Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Okay. I restarted it so the public can't hear.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:04] Speaker A: What I just said to you, my.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Love, you gotta be. You gotta be careful. You're a public celebrity now.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: That's awesome. In certain circles, in certain really tiny circles.
Three people circles. They're called triangles.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hey, we made an impression at picklecon. I just want you to know that.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Thank you. Who, who lets you know that? Or did you make that decision on your own?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: I made that decision on my own.
Plus by the end of, everybody knew that, knew our names and knew where we were from.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: It was like cheers.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: It was.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Pretty awesome this year.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: It was. We enjoyed it.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: It was our first time to go.
And candidly, I can see why people like vendors maybe wouldn't go back.
There just wasn't a lot of foot traffic.
We were there on Saturday. We were there Thursday, Friday, Saturday, went in on Sunday, Saturday, you'd think it would have been busy. And we were there most of the day and it wasn't busy.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: But the days that they had tournaments, they were. The vendors had more foot traffic.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: There was tournaments every day. Milp juniors, regular.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Right?
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't get it.
We did play blacklight pickleball.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: We did. That was fun.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it was really fun.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: The nice thing for us is because there wasn't a lot of foot traffic to the vendors, we were able to have more in depth conversations. We got to learn more about them. We probably spent more money on stuff for ourselves than we would have.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: It's almost really like a vendor party.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: It was because it's.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: If you're a regular pickleball person going there, you wouldn't get a lot out of most of the booths.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: It was more B2B.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: I mean char bar, BBQ, give away, free barbecue food. And it was delicious. So that was great. But I mean, that's not worth the cost of entry.
You think about all the booths that are there.
Empower her.
We're. Empower her. I should say it that way. We're fans, but they're mostly sold out. So there. We're just there because they're local and cast on some stands and they got a free booth.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: And yeah, they sold out because they finished selling out while they were there. They didn't have a great. They didn't have a whole bunch of seats left to fill. But it was great visibility for her moving forward.
But I would say the majority of the booths were business to business. So if you are a club owner or a community club or organizer, the booths were more for you. Yeah, but at the Same time.
It would have been nice if they had had more products. So I.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: There were a couple products. I mean, paddle shoes. Well, I love the pup, which I got, which is a little device that flicks a ball. So you can kind of.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: He's coming on our podcast.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: He will be on. So will Cass from Empower.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Cass. Will too.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: That guy's name was Chris. And it's Power Up Pickleball.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Is that right? Power Up Pickleball Pup. Pup.
Yeah. I think we had one or two more that said they'd be on the podcast.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: We have Elena from the Recreational Player Pickleball Players association that's going to come on board and she has a software that's free for users and she calls it the Facebook for Pickleball Players. And then, yeah, we have. We have more that we've. We're gonna invite. So we made some amazing connections, not just for sweet Lobs, but for the tournament company as well.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you know what, folks? We went to picklecon for you so that we could help you stay.
That's right ahead of the sky. I put together a survey for you.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: You did?
[00:04:00] Speaker A: I did.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Oh, goody.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: As the survey about this event, about Pickle Con. The Pickle Con event. Okay, I gotta find it. It's in here somewhere. I think I've got it right in here somewhere. But the first thing I did was I was like, I wonder how big this is compared to other cons. Oh, I don't think there were that many people that it really attended. And when I did some searching, I noted that it didn't actually list how many people attended, but. National Pickleball Expo in New Jersey. 20,000 plus attendees per day.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: We didn't have that at Picklecon.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: No.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: World Pickleball Convention in Palm beach, the inaugural event had around 2850. I don't think we had that at Picklecon.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: I have no idea.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: 3000 people at 50, 75 booths. If you just think about it for a minute, like, sure, we're talking about 35 to 40 people average per booth.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:58] Speaker A: There weren't that many people walking around.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: No.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Now what there were was there was 60 pickleball courts.
