaders should balance their strengths by building a team with strong execution skills, ensuring discipline and accountability in day-to-day operations to drive long-term success for the club.

Where to listen: The Pickleball Brief podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Podopolo. The Pickleball Brief also offers a subscription-based newsletter that covers the same types of topics as the podcast, available on their website. 

9. The Tennis Business Academy Podcast | David Martins

The Tennis Business Academy Podcast, hosted by former ATP-ranked player and business consultant David Martins, provides bite-sized ideas on vital off-court skills like marketing, team leadership, coach development, and customer experience. 

With over 20 years of experience in tennis and business, David shares useful tips to help clubs grow, stand out, and thrive. If your goal is to get more people playing and enjoying tennis, this podcast is an excellent resource for you.

The Tennis Business Academy Podcast includes 30 episodes; here’s the episode we recommend checking out:

Audio Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode number 28 of the Tennis Business Academy Podcast. In today’s episode, I want to go through a relatively long list of off-court things that you have to do and decisions that you have to make in order to create a successful tennis business. My goal here is just to really illustrate how much goes into creating a successful tennis business or club, which is quite a lot. Some of these tasks will be really simple to tackle, but they do represent important decisions that will take your business or club in a specific direction and should obviously be considered carefully, like deciding on pricing, for example. It’s a quick thing to do, but could have far-reaching effects for your business, so you should think it through. The other goals for this episode are to show you perhaps some tasks or activities that you haven’t considered yet, but that still need to be done, and also to maybe help you decide if there are any tasks that you feel like you should do yourself and others that maybe you should outsource. Often we try to do everything ourselves and that’s not necessarily the best way of doing things. Seeing this list of activities all at the same time might prompt you to think that maybe you are trying to do too many things and that maybe you’ll be better off outsourcing some of them. And the last thing that I’ll mention before we get started is that I’ve added links to other relevant episodes in the transcript. So you can always check those out if you want to learn more specific topic that I mentioned today. Okay, with all that said, let’s go through the list of 31 things you need to do off court to create a successful tennis business. Number one, decide on the products and services that you want to sell. Yes, we’re all selling tennis in one way or another, but what exactly are you selling? Are you selling coaching? And if so, what type of coaching? Just individual lessons, individuals and groups, cardio tennis as well, what age groups, what levels of ability? And is it just coaching? What about memberships, pay to play, restringing services, pro shop, bar or cafe area, any other sports or activities and so on. The first big decision you need to make is around what you are selling exactly. So make sure that you’ve made this decision consciously. Number two, decide on pricing. Once you’ve decided what you’re selling, you then need to decide how much you’re selling it for, of course. What you end up charging will be influenced by a number of factors. But just consider what kind of brand you’re trying to create and charge accordingly. If your idea is to create a more exclusive premium brand, then you should charge more. If instead you want more people playing, then perhaps you should charge less. Just bear in mind that whatever pricing you end up going for, the market will ultimately decide if they’re willing to pay for it or not. So be prepared to learn about what the right pricing is for your business as you go. Number three, decide on payment model. When will you actually charge people? Monthly? Quarterly? Yearly? Course by course? Via direct debit or one-off card payments? Different payment models will require very different admin processes and different types of customer interactions. So think through what will be best for your situation and what you’re trying to achieve. Number four, create a well-defined and unique brand. A brand that you can be proud of and that represents the business or the club well. And please use a professional to do this with you. If you don’t know any, email me and I can put you in touch with someone who knows how to create quality brands. Number five, create a comprehensive terms and conditions document. This document needs to be fair to both your business and the customers. And you need to make sure to give all your customers the chance to see and agree to it. No point in creating a good document that customers are never given the chance of seeing. Number six, decide on the software you will use to manage payments and bookings. This is probably the most important piece of software you’ll use, so choose it wisely. Make sure you test and trial it yourself properly before committing to use it for the business. And in case you’re still using bank transfers and cash, it is my strong opinion that you should stop doing that and use a piece of software that will make taking payments and bookings easier for yourself and your customers. Number seven, hire coaches and other staff, including negotiating and signing contracts with them. This is most certainly a very important part of any successful business. Number eight, negotiate contracts with a venue. If you don’t own the venue where you work, this is probably one of the single most important tasks you’ll ever have to deal with. Number nine, create strong health and safety and safeguarding procedures and make sure that all relevant people are appropriately trained. Number 10, create a system to manage and maintain equipment, inventory and facilities. Some sort of process that ensures that all equipment, inventory and facilities are kept in good order. You will probably include some sort of checklist or checklists and a recurring appointment to check these things every week, every month, every year or whatever might be relevant. Number 11, collect testimonials from happy customers. Showcasing happy customers is one of the best ways to persuade other people to join. So make sure that you have a plan to collect testimonials from happy customers regularly. These can then be used on your website, in emails, on social media, flyers, banners and anywhere else that you think is relevant. Number 12, hire a professional photographer, videographer to take photos and videos of your club and or coaching sessions. These photos and videos can then be used as marketing materials that will serve you for years to come on your website, on social media, flyers, banners, etc. We are lucky that the activity that we’re trying to sell looks cool, unlike, for example, an insurance company, which doesn’t really have anything cool to show potential customers. So we should make sure that we have good photos and videos that visually illustrate to people what it feels like to play tennis. