Episode 25 - If you Build it, They WILL Come!

[00:00:01] Speaker A: I love it. I especially love that you love it. [00:00:05] Speaker B: Yeah. You love it. Nice. [00:00:07] Speaker A: It's. It's a little gritty. [00:00:08] Speaker B: I love this. [00:00:09] Speaker A: Fun. [00:00:17] Speaker B: I could listen to that part. Just the beginning of my pickleball tournaments. Just right there. [00:00:23] Speaker A: Yeah. What's your playlist? My theme songs of all my podcasts. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Take podcast theme songs and mix them myself. [00:00:29] Speaker A: I have so many podcasts, I can't anymore. [00:00:33] Speaker B: I'm ahead of the game. [00:00:34] Speaker A: My new pastime is editing. [00:00:38] Speaker B: It really has become sort of. Sort of that. [00:00:41] Speaker A: What did you do? Do While you're recovering, Editing. [00:00:46] Speaker B: Hey, okay, this concept of goodness. What do I do? I'm a. I'm a. I'm trying to get pickleball going in my community, or I'm a club leader or I got tasked with having to put together a scramb around Robin or whatever. You know, what the heck do I do? And obviously you work for pickup place. And we're not trying to create a pickup, like, commercial here, but we're saying, like, what should you consider? What should you do? What are some options that you have? Clearly, pickle play being one of them. We'll get to that. But that's really where we're at right here, right? [00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Let me add a little bit more to that foundation. So those who are in the pickleball industry, whether it's an app or a product, we often find ourselves problem solving with our customers because it is a growing sport. It's growing quickly, still some gaps. And because we're in the industry and when a lot of times we're players or we're coaches or we're instructors, people, we get to know them. And so then they start asking us questions that may or may not pertain to what we're offering on the business side. And so we thought it would be good to just cover some questions, some frequently asked questions that can help whether they're in a transition point with their club or if they are brand new to facility management or club management. Because once you open. Yeah, once you open your doors, you're going to have. You're going to have. Some people are going to be there. Exactly. It really is a build it and they will come situations. [00:02:23] Speaker B: Like one of your examples today was this guy's friend owns a gym, and there's open space time during that gym or open space time at that gym. And he was like, hey, buddy, can I have pickleball in here? And the buddy was like, sure, yeah. And now the guy's like, now what do I do? [00:02:37] Speaker A: They're the Only facility in like 20 mile radius. [00:02:40] Speaker B: They're gonna get slammed. [00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So he was like asking me things about pricing and, you know, all these different things. And I was like, well, this is a lot longer conversation than the 30 minute demo, but I want to help you. [00:02:54] Speaker B: This may sound pretty arrogant, but they came to the right place. We're ahead of the game. Somewhat tongue in cheek. We have actually worked hard to be ahead of the game. Not to pat ourselves on the back, but because we love pickleball. We love pickleball, and we want great things to happen in pickleball. So we started leagues like six. It's over. It's been over six years ago. [00:03:17] Speaker A: It's crazy. [00:03:18] Speaker B: And in pickleball years, that's forever. Because most of the people that play today weren't playing six years ago. I mean, there's a lot of people then, but not even remotely like it is today. Right. It's grown so much in the last six years. And Covid accelerated that as we've talked about. [00:03:30] Speaker A: Yep. [00:03:31] Speaker B: But you bring up some really good topics. And so I think we should just kind of do a little. Little faq. [00:03:37] Speaker A: Let's do it. [00:03:38] Speaker B: Little pickle fact. [00:03:39] Speaker A: Yes. So I guess I think the biggest thing, whether you are a pickleball business or a brand new business of any type is pricing. I know that when we had our coffee shops trying to figure out how much to charge for a latte versus how much to charge for a cookie, that was some serious. We had fights over that. Like arguments. And you always wanted to go low, and I always wanted to go high. [00:04:06] Speaker B: I thought you were going to say you always won, but then you said wanted, and I was like, darn it. [00:04:10] Speaker A: No, you. You had the customer's mindset, and I had the I got to pay bills mindset. So there's got to be some equal and market matters. [00:04:23] Speaker B: I just got off the phone with Edina Liquor. [00:04:25] Speaker A: Yep. [00:04:25] Speaker B: One of my clients. Edina is a wealthy city. We should not price lattes low in Edina. [00:04:33] Speaker A: No. Because the market can bear. [00:04:35] Speaker B: Exactly. So I say that so that we are setting. So that we're tempering expectations on this call. Because some of the things we say might make sense in some markets and not others. [00:04:46] Speaker A: Well, that's. That's part of the equation. [00:04:48] Speaker B: Right. [00:04:48] Speaker A: Is there our pricing? There's different ways you can price it. So we had 24. Seven dink on. [00:04:57] Speaker B: Yep. [00:04:58] Speaker A: And they base their pricing on the time of day and the day of the week. [00:05:02] Speaker B: And the market. [00:05:03] Speaker A: And the market. [00:05:04] Speaker B: Sure. [00:05:04] Speaker A: So they have a lower Price from like what, 11:00pm? Yeah, 5:00am or whatever. 