Half of them were for the tournaments on one end of the building.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Other. Other end of the building were open play pickleball courts. And quite honestly, most of them were being used.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: So they were. They had clinics. They had.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: But that's only 240 people. 60 courts.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:16] Speaker A: I'm just saying, I'd be shocked if 2,000 people bought a ticket?
[00:05:20] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: So to me, it was more like I said, an event for vendors.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Unless you are a tournament player.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: But I'm gonna put you through the rigors here and ask you a few questions and have you rate what you thought about the court, about the picklecon. Okay, first question. I already kind of teed it up. Thoughts on total attendance and the mix of attendance. So for instance, how many were players, fans, industry, you know, employed people?
How many do you think were out of market versus how many were just from Kansas City? All right, thoughts on toll attendance and mix?
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Wow.
I would say is there like a scale? Like a one to two?
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Zero to.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Well, zero to five.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Zero to five, let's say. But you got to give me still your thoughts on attendance numbers. Do you agree with the numbers I gave earlier?
[00:06:08] Speaker B: I do. I. It was okay.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: So then let's rate it this way. 0 to 5 on 1 to 5. 1 to 5 on 1 to 5 like 5 being, hey, great job. You nailed it. This is how people should have been there. Or one being. Whoops.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: I would have to say a two.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: You're very kind. I would have said a one.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: I would say two. Because I don't know how many people actually came to clinics and tournaments.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: I wasn't do know how many went to clinics? Because when we talked to people that went to clinics, they were like, hey, there was only four of us. And there was great. I was by myself. I got lots of great, you know, one on one time.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: But I never took a survey of the courts and to try to figure out how many were open play and how many were actually profitable time.
[00:06:47] Speaker A: But of the open play courts, babe, they were never awful. Except for maybe black light night.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe black light night. Yeah.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: And there was three black knight nights. There was two for sure. In the tournament.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: There's three. Yeah.
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So, okay, what about mix? Do you think there was a healthy 3 out of 5? Mix of people from out of town, out of state.
One being. Nope, mostly Kansas City. Five being nobody from Kansas City. One do you got.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: I would say it was probably pretty even.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Because I met a lot of people that said that was their first time at picklecon.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: That's true. Like us, we traveled from Indiana. We met Omar. He came from El Paso.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
Most of the people that I talked to were out of state.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: We are going to do a tournament in El Paso with Omar.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: So that was a really cool connection to make.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Maybe not out of state, but they were definitely out of town, out of town.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Sure.
Okay, how about this? In terms of the experience they gave for play and how many courts were being utilized at, you know, throughout the event, how would you rate that? 1 to 5.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: There was a lot of courts, which was really nice. I mean, like, if you wanted to, at any point in time, you could have grabbed your paddle. They had balls available, different ball types to try, and you could have played. Now, of course, you would have had to round up some people to play with, but that wasn't hard to do.
And pretty much everybody carried their paddle around with them.
But if you didn't, there was companies there that would demo paddles with you. So that was. That was nice. The court surface was the rollout, and that was nice because they were able to put in a lot of quartz on top of the cement. The challenge was that there were sometimes a wrinkle in it because they weren't able to secure it to the convention floor really well. So that, you know, if you had any type of injury prone. If you're prone to injury, that. That might have been bad for you. Um, but for the most part, I played on them and I played fine.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: I will say I did not like the design. In terms of the food and beverage.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: We were so weird. And we talked to Sarah, who's in charge.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: But it was like, lady, this just doesn't make sense. Like, just drive the trucks over there.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: So the food you could get, but then you had to walk, like, 100 yards trying to balance all your food to find an actual table to eat it at.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: They could have done weird. They could have done better with setup, I think.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: The other challenge was set up was they used their stage with their sound system right next to the vendor booth. So anytime there was a tournament announcement with the PA System, you're basically talking over the panelists. And so the panelists would have to, like, like, pause or they would try to talk through the announcement. And that seemed disrespectful to the panelists, but it also.