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. Number 13, set up a referral scheme. A program that rewards customers who refer your organization to their friends and family. Should be fairly easy to set up. Number 14, run regular customer feedback surveys at least once a year. And most importantly, you should develop a system for taking the feedback you receive and turn it into actions that benefit your customers and your business. Number 15, set up a reporting system that allows you to track the key metrics for your business, including the financial ones, and make sure to run it consistently so you always know how your business is performing. Consistently means at least once a month. Number 16, set up a tax record keeping system. Create a system for keeping all the information needed for tax purposes well organized. Boring, but needs to be done. Number 17, set up insurance for your business. Make sure that your business or club has the appropriate level of insurance. Again, very boring, but needs to be done. Number 18, create an onboarding process for new staff to ensure that they understand how things are done in your business or club. Even if you hire really experienced staff, you should still have a process in place to help them understand how you do things. Every business is different, so you shouldn’t expect people to magically know how things run in your business. Number 19, create training processes for coaches and other staff. The idea being that at some point you will need to hire someone who you will need to train to be able to do the job you’d like them to do well. Junior coaches are a great example of where a solid training program will be needed. Number 20, create a quality website that looks like it was built in the 21st century, has a clearly defined goal, and is easy and intuitive to use. Number 21, create an annual events calendar. Basically answer the question, what activities and events are you running and trying to sell throughout the year? You need to know which activities and events you will be running each year so that you can plan for them in advance. Don’t wait until the last minute to decide what you’re doing. Number 22, create an annual marketing calendar. Tied to the events and activities that you have decided to run, you want to create a marketing calendar that lists all activities that you’ll use to promote those events. Because if you’ve decided to run an event or activity, you want to market it well and in advance so that that event is a success. Number 23, set up a solid email marketing system. This system should automatically add people to your email list and allow you to easily email them whenever you want. If it’s a struggle to keep your email list organized and or to email people whenever you want, then your email marketing system isn’t set up properly and you should fix it. Number 24, send regular emails to your customers and your potential customers. Basically anyone that’s ever given you their email address and said that was happy to receive your emails going forward. Email is one of the best ways, if not the best way, to keep in touch with customers and potential customers and inform them of what is happening in your business or club. So you should use it extensively. Number 25, create a social media plan. What will you post, where will you post and when will you post? Social media is one of the best ways to stay top of mind with your customers and potential customers. So put some time into thinking about how you want to use it. Number 26, post on social media regularly. Actually execute against your social media plan or get someone else to do it for you. Number 27, run regular digital advertising campaigns like Facebook ads and Google ads for example. When done well, these types of campaigns have the power to generate a lot of interest in your services in a short period of time. So it’s definitely worth you running a few of these each year. journey for new customers. What type of initiatives will you run to make new customers feel welcome and get them on the path to becoming loyal to your business? A little thought put into this sort of thing can yield really good results in terms of customer retention and customer happiness. Number 30, establish working relationships with nearby schools. Ideally so you can deliver tennis session to the kids in the school and market your club program to them and their parents. Number 31, establish partnerships with local businesses and other local organizations. From my perspective, it’s always a good idea to embed yourself into your local community as much as possible. So if you can, look to establish partnerships with local businesses and local organizations as it’s likely that there will be ways in which you can help each other out. Alright, there’s the list of 31 things that you need to do off court. Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive list. I’m sure that there are other things that need to be addressed. But hopefully this is a good starting point for you if you had never thought about how much actually needs to be done off court to create a successful tennis business. And if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, just remember that you don’t need to tackle all of these at the same time. No business is perfect. There’s always something that needs to be done or improved upon. So just find a way to work through the things that matter, even if it takes you a bit longer than you’d like to get there. Alright, that’s it for today’s episode. As always, I’ll be back next week with another installment of the Tennis Business Academy podcast. Until then, and thanks for tuning in. Bye.