5:00am and then they have peak hours and they have non peak hours. And so I shared that with this customer. And then also there's time of year considerations. So where he's at, his peak time is going to be in the winter because he's down south in the United States. And so his slower season would be when the weather is nice outside versus when it's like 110 degrees. That's when his peak season would be because people would be forced inside to play for their own safety. So vice versa. For us in the Midwest, our peak season is winter. [00:05:50] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:51] Speaker A: And our slow season for indoor courts would be when the weather is. [00:05:56] Speaker B: So maybe outside. If we're gonna broach the subject of pricing, we now have several things to consider. So pricing for court time is where I think you're starting. [00:06:04] Speaker A: So court time, membership. [00:06:06] Speaker B: But memberships, leagues, tournaments, the whole nine yards. [00:06:10] Speaker A: Yep. [00:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a fair place to start. Let's, let's just start with court time. [00:06:14] Speaker A: Okay. [00:06:16] Speaker B: Free is what we want. [00:06:18] Speaker A: All pickleball players want to play for free. We got that. [00:06:21] Speaker B: I mean, everyone wants a car for free too. We're not stupid. But we're not going to get it. So. And again, sort of your geography notwithstanding, because you know, 80 bucks an hour in New York City is probably a deal. 80 bucks an hour in Kansas City sounds pretty expensive because at the most, chicken and pickles, 40. So you've kind of got to look at, well, what's the business model? What are you going for? If you're going for the everyday pickleball player, meaning I want them at my court every day. [00:06:46] Speaker A: Right. [00:06:46] Speaker B: Then you have to have a membership based model. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Yep. [00:06:49] Speaker B: If you're saying I'll just worry about attracting whoever I can attract each day and it will be more of an event driven experience. Oh, hey, it's Johnny's birthday. Let's take Johnny and his kids or and the rest of the kids and his buddies over to the pickleball place and play. Now you have a non membership event model. There's certainly hybrids, but I think we start with looking at those two things. So the membership model, you've got to do your due diligence, create your own financials and say, what are my costs? What do I want to do with any margin that's contributed? So if I have any extra dollars Right. In the bottom line, what do I want to do with those dollars? If it's, I want to have a business where I make extra Money, then you need to figure out how to make extra money. If it's a business where you want to do things like I want to do, like I want to do scholarships for kids, Yeah, I still have to have the money to do that, but I can maybe price it differently. [00:07:42] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:07:43] Speaker B: If it's. I want to open another facility based on the revenue I make from this facility, then I need to have a really healthy model where I'm bringing in good revenue, good profitable revenue so that I can show the bankers or whoever need to show the investment teams that the money is there to now go start a second facility and a third facility, fourth facility. I think some of these companies are doing it wrong. I'm not going to call them out. Some of my friends are involved in some of these companies are doing it wrong. I would not open a bunch all at one time. I think that's a risk. Now, there's a model that can win there, especially if you have good money behind it and you can really invest heavily in it. But most of the people we're talking about, they're not coming to you asking you what to price things. [00:08:20] Speaker A: No, this is a brand new business owner. [00:08:23] Speaker B: Well, this is. Anybody that's, hey, the church. Let me put in, you know, I taped lines on the church court. Now what do I do exactly? So membership models for those that are smaller organizations but have space available to them. You know, you've got to build out your own. Got to build out your own finances and figure out what you got to do to make money. I need 100 members at $50amember per month, $5,000 a month. That covers all my expenses and my staff and my. Everything I rent, my balls, whatever. I've got to have paddles. [00:08:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And also I did share with him. I said you could do like a country club model where you have a limit, you find out how much time, space, availability you have and do a limited partnership and then you can charge a higher price because, you know, people will play well, they will pay a higher price if they know they always have those courts available to them because it's like a country club model. So I told him, I said, you really need to kind of do some research and figure out what would work best. I said, you're lucky that you're in a, in an area that doesn't have a indoor pickleball court other than maybe the rec center. And, and that's, you know, a very shared space. [00:09:39] Speaker B: Right. [00:09:40] Speaker A: So he was like, yeah, I think that'll work for me. So I'm excited to get back to him. [00:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:44] Speaker A: But what you just shared was very, very helpful. [00:09:47] Speaker B: Yeah. I think a membership model makes a lot of sense, but you've got to know how many members and how many dollars per member you've got to be able to charge to break even and then to make money. Those are two really important numbers to know. And we shouldn't play to lose. We don't play to break even. We play to win. So we need to be making money. Otherwise it's. Otherwise it's what we would call a. What does the government call it? It's a hobby. [00:10:08] Speaker A: It's a hobby, right. [00:10:09] Speaker B: That's a hobby, not a business. You have a hobby, congratulations on having a hobby. It's a $500,000 hobby because you don't make any money on the $500,000 you bring in, which is no good. All right, so then let's look at the event driven or court rental driven model instead. Now you're saying basically this, I'm either going to be priced like a membership model is, meaning I'm a low enough price that you will come to my facility frequently enough in a month that if I had done memberships, it probably would have worked, but I chose court time instead. $5 an hour, $10 per court, two hour maximum. Something. Something kind of along that line. For most places, though, that is very low. But just bear with me. If you go to a membership model and it's, let's call it a hundred bucks a month, and now it's unlimited time, or it's two hour slots. If they come five days a week, they're coming 21 times a month. [00:11:02] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:03] Speaker B: And if you charge them a hundred bucks, you're now making $4.80 each time they come. [00:11:06] Speaker A: Your availability is really low because the same people. [00:11:09] Speaker B: Exactly. That's why I'm saying six hours a day, you really have to do the math because you got to go, you know, it's. If we go to the, to the root issue, it's how many square feet do I have? How many dollars can I make per square feet per hour? That's the root issue, and that takes work. So I've got, you know, a thousand square feet. I can. Well, that's a horribly low number because a pickleball courts. 