I don't know how they would have changed that without.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: It was horrible.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Put him in a classroom.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Put them in a room. They had. They had breakout sessions downstairs.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: And these panels were the smallest groups of all. They would have easily fit in breakout rooms downstairs.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: Here's a. Another thing, I think, sky, that kind of fits with that, which is.
And actually, this really rolls into the next question which I'm gonna ask you. But there was two courts that were. That were laid down, that had. And laid down because they were all pickle roll. And they were horrible. Just gonna say it online out loud. Whoever did it, crappy job. Balls didn't bounce very well. And pickle roll was 4 foot by 4 foot squares. And that means it creates all these extra seams.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Because it's not even a roll anymore. Now it's just pickle tile.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: That's what they should call it.
But there were two courts laid down where there was no stopping the ball on any side or any end. So now the balls are rolling into all the vendors, like, nonstop all day long. Like one vendor. We're sitting there getting a knee brace. I think it was now camera for sure what it was, because I want to call the guy out. But it might have been the knee brace one.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: It was the brace guy.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: And the ball rolls in somewhere near him. And those guys are like, ball. And he's like, I am trying to make money. I've paid for a booth. I'm helping a customer. Like, seriously.
And he's right.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: Cuz these balls are going into his booth all freaking day long.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: He's like, this isn't what I came here for.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: So if I was that vendor or some of those vendors that had those balls consistently rolling into my thing, I mean, the first few, I'd be like, here you go. Here you go. But all day long for four days.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: That's a lot.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: It would have driven me in. Freaking sane.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yep. Yep.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: So I don't know. Let's rate exhibitor and sponsor return on investment.
Best guess for exhibitor and sponsor return on investment. One to five. Five. Yeah. I'll be back every year. One. What did I just do?
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Ooh. I think it depended on.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: You can't have an independence. This is an overall average.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Okay. So the majority of the ones that I talked to and asked them that question, would you come back next year? They said yes.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Okay. There you go.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: They thought it was definitely worth their time.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: How much of a majority? 1 to 5.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: I would say almost everybody. I asked that question. They.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: So at least a four.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: But there were. There were vendors that just left.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Like, they would just leave their booth. And some of them were playing pickleball, which I think was funny.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Awesome.
I'm not selling my little squirrely thing I made for pickleball people, so I'm gonna go play instead.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: Or he would be like, hey, if you need a another player, just come back and get me. Like, he was more interested in playing than he was selling. So I thought that was funny.
But at the same Time.
I can. I can see why watching pickleball all day would want you to want to play.
So. I feel you, dude. No judgment here.
Then there were some that just like disappeared. Like the insurance guy just. Yeah, I never saw him.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: And then at one point he took all his stuff and left. And I'm like.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: I think he was like, I'm in the wrong spot.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: I just. I don't know.
[00:12:35] Speaker A: But you wanted to talk to him.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: I wanted to talk to him.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: So. All right, let's give it a four.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: I do believe that it was a vendor for a vendor event. So if you're really interested, like, we connected vendors and then we connected with vendors and then vendors connected us with vendors and we connected them with vendors that weren't at the party. Like. Yes, it was a very.
Lots of B2B. Yeah. Okay, so if it was a B2B event, I would have given it a four or five.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: But that's not how it's promoted.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Probably not.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Okay. Program and activation engagement. So activation engagement, that's about activities. So like how many activities did you go to? So whether it's black light or panels or so in other words, overall programming and activities, what do you think was the score on the engagement there?
[00:13:19] Speaker B: One to five, I would say.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Not your personal engagement, the events engagement.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: I would say they gave you lots of things to do when we didn't do everything. We didn't do a clinic, we didn't do a tournament.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: You did get your duper.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: I did get my.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Talk about that in a minute.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: I did go to panels.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah, we went to a lot of.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Panels, did activities at booths.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Panels were good. The most important thing was the boot was the booth.
Yeah, but that's you. I'm asking overall, what do you think the activity engagement was?
So think about all the panels you went to and sitting by four other people or eight other people.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: I was, I was surprised that the panels didn't have more of an attendance.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Me too.