Key takeaways

  • Set up a solid payment and booking system – Selecting reliable club management software for managing payments and bookings streamlines operations and enhances customer experience. Avoid pen-and-paper methods and adopt digital solutions that automate processes and reduce administrative burden.
  • Outsource where necessary – Trying to do everything yourself may not be the best approach. Identifying tasks that can be outsourced – such as marketing, admin, or even food and beverage services via food trucks – allows you to focus on core areas of your club while improving overall efficiency and reducing stress.
  • Choose the right payment model – Selecting the right payment model (monthly, quarterly, or one-time) impacts your club’s cash flow and customer relationships. Options like direct debit vs. one-off payments affect the administrative processes, so choose one that fits your business goals and customer convenience.

Where to listen: This podcast is available directly on The Tennis Business Academy website, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. 

10. CourtReserve Unscripted | Ashley Owens

10 Minute MBA, hosted by Scott D. Clary, is a straightforward, daily podcast tailored for entrepreneurs. It focuses on general business strategies like sales tactics, customer retention, and leadership tips. 

For tennis and pickleball club owners, the podcast is highly relevant – providing tips on improving business efficiency, enhancing satisfaction, and boosting revenue. Its concise format allows busy club owners to quickly learn new strategies to grow their clubs and streamline operations.

10 Minute MBA has over 250 episodes. So if you don’t know where to start, here are two episodes we think would be helpful to club owners:

Key takeaways

  • Leverage competitor reviews – Regularly analyze competitors’ customer reviews to identify common complaints and popular features. Then, apply these insights to improve your club’s offerings – enhancing member experience and gaining a competitive edge.
  • Monitor competitors’ pricing strategies – Routinely track competitors’ pricing changes and feature offerings to identify gaps where you can add value or adjust pricing. This allows your club to differentiate itself – offering more competitive packages or services that appeal to potential members.

Key takeaways

  • Maximize profit from existing customers Instead of focusing solely on acquiring new members, tap into your existing customer base. Engage loyal members by offering higher-value services or products. And, use their feedback to refine offerings – increasing revenue without the high cost of new customer acquisition.
  • Resurrect inactive leads Revisit leads that initially showed interest, but didn’t convert. By nurturing these prospects with targeted offers, discounts, or special events, you can re-engage potential members. This low-cost strategy helps fill classes and memberships without the expense of acquiring completely new customers.

Where to listen: 10 Minute MBA is available anywhere you can listen to podcasts including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, iHeartRadio, and more. 

Attend

Attending industry events and conferences is extremely beneficial and valuable to new and experienced club owners. And that’s because these events are packed with useful information and provide an accelerated learning environment. So, you gain hands-on experience and discover innovative strategies to propel your club forward in just a few days. 

Let’s take a look at two events designed specifically for pickleball and tennis club owners.

11. Club Mastermind | Devan Egan and Mike Egan

Club Mastermind, created by Devan and Mike Egan, is a three-day event for pickleball club owners. It is designed to help you improve operations, increase revenue, and minimize expenses through accelerated learning. It features curated training sessions, networking opportunities, and guidance from industry experts. 