1800 square feet. So I've got 10,000 square foot facility, I've got five courts inside of it. I now know what my sort of limiting factors are. So If I've got five courts and I'm open, let's say 5:00am to 10:00pm okay, I've got 17 hours in those 17 hours. Now, how do I maximize on five courts? That's hypercritical. It's one of the reasons, like, I don't know if I said it in one of our previous sessions, but when I was talking about steal my idea, right. And I was saying like, we need to be more creative about how many people are showing a court at one time. Which MLP did. And it was brilliant. MLP said let's put eight people on a court. They didn't do it for the reasons a business owner like we're talking about here would do it. But because they did it, it makes it easier for a business owner to do it. And I've said to local facilities like, hey, the next time you want to run a small tournament, put eight people on a court at one time. What do you mean? Like, just do MLP rally style scoring and have two people cheering for the other two people while they're playing. And now you've got eight people per court, four per team, and all of a sudden the cost goes down where the revenue goes up. You're not cheating anyone out of anything. You're just creating a different type of event that some people will be interested in, some won't. Okay, great. So back to what I'm saying then about this hourly model or this court rental per time model, which by the way, is the model a lot of tennis facilities use. Although they often use a membership plus court fee model, which is the hybrid we said we would get to later on the court model, you're going to realize pretty quickly that your, your memberships would be like $250 a month or $350 a month. And that's why when John comes in, he goes, I'm not trying to target the everyday player. I know that that's not feasible because they're going to end up. They would. It would be like having a $350 membership. You can get to some really nice courts at $350 per membership. [00:13:18] Speaker A: Definitely. [00:13:19] Speaker B: I'll build them. Come on, come my way and give me your 350. Give me 100 people paying 350amonth and I've got 35k per month to work with. Yep, I'll give you some gorgeous facilities to play in. Okay, so that's not a sustainable model unless you go, I'm not about the everyday player. So we gotta keep that in mind. Memberships about the everyday player. Court rental pricing is not about the everyday player. It's about the event driven player. Like I said, Johnny has a birthday party. Let's go to. Or Kevin has his 50th. Let's all go to this. [00:13:47] Speaker A: Like chicken and pickle. [00:13:48] Speaker B: Chicken and pickles. 100% like that. It is not designed for the everyday player. [00:13:52] Speaker A: No, it's. [00:13:53] Speaker B: And they're freaking packed every day. [00:13:54] Speaker A: Wow. Great, great facilities, amazing food. Why not? [00:13:58] Speaker B: Yep. Couldn't agree more. Then there's the hybrid, which I think is probably a pretty healthy model. You would basically take a membership model and convert it to hybrid. I would not take an event driven model and convert it to hybrid. That makes no sense. [00:14:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:11] Speaker B: So take a membership driven model and convert to hybrid. You do something like this, you say, okay, my members are going to pay 50amonth to be able to play here. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Right. [00:14:20] Speaker B: And then after the ability comes the availability. So you have the ability to play here but not the. But not the court availability yet. Until you reserve a court and reserving a court costs. But now instead of the $40 an hour that a chicken and pickle will get during prime time, you're maybe more like $25 an hour or $30 an hour. Something that's significantly lower. 25 and 30 are significantly lower than $40 is whatever that is 25% lower than 40. $25. Significantly even more than that. Right. Because it's whatever 3, 8 is 3. 37.5% lower. [00:14:54] Speaker A: Yep. [00:14:54] Speaker B: And on top of that, you also are knowing that your members aren't going to come every day. It's still. What's funny is the membership model is an everyday model, but as soon as you go hybrid with membership, you're going back to not an everyday thing. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:07] Speaker B: It's a turnip prep or it's a I'm wealthy enough to afford it model. [00:15:12] Speaker A: Yep. [00:15:13] Speaker B: That's really what it is. So those are kind of like, you know, you're the people you're going after. So I think that model is the one that really is very conducive to putting things like leagues in scrambles, round robins. We do a doubles league where you stay with the same part of the time. We call it turning prep. That way you and your partner get to play a lot of games together. Those types of things I think are very well suited for a hybrid model system. [00:15:37] Speaker A: Clinics, classes, drills, which leads us to. [00:15:41] Speaker B: Pricing and all those things. [00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Private lessons. Yeah. I mean, like, there's a lot you can do that can utilize that court space. I think, you know, for those who are listening to Kevin's Prices and you're like, ah, that's, that's higher. Ooh, that's low. I mean, like, again, go back to your research. Figure out what your average person in your area could afford. [00:16:02] Speaker B: Do not start low. [00:16:05] Speaker A: It's tough to start low and go up. [00:16:07] Speaker B: Much easier to start high and go down. But I think I would say this. Like, if you're going to build or you have a court where people are willing to play and want to play, price yourself where you belong. Don't, don't try to beat the next guy, because that's not how pickleball works. We're all going to play your facility. We're all going to play everyone else's facility, too, because we want to, we like to, we want to try out all the facilities. We'll have a home court, by all means. But just keep in mind that this is the type of sport where it's about community way more than it is about a specific physical court. [00:16:41] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:16:42] Speaker B: Community over court. That would be our. [00:16:45] Speaker A: Oh, I like it. Right, let's do a T shirt on that, too. So let's move on to pricing leagues, pricing lessons, pricing. We can continue on the price. [00:16:57] Speaker B: I think we should finish pricing out real quick. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Let's finish out pricing. [00:17:00] Speaker B: So let's go to leagues. You know, again, I think that you're, you're always going to determine what's the purpose, what's the outcome that I want from this league. At our local church, where we have a lot of leagues and I've been doing them for over six years, our outcome is we eventually want to have a bunch of beautiful courts outside on a. In a parking area that has been, you know, granted us to, to play around with. And so we've got some money set aside for that, and we could probably build two to three quarts at this point in time. In terms of the. Just the cost of the paint, the cost of the nets. These things are expensive, unfortunately. Right. The paints a lot of money and the nets a lot of money. And you want to have a. Like, if we did a rollout net or instead of a permanent net, it'd be cheaper. But even the really good rollout nets are between two and four grand each. [00:17:45] Speaker A: Yep. [00:17:46] Speaker B: So we could probably do two quarts right now. And that would include, like, fencing around them that would. I would call temporary fencing. I don't think we'd want it year round. I don't think that the church would want us to build a fence that's cement or asphalt dug into the ground all the way around it either. I think the polls is. The polls is one thing because you can kind of drop those pieces in that hold the post and you can take them out if you have to. [00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:18:08] Speaker B: Well, no, I know I am, but that's important to understand, right, because you're like, well, what is the money going towards? And then you have to start planning that. So as we've planned our courts up above, it's kind of driven what we do for our leagues inside. All right. So if you have that in mind and you go, here's what we want to accomplish and here's how long we want to take it, then that works backwards to here's my cost. I believe that leagues are sustainable at a $30 minimum for at least six weeks. I believe they're sustainable for up to 12 weeks. I think a league that goes beyond 12 weeks is just a bunch of people getting together to play pickleball every week. [00:18:48] Speaker A: Right. [00:18:48] Speaker B: There needs to be a beginning and an end. It needs to be obvious. I think upwards of $150 is probably acceptable for a league. So if I got to play at John's Place or at Chicken and Pickle and I paid 150 bucks for 10 weeks, I mean that's only 15 bucks a week to play Chicken and Pickle. [00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:09] Speaker B: That's not bad. No, I probably take it. [00:19:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:11] Speaker B: Now Chicken and Pickle, that's great for them because guess what? Four people are playing. They're getting an average of 15 bucks per player. That's 60 bucks per court, which is. [00:19:20] Speaker A: More than they average. [00:19:21] Speaker B: No, I think they would do two hours slot. Oh, this is a little less than the average at 30 an hour. But it was complaining. They've now booked all these courts for the next 10 weeks. [00:19:31] Speaker A: Yep. [00:19:32] Speaker B: And they've got their money up front. And time value money, it's probably a break even thing for them. Like they're making the same they would have made anyway. [00:19:37] Speaker A: Depends on their food. [00:19:38] Speaker B: But they're getting all these same people back. And there's, there's this, I'm going to keep saying this visibility piece or this. What's the right word? [00:19:50] Speaker A: You, you used to call it the lifetime value of a customer. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Yeah. LTV is a good choice of terms for the revenue that's associated there. But what I'm thinking about is when you know a place and you're like, well, we're going to Chicken Pickle on Thursday night, like you, you've built into your weekly plan. Chicken wings. [00:20:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and when you don't go, then you're like, I miss mine. [00:20:12] Speaker B: Yeah. That's what I'm saying is there's more to it than just that cheers factor. And the community factor. Well, that's what you say when you say cheers factor. Community factor. Yeah. So, all right, I think that's doable pricing on leagues anywhere from 30, 250 and anywhere from six weeks to 12 weeks. I think a league that's. I hate these one night leagues. It's not a league. That's not a boring league. That's not a basketball league. That's not any. It's not a volleyball league. It's not any other league out there. So why call it a league? Yeah, just call it a one night. [00:20:37] Speaker A: Scramble or a clinic or something. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Just, just call it a one night scramble or a one night round. Yeah, it's a one night social. It's a one night stand. Everybody, let's get it straight. Okay? Let's just one and done. One and done. [00:20:50] Speaker A: You got to be active. [00:20:51] Speaker B: But that's, it's not what we're saying. So I just teasing. Yeah, yeah, let's. So let's shift to clinics and, and coaching hours. This is where I think more money gets spent and I think appropriately so. I believe that volume drives price down and it should. So if 30 people are coming to a clinic, they should not all be paying $100 an hour to be with some special coach. [00:21:13] Speaker A: Correct. [00:21:13] Speaker B: Okay, sorry coaches. You're not worth $3,000 an hour. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Plus the person's not getting the personal attention. [00:21:22] Speaker B: That's why they're not worth $3,000 an hour. But your knowledge and information is definitely worth a thousand dollars an hour. So if 30 people want to come and each pay 30 or 35 bucks, I think that's a very doable price range. But once you go past about three courts, I'll call it maybe four if they're oriented so that you can stand in the middle of all four of them. You know, I mean, they're kind of like in a rectangle or you have coaches. No, no, no, bear with me. This is one person thing I'm saying. So I'm saying you can't really go beyond three or maybe four courts by yourself. And I really recommend only one to two courts by yourself once you go past that. So in other words, 30 people, because four course is only 16 once you're at six courts, seven courts, eight courts. I mean even at four courts, you really need two plus instructors. We teach beginners how to play. We just had a beginner's day. On Saturday at our church, we do it free thanks to community in motion and thanks to Bethany Christian church. And we had 13 people come, and I had one to two courts and Joe had one, sometimes two courts as well. But there was only two of us. And it was enough. [00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:27] Speaker B: For the two of us to keep ourselves hopping. Now they were beginners. Whole different story when people know what they're doing because you're not trying to teach them everything. Don't forget about the kitchen. Don't forget about the score. Don't forget about the blah, blah, blah. [00:22:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Because you can target one or two or three specific skills. [00:22:40] Speaker B: Exactly. Right. That's what we're working on. Like today's backhand day or today's whatever day. [00:22:44] Speaker A: Yep. [00:22:45] Speaker B: Or this hour is blank hour. So I think that that's a good starting price is about 30 or 30. I would pay 30 or 35 bucks minimum to go to a clinic, Meaning I would expect there to be 30 people there. I think a coach should recognize that a thousand dollars an hour is probably a minimum. They should be bringing in. Not personally, but for the event. They may have to rent the facility. They may have to pay other coaches. So Maybe they're making 200 bucks or a hundred bucks an hour. Neither of those numbers are shabby. And then I think that I would pay, you know, if I was paying 300 bucks for a clinic, it would need to be like a three day clinic. I'd need to have at least six hours or seven hours of instruction. And I would expect multiple coaches. And I wouldn't expect 30 people there. I might expect 15 people there. Yeah, I was thinking 10 to 15. Right. But 10 people times 300 bucks is 30 grand. Sorry, 10 people times 300 is three grand. So I just said I would want six to seven hours. So it probably needs to be about 15 to 18 people to make that around $1,000 an hour. You know, price tag. Right. 1000s may be a little high, but, you know, if you're one person and you can get 20 people out there or 16 people out there on four courts and you're making 300, 400 bucks, congratulations, good job. And that's only 20 bucks a person. [00:24:03] Speaker A: Yep. [00:24:04] Speaker B: I think the top end is probably like. Like if Zane was in my town and I had a chance to spend time with him with only three or four other people. So either three and me, which is three in the coach playing or three or four in the coach, which the coaches on the sidelines. I mean, I'd have to probably beg you But I think that's worth probably a thousand dollars for a weekend. [00:24:27] Speaker A: I mean, sure, if you begged me, I would, I would. [00:24:30] Speaker B: He charges $600 per hour for one on one instruction. [00:24:33] Speaker A: Right. [00:24:33] Speaker B: And I would get 6ish hours with him, which would be 3, 600 bucks to me. Discount that down to a thousand. Probably worth it. [00:24:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:41] Speaker B: And I don't necessarily mean just Zane. It just happens that I know him and his numbers. Right. [00:24:44] Speaker A: It's right. [00:24:45] Speaker B: But Ben Johns comes to town, I mean you're going to learn a heck ton. And a thousand dollars is probably worth it for three days with Ben. [00:24:51] Speaker A: Yep. [00:24:53] Speaker B: So I think. And remember I'm doing the low and the high. So I think somewhere between thirty dollars and a thousand dollars for the clinic would be worth it depending on what you're really getting into. But don't take somebody you don't know who's just offering you a trip to Costa Rica and you think you're going to get a lot of training. You know what you're doing. You're going on vacation to Costa Rica to play pickleball. That's what you're paying for. Unless it's with Ben or someone else that you really know is a great player and a great coach. By the way, players and coaches are not usually. People are not usually great players and great coaches. [00:25:24] Speaker A: True. [00:25:25] Speaker B: Statistically they flat out are not. [00:25:28] Speaker A: Right. [00:25:28] Speaker B: Two completely different skill sets. So that's why I say just because they're a great player doesn't make them a great coach. [00:25:34] Speaker A: It's so true. [00:25:35] Speaker B: And you can tell by watching all these guys YouTube videos, some of them are really good and some of them are like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm listening to this person tell me how to hit a serve. [00:25:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:43] Speaker B: Okay. I think that covers most of the pricing and I know we've. I don't care if this goes over half an hour like that. This is a, this is a good one. This is, this is one that people are, people are asking about. Yeah. So. [00:25:54] Speaker A: So the next one is software and I can kind of take the lead on this. [00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Because we get asked all the time like, well, what do we use to manage everything? [00:26:01] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:02] Speaker B: Because tax sucks. [00:26:04] Speaker A: Yes. So if you're a beginner and you're just forming a club, whether it's a community club or a facility based club, how you communicate to your players is going to either cost you a lot of time or it's going to save you a lot of time. And your time is part of your inventory because you have. If you're spending time communicating with them, you're not spending time. Other things that we just mentioned. So when you're looking for software. And of course I work for Pickle Play, but I have also worked for a club that use club automation. We also have used Team Reach. We've done some other different things and just flat out used email and text messaging, spreadsheets. I mean, like, there's all kinds of things that we've used to be able to communicate with our players, whether we're making money by running this event or if we are doing this out of the goodness of our heart. And so what I will say is, when you're looking at a software, it needs to be part of your membership cost. So if. [00:27:13] Speaker B: And