Yeah, me too.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: But the tournaments seem to do really well. The exhibits, like they had play with Vito from Sopranos.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: They had never even saw it happen because no one. Well, one game maybe.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: I saw a couple.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: And then they had like pros come out and play.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Can you name any pro?
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Jardine.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Yes. Simone Jardine. Yeah, she came out and she played with.
Was her partner. Was it like Steve Deacon or someone? I'll have to look it up.
But it was a one time.
Attendance was great, but we didn't get to play with them.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: No, no, no. But we got to watch. And. And they really did a great job.
Yep. And.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: But when you say it was full and people are watching, just to set the expectation, there were three rows of bleachers and four rows of bleachers. And you can stand around in a circle around the court.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: I doubt there were more than 200 people watching them.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: Probably not.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Probably 150ish. Which is actually not bad attendance for.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: A pickleball game, considering we may have had 20 at a panel at any given time.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: At the biggest of all panels.
Okay, let's go the next one. Digital and on site operational performance.
So the app and how things worked against the app while we were there.
So it could be signage, it could be, you know, the app telling you where to go or just the ease of the use of the app. We did. Just so everyone knows we use the app at every booth. We'll get back to that. But overall, what do you think about the digital app and the on site operations performance?
[00:15:34] Speaker B: I would have liked more details on events. Like. Like a description or where it's at. Or where it's at. Like in the map.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: But other than that, I don't know. Think it was so big that I couldn't figure things out. And ease of use of the app. It. It turned on quickly. It behaved fast.
Um, the menu was easy to understand.
So.
Yeah, I think it was. It was not bad for an app at all.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Okay.
I think the app was actually pretty intuitive.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Mm.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: I do think you're right. The communication aspect was low and we could have had a lot more information on there.
Overall. Yeah. Pretty good. I would say that the staff didn't know much about where things were.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: No.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Like, hey, where's this? They'd be like, it's on the stage.
Where's the stage?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: That way.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: No, they, you know, they figured out when we did.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: No. And it sounded like a lot of the planning was done last minute. And we understand that as tournament directors.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Too, because we do.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: You have to be able to be flexible. Be flexible and move things on a fly.
On the fly.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Or on a fly.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Or on a fly.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Tougher.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: What do you think about their brand reach and their social impact?
[00:16:47] Speaker B: I saw picklecon commercials clear up to the event, even though they didn't know I registered because they didn't register through the, you know, through any social media content.
So I think they did good advertising it. I think they.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: I didn't see one thing at the event that said share hashtag pocon. Like, not one thing that said, please.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: I wasn't paying attention to that.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: I was looking for it. I was looking for anything communication oriented and there was nothing.
Now, you saw the word picklecon 5,000 times a day.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: Oh, sure.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: It was on every court, 20 times.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: It was on all the signs, end caps, QR codes.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah, we knew where we were. We didn't need that many Pickle Con signs. They must have fallen short on advertisers to take those spots up.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: They. I did see a commercial from the hotel that picklecon was in town. Like it was like really this weekend events.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: Our hotel? Yeah, really.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: So the local news was there.
There was, you know, people were hired from ESPN to be there. So I think as far as reach and visibility, they did get a good job.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: All right, let's go to my last question for you.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Do you feel like the fee was reasonable? Entry fee and would you go back?
[00:18:05] Speaker B: I don't know. I mean, I think it was a little pricey for us, but I think if we had just bought a normal regular ticket.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: 70 bucks a person for four days is not much money.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Oh, that's true. I was thinking he was higher. No, no, no, no, that was, that's. That's right. Yeah, I like that.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Don't get me wrong, it's 140 bucks. But we had full access for four days. Yeah, we could play in the events.
We weren't in the tournaments. We could have paid extra to be in the tournaments, but we could play in the black light events. We could play any of the courts, anytime we wanted to.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: I mean, that's like 18 bucks a day.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: No, that's true. I was thinking for some reason it was higher. No.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not bad.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: No, the price was right. It's actually reasonable.