Attendees of Club Mastermind have found it to be a transformative experience. Co-Founder of Dill Dinkers, Will Richards shares,

“We learned a ton from Egan’s program, and also realized we were already doing a lot of things right.” 

Every Club Mastermind event is different in terms of agenda and keynote speakers. But, here’s what you can generally expect at the event:

Key takeaways

  • Learn from successful club owners – Learn from the proven success of leading clubs like Club Pickleball USA and Old Coast Pickleball. Discover the strategies both clubs used to scale operations, boost revenue, and enhance member engagement. 
  • Network and collaborate– Participants can network and connect with peers and industry leaders, fostering advantageous partnerships and collaborations.
  • Engage in CourtReserve software training – Take an in-depth look at the software that helps Club Pickleball USA and 1,500+ other clubs thrive. Learn how our solution can help your club by automating processes, streamlining operations, and more.
  • Receive ongoing support – Attendees will receive a monthly Club Mastermind webinar and access to a private Facebook group, ensuring long-term guidance and success beyond the event.

Where to attend: Club Mastermind is a yearly event, visit their website to find out when and where the next one will be held. 

12. CourtReserve Catalyst: The Invited Tour | CourtReserve

CourtReserve Catalyst: The Invited Tour is an event designed for current CourtReserve users and those interested in learning more about club management systems

Previously, this was a two-day event held in St. Augustine, FL. But now, CourtReserve is taking this user conference on tour across the United States. And, we’ve partnered with Invited to host this event at their premier locations nationwide. 

Each stop will be an all day event, providing attendees with extensive training on maximizing the use of CourtReserve and boosting operational efficiency. 

Instagram Video Transcript
Hi everyone, it’s Ashley with Court Reserve. It is that time of year. I’m so excited to announce that we are planning for the next Court Reserve Catalyst User Conference. We’re calling it the Invited Tour. We’re actually going to partner with invited around the country and do one-day user conferences on Court Reserve. If you’re an admin in Court Reserve, if you’re a super user, you should come for the one-day. We’re going to start with in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s going to be Wednesday, December 11th. It’s going to be all day, 8 to 5. We’re going to network together. We’re going to do classroom style teachings on financials, how to maximize your Court Reserve platform. If you’re an admin, a front desk, an instructor, a manager, a director, if you are using Court Reserve and you want to maximize what you know and how you use the to your boss and make it really easy so that you can say, hey, I want to go. I want to maximize my efforts in Court Reserve. We’re going to limit it to 40 people, keep it nice and simple and together. So don’t wait. Sign up today. We look forward to seeing you in Charlotte.

Key takeaways

  • Network with CourtReserve experts and peers – This one-of-a-kind event offers you the unique opportunity to connect with our dedicated team and other users – allowing you to exchange experiences, troubleshoot challenges, discover new trends, and foster a supportive network that can help propel your business forward.
  • Master CourtReserve – Gain a comprehensive understanding of how to fully leverage CourtReserve’s capabilities through in-depth training sessions. 
  • Get personalized guidance – Receive one-on-one training and tailored support from product experts. Unlock new features, optimize your account, and customize solutions to meet your unique business needs. 

Where to attend: Check out our dedicated Catalyst page for upcoming event dates and agendas.

Take your club to the next level with CourtReserve

Operating a pickleball or tennis club can be challenging, no matter what stage you’re at. We hope these 12 resources help you grow your business by providing meaningful perspectives and actionable strategies.

In addition to these resources, CourtReserve offers a variety of educational tools tailored for pickleball and tennis club owners. Whether you’re seeking guidance through our webinars, blog posts, or events, we want you to have the knowledge and support needed to make informed decisions and thrive in this competitive space.

And, if you’re looking to enhance your tennis or pickleball club further, CourtReserve offers a comprehensive club management system. Our solution is designed to help you streamline your operations, improve member experiences, and drive revenue. So, you can focus on what matters most—growing your club.

Get started with CourtReserve today and unlock the full potential of your club. Book a call below!