requirements. [00:27:14] Speaker A: And requirements. [00:27:15] Speaker B: Like you need to make it mandatory. Guys, we're using this app. Love it or not. [00:27:18] Speaker A: If you don't. I mean, like, it's. It's easier to start them at the beginning with an app, then to try to move on to an app later. [00:27:25] Speaker B: And let's. Let me add to that, if you don't mind. We started at Bethany here locally. When we started in our league six years ago, we started with all of it on paper, and then we quickly transitioned to one called Global Pickleball Network. Look, we all love pickle play as an example, but it would be like pulling teeth to get everyone to leave gpn, which we have five years for the results in. [00:27:48] Speaker A: Well, and our. And our leadership is probably. [00:27:50] Speaker B: Leadership. No, forget that. I'm just saying we all know it and all the players know it, and everyone is used to it. So. So the point you're making is two things. Start them on an app right away, but start them on the right one right away. [00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:05] Speaker B: Or you're gonna just have to continue to deal with something clunkier down the road because it's gonna be like pulling teeth to get people to switch. [00:28:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:28:10] Speaker B: What's funny is James, he and Robin really run the leagues now at our church. They get help from a few other people. They do a great job. But I mean, in. James loves Pickle Play, but guess what? He's so embedded in gpn, it's. He wants to use Pickle Play for other things. And we do have like Friday Pickle and stuff, but. And it's really difficult to consider making that change for leagues. [00:28:29] Speaker A: Well, and that's part of my discussion is if you do find that you need an upgrade or you need something different, make sure that whatever you're choosing now has the ability to download A CSV so that you can upload it into something else. Because there. So most of these software companies allow you to upload or import a membership. [00:28:51] Speaker B: List, roster, emails, phone numbers. Right? [00:28:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And they'll help you format it so that it'll be easy for you to upload. For us at Pickle Play, we. We want to be involved in that transfer so that we can make that seamless for you, and it makes it a lot easier. So if you do need to make the switch. But what we're looking for in software, and again, I'm not trying to make this a commercial, but it needs to be easy to use for your consumer, for you. [00:29:20] Speaker B: Let's pause on each. On each point. Because text is easy to use, but it's a horrible choice. [00:29:24] Speaker A: It's a horrible. [00:29:25] Speaker B: We're not done with all the criteria. [00:29:27] Speaker A: Yet, so it needs to be easy to use. So for example, some applications will have an app, phone app, and they'll have a website. So that's nice because if you have people that are players that don't like to fumble with their phone, they have a website they can go to. And then for those who like the app, then they have that too. So look for that. [00:29:50] Speaker B: And second, again, I want to keep pausing. So let's, let's look at one of the reasons why I think what, what's missing is some of these people, gosh, it's gonna sound like I'm picking on them. We didn't have the foresight when we first started leagues. We have the. We have the post knowledge, right? And one of the things that's going to happen is over time, things are going to change. And what you can expect will be a great community, but also some divisiveness, not negative. This is what I mean. When we first started, it was invite everyone. [00:30:21] Speaker A: Right? [00:30:22] Speaker B: Now, seven years later, it's like, okay, Tuesday nights is for 2.2 to 2.9. You know, Wednesday night league is typically 3 to 3.5. Monday night league is typically 3.5 to 5.0. You know, different hours even. Thursday night league is typically that new player or 2.5 to 3.2 range. Saturday morning at 7 is our 4.0. Just bear with me. Saturday at 9 is a. So the point is this, like, you may not be there today, you may not be there in a year, but at some point in time, you're. We expect that because of how fast pickleball is growing, you will have so many people involved in your club that you will wish you had made a decision to get an app that was much more focused on pickleball and what it's going to be for you like in the future than just now. [00:31:09] Speaker A: Right. Because some of the apps that are out there are multi sport focused. Where Team Reach. Yeah. So some are pickleball only and then there are some that are more universal. Um, and. And that's great when you first start, but as you progress, like we just mentioned, it will cause you some growing pains that you wished you had known about earlier. And this is what this podcast is about, is helping you to avoid some of those growing pains. [00:31:36] Speaker B: So what was the second thing? [00:31:37] Speaker A: So again, app and website. So next is easy to use. If there is a. If it is tough for you to learn the app and to be able to communicate that with your. With your folks as well as use it as an admin, it's not going to be for you. [00:31:53] Speaker B: No. [00:31:53] Speaker A: So the club that I worked at before, it was so tough to learn that application. [00:31:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:00] Speaker A: And it had everything we wanted. But the learning curve was humongous. [00:32:04] Speaker B: And what it could do is expensive. It could do everything too. It could do everything crazy. But you had to figure out to be like. You had to be like a, A developer to understand how to make changes really. [00:32:12] Speaker A: Or you just had to be on the phone all the time with customer service. [00:32:15] Speaker B: Club automation, if I'm not mistaken, pretty popular out there at tons of big clubs. Especially like tennis type facilities. [00:32:22] Speaker A: It's meant for courts and it's great for a lot of different reasons. But if you are not tech savvy, it's going to be a struggle. [00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah. If you like taking computers apart and putting them back together, Club Automation is for you. [00:32:34] Speaker A: And hopefully they improve on that if they're listening to this podcast. [00:32:37] Speaker B: Listen up, Ca. [00:32:39] Speaker A: I'm doing this because I love you. Um, not. Not