Yeah, I would say the lanyard they, you know, they gave us was nice. The.
I mean, like, you can take your tab.
No, it's a nice lanyard. You can use it for keys or whatever, you know, the. They gave us a prize if we scanned 50 QR codes from vendors.
A little tiny, you know, I mean.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: It wasn't worth the effort, but we were going to go to all the booths anyway, so we were. Made sense for us to do it. So we got tiny little pickleball paddles that are really cute.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: I thought it was worth. It was enough of an incentive to get people to do it.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: I mean, I call them tiny. They're probably 7 inches long.
They're not like earring size or hang on, an ornament size for a Christmas tree.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Bookshelf size?
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Yeah, something like that.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Okay. What was your biggest takeaway from the event or. Yeah, let's start there. Biggest takeaway from the event?
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Well, again, I would say after listening to other places present questions or issues that they have at panels or to learn more about the industry, some of the things that hit most are one. Again, we're very blessed in central Indiana to have the number of outdoor and indoor courts that we have, even if we have to pay for to be part of an indoor facility.
We are still, like we have said before, ahead of the game in terms of where other states are and where other places are worldwide. So way to go Indiana.
So we, I mean like, it's just great. We're. We're up there with a lot of other states.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: You said that before and it's still true. Nothing's changed.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: The other thing is I went to a woman in pickleball panel and pickleball is the one sport where the pro women are out earning the men.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: No.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: You don't think so?
[00:20:46] Speaker A: No, she was definitely wrong.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: She was 100.
Okay, well maybe she meant. I don't know.
But it was an interesting comment.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: I'm not trying to slam it. Or women. That's not my point.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: That's just an incorrect statistic.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: I. And then the other thing that came out of women in pickleball sub panel now was how little funding women own businesses.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: That was a big deal.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Qualify for.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: If she said something closer to the lines of there's not much of a difference between what women pros and men pros make, I could get on them with that statement, but they are not out earning men.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Maybe she meant the number one pickleball woman is out earning the number one pickleball man.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Maybe analytic, but Ben and Annalee are both making a heck ton of money.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Okay. I don't know where she got that stat. She didn't actually provide that information.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Her other stat I challenged and it was wrong, but whatever.
So. Oh for two. But. But she did make a good point. She just shouldn't use a statistic. Okay, but the point is this.
Approximately 3 to 5%. I'll use a range so we don't be off of. The money that is given to entrepreneurs seeking funding goes to women and or minorities.
The other 95 to 97 goes to men.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that's still eye opening in 2025.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: It's a big deal. It's horrible statistic.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: It is.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: And, and this is what I talked to her about afterwards. I said and you need to also recognize that of that 3 to 5% that get funding, they get on average one third of what a guy gets.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Yeah. It's still terrible.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Now, I. I don't know if it was a white guy. I hate to say it that way. I don't remember. Because she said minorities.
So that to me implies that only white men were the other statistic.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: Yeah. She didn't provide her source.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Her data was weak to begin with.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: But her point is accurate.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: And again, I wish she just stuck with her point.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: And that was the eye opening part.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: Was the very eye opening.
Basically it says to get the funding you actually want or need, you're at a 90, 270 to 1 disadvantage.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: That's heavy.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: It is.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Especially in a sport that is growing so fast.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: And is projected to continue to grow for another 10 more years.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And we ran into some really incredibly awesome women owned businesses there.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: The one that's building tournament software.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: Yep. Twisted Pickle.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Twisted Pickle. They were great. Couple ladies there own it. The two that are running 365.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: 365. Dink.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Vanilla Ice. Ice, baby.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: We call them Vanilla.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Vanilla Twice.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: It's Camilla and Vanessa.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Vanessa and Camilla. And they go by Vanilla. So we called them Vanilla Twice.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Twice. Twice, baby.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: We also.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: They were awesome. I love their idea.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: In fact, that's one of the things I need to get Lisa in touch with is them.