because I want to hurt you, but at the same time it's about the players and you need to be player focused and not about. [00:32:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:50] Speaker B: The opposite end of the spectrum is like group Me. [00:32:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:53] Speaker B: Which is just a text based. [00:32:55] Speaker A: It's a. [00:32:56] Speaker B: You might as well just use text. And Team Reach to me is very close to that. There's a little bit more to Team Reach than that, which is kind of nice. But yeah. Those are like the opposite of the spectrum of club automation. [00:33:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And those are where we all started because we were probably soccer parents at one time. [00:33:09] Speaker B: And it was easy. [00:33:10] Speaker A: And it was easy. [00:33:11] Speaker B: Super easy. But that's back to that not being the only thing that matters. [00:33:14] Speaker A: Right. [00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah. What's your Next one. [00:33:15] Speaker A: The other thing is to be able to accept payment because here's where it gets sticky, folks. Especially if you're a community based volunteer run organization, if there is not a checks and balance on where the money comes in and where the money goes out, you're going to be able to find yourself dealing with someone who had a bad month and so they might have dived into that cash and thought, oh, I'll just pay back the club later. Or, or there's lost cash because you were in the middle of a pickleball game, somebody decided to take that moment to pay you and you shoved it in a pocket and the next thing you know you're missing $300. So what I'm saying is for your safety and for the sustainability of your group, use an application that allows you to charge. So the nice thing about some of these app is you can sync a payment system into it. In my case with Pickle Play we use Stripe and it enables you to issue refunds. It enables you to do stuff like that through Stripe itself. And that, and Stripe isn't just Piggle Play specific, you can use that for a lot of different things, but it enables you to run reports, provide checks and balances and be able to manage that club was transparency, which is what you're going to want for sustainability. [00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And then you end up, if you don't really end up making the right decision, you end up with two apps. So yeah. One of the groups I'm a member of has a team reach and has a. What's the other one called? Court Reserve. [00:34:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:53] Speaker B: So now I'm like, which one do I, I flip over here to text everybody and then I flip back over here to figure out where we're playing. Flip back over here to what can we play again? Flip back over here to actually schedule the same time. Like it's. [00:35:01] Speaker A: And where there's confusion, there's conflict, where. [00:35:04] Speaker B: There'S confusion, there's chaos and chaos causes. [00:35:08] Speaker A: So I'm just, we're, we're here to help you not really add more to your today. [00:35:13] Speaker B: And that is not all to say, hey, go get Pickle Play. [00:35:15] Speaker A: No, I mean it's first, not for everybody, but at the same time it has opened my eyes to other possibilities. [00:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:22] Speaker A: For the smaller size clubs. [00:35:24] Speaker B: But if we backtrack only three months. [00:35:27] Speaker A: Yep. [00:35:27] Speaker B: I settled on Pickle Play two years ago because it was the right app for us. [00:35:31] Speaker A: Right. [00:35:32] Speaker B: You weren't working for Pickle Play. You didn't even know what it was. I was like Download this app and you're like, okay, honey, you know, I mean, like that was how much you. [00:35:38] Speaker A: Knew about Pickle Play. I didn't and I missed out. So here's the other thing. I don't have this on my list, but some apps will enable you to recruit and expand your base. And so when I was the director of marketing at csw, we had a Pickle Play group in. [00:35:56] Speaker B: Yep. [00:35:57] Speaker A: Inside. A group inside for you that he. You created for us. And you had mentioned it to me, but I never looked into it and it was a whole lost opportunity on even just the ability to promote our program. [00:36:12] Speaker B: We had 100 plus members in there. [00:36:13] Speaker A: It's like 82 now. But some have left maybe, but. But the point is I missed out on some free publicity. And when you make an event public in there, it goes out to everybody in a 50 mile radius. It's already in Pickle Play. So think about that when you're using an app. I'm not. Not just one or the other, but that if it's not marketing for you, then you might look for one that does that for you. [00:36:39] Speaker B: Yeah, good example. [00:36:41] Speaker A: So the other question I get a lot is about courts and facilities. And what's the question, though? So we had a gentleman that we interviewed for the podcast who built courts and Brent. [00:36:58] Speaker B: Sure. [00:36:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So it was like 30, you know, between 25 and $40,000 to build a. [00:37:04] Speaker B: I think he said between 30 and 75. And the upper end was like fencing lights. Yeah, yeah. [00:37:11] Speaker A: So as a public service announcement, when you're playing on courts for free, you can go anywhere and play for free almost. And you're going to have cracked courts, holes, different things. So you get what you pay for. So if you're playing for a membership and you're on a nice court, you expect nice courts. [00:37:32] Speaker B: If you're paying for membership. [00:37:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Understand that that membership is also going into upkeep of those courts and there are things that need to be done daily, weekly, monthly, yearly to be able to sustain a beautiful facility. So I know I've probably been way too repetitive about this, but I love what Grand Rapids, Michigan does with, you know, they have a community club, but part of that membership is not only do they pay a membership fee, but they're also part of the upkeep crew. And you take pride in what they are part of. They are, they are. [00:38:13] Speaker B: So, I mean, which includes repainting and striping and all that stuff, fixing nuts and. [00:38:18] Speaker A: And then I was talking to Omaha Pickle Ball today and they charge A membership fee that's monthly. And they have contracts with, I think, four or five different facilities. Some are public, some are private. And they've partnered with Omaha, the city of Omaha, to be able to have some of those facilities. [00:38:38] Speaker B: They have over a thousand members. I think they pay like it's 150 or something. [00:38:42] Speaker A: 50Amonth. [00:38:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. I know it's a lot per year. 600 a year. But that gets them access to these multiple locations. [00:38:49] Speaker A: Yeah, they get to play for free in the summer. [00:38:50] Speaker B: Going back to the hybrid model of saying that this is how you make money. You let clubs rent certain times a day. Hey, the Pickle Brawlers get Tuesdays at XYZ Club. The whatever. The ATP Club gets Wednesdays. The MCPA Club gets Thursdays. And. [00:39:07] Speaker A: Yeah, so. So when you're looking at facilities, look at if you don't have the money to build a facility, whether it's a private court or an organization that you're going to turn into a business, you know, maybe you have that opportunity to go to your city, go to your town, upgrade the courts, and then build a model around that with a. With an apartment, a partnership or an agreement. [00:39:35] Speaker B: Yeah, concur. There is probably a lot more I could say. Did you have any other specific questions that came up on these calls that we wanted to try and tackle today? Well, it was our FAQs. [00:39:45] Speaker A: Some of it was just money management in general. [00:39:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:49] Speaker A: And so that can be a whole nother podcast. But I will say checks and balances are always nice. Having a budget is important. [00:39:57] Speaker B: In retrospect, I think what we should have done and what we probably still should do is we probably should have set up some kind of NonProfit or Little LLC or something, and, you know, use the first $500 from League to buy the LLC paper to do the LLC paper. And then we could have had a bank account open and put all the money in the bank account and there would have been more checks and balances, and we should still do that. We haven't done that here yet, by the way. So going to take my own medicine and figure this one out on our end. But I think that's really good insight you bring, and it provides more visibility and accountability, which is critical because at some point in time you start to make money. I mean, we've made, I don't know, 17 to 20. Well, probably at least 20,000 at this point in time. Now we spent money on nets and balls and, you know, ad nauseam. We've donated to tournaments and we've donated to Charities and we've donated to, you know, paddles to kids and we've, you know, whatever, but we're still sitting on a lot of money. If it goes to an individual, that guy is paying taxes on it. If it goes to a corporation, it's a whole different story. And so I just think that's probably some really smart moves you should make it, mate. You may be like, but it's just eight of us. Right, I get it. But at some point in time it's gonna be 80. And at some point in time it's gonna be hopefully, you know, well, more than that, maybe a hundred. We've had 1100 plus people play at our church, so that should. And we're in a small, small, you know, farming town of 55, 000 people. To me, that's not really small, but around here it's considered small, so. [00:41:17] Speaker A: Well, didn't you just post on social media the growth of pickleball by. [00:41:21] Speaker B: It's insane. Like 2035. [00:41:23] Speaker A: Yeah. What was that number? [00:41:25] Speaker B: It's 11 per year between now and then. [00:41:28] Speaker A: That's great. [00:41:29] Speaker B: Per year. [00:41:29] Speaker A: So you investment buffs. Yeah. [00:41:32] Speaker B: Rule of 72. So it's, it's doubling every six years and that's 11 years from now. So basically we're going to have four times the number of players in 2035 than we have today. And you think about how many courts already have 50 paddles waiting for people to get on to them. [00:41:47] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:41:47] Speaker B: We're very blessed where we are. We don't have that problem here. I, I think even at our busiest, on a Saturday morning when there's 15 or 20 paddles waiting, if that 15 or 20 paddle group wanted to pick their paddles up and drive down to Pulaski park, they probably would be able to find two or three courts and there goes eight or 12 of them. [00:42:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:04] Speaker B: If they went over to May park, they could probably find another two courts. And I bet you we bet you we wouldn't have all the courts full at the same time. Super grateful to our community for that. But guess what? It's picking up crazy this year. [00:42:15] Speaker A: Yep. [00:42:16] Speaker B: By next year we'll have weights at all four. All three locations. [00:42:19] Speaker A: Yep. [00:42:19] Speaker B: So, and then think about, you know, what we just said 10 years down the road, which is not long. It took three years for them to build courts here. So if we start working on it now, hopefully we have them in four or five years from now because they're like, we already got some. [00:42:31] Speaker A: Yep. [00:42:32] Speaker B: But boom, if things double between now and then, it's gonna be super packed at all three parks. And we want that. [00:42:38] Speaker A: We do. [00:42:39] Speaker B: But we also want a good experience. So expand the community. Add more courts somewhere else. Add more courts to those locations. [00:42:46] Speaker A: I guess the bottom line is pickleball is a good business decision. My next point is don't have a short term vision. Have a long term vision. [00:42:55] Speaker B: Definitely. [00:42:56] Speaker A: Hopefully this podcast gave you some things to think about, if not some critical information that you can use. [00:43:03] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe we do just a podcast just on leagues. I think leagues is one of the best ways for clubs to really get things going. Count on us doing a podcast on leagues really, really soon. [00:43:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:43:15] Speaker B: Thank you so much for listening. We love it that you made us a part of your day. Keep telling everyone that we're ahead of. [00:43:21] Speaker A: The game and so are you. Caught up on the line Got a string around my finger Remember who am I? I'm a boss and I'm honestly up my rocker. But follow me, I'm ahead of the game.