I just remembered. Let me go text her after we're done with the call. I always like all this. A call.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: What?
[00:23:49] Speaker A: I'm so used to being on Zoom. This is so.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Used to be on calls.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Anyway, that's funny.
There is some great vendors in general too. There's some people that because of the love of the game, they found a problem they could solve and they created a business out of it. And then there are those who were.
They're just. Because they work for the company and they've never played pickleball.
It's just. It's really funny to see their response to the pickleball craziness of us addicts.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: It was. It was fun.
I don't know that we would need to go again if we had an active business. Although we could go as a vendor and probably do pretty well because he would have been the only tournament company there.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: There was a competitor there.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Never heard of him.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: So. No. But they were there.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: They were there. That's true, man. So cool inventions that we saw. Let's shift our topic. I'LL start. I bought six of these things.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:52] Speaker A: And I plan to get a whole lot more if people like them. But it is a device for trainers or coaches.
And essentially, if you think about like those long telescoping magnet devices, like for when you drop your keys way behind something you can't reach and you.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: Or a pointer, you're pointing at a white.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And you reach down, the magnet gets a hold of it. So imagine one of those. But on the end of it, it' kind of got like a claw. You can reach down and grab a ball with the claw, pick it up over your head and then throw it, flick it so you can flick it to the other side so you can practice throwing to their forehands, to their backhands. Instead of having to hit every ball or really instead of having to bend over and pick up a ball, you just pick up balls off the ground or out of a big bucket on the ground. Just flick, flick, flick.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: And they created this.
He basically took the idea for a pet owner, so if you have a dog that you play fetch with, they have a tool like this for a tennis ball. And he basically took that, but he made it a telescoping unit instead of just a straight arm and made it for pickleball.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: It's just smart.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: Brilliant.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: Other things we loved. I was blown away by the. Is it called hoopless the bag?
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Yes, Hooplus.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: H O O P L I S.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: It's really just a basic.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: It's not basic.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: It's not. I mean, it looks basic.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: It's a pickleball bag.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:05] Speaker A: Throw it over your shoulders like a backpack.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: But, dude, the number of zippers it has.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's not.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: It's a really intelligent design.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: It was. It's very intelligent. And that's what they said they did. They took data from all of their friends and other pickleball players about what they like and don't like about their pickleball bags. And then they took that information and created one that is what the players want. And now did we see other bags? We saw some really fashionable ones at Centerline. We saw this new company called Econos or something.
Design wise.
Aesthetically, they look more beautiful and more stylish, but they were not as lightweight as the hoopas one. And that's the nice thing about the hoopas one is I wore that thing all day. I didn't have any shoulder fatigue.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: I think the thing about it that is amazing is just all the foresight. There's only one thing I wish I'd done differently. And, you know, I just. That's My mind works that way. I'm sorry. But, yeah, other than that, I just think it's really, really brilliant design. Everything from the hook so you can hang it on a fence to sunglasses case built in. Or not necessarily sunglasses, but a hard case built hard. Pickleball. I wear, you know, glasses case built in, power built in. So you can put your, you know, your device in there, your battery in there, and then it's got a cord that you can use to charge your phone.
It's got a great place to put your shoes at the bottom. And it's open mesh, vented. So it's vented really well.
The side pocket can fit, like, a big half gallon or larger, like, container.
Instead of your typical yeti, it can fit something bigger than a yeti. That was something that they called out, which was pretty cool. And it's got so many zippers and pockets and places to put things, hidden pockets. I actually couldn't find some stuff the other day. I was like, dad, where did I put this thing?
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Gonna have to air tag it.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Airtag everything inside of it.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Air tag the bag.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
So anyway, that was a really cool thing. The other thing that I think that I saw that I thought was pretty ingenious was a knee brace. And I kind of talked about that a bit ago, but this knee brace actually has a. I think it's patent pending, but when you come above the knee sometimes, you know, like, your thighs are bigger than your calves are, and so you've kind of got this V shape that tends to slide down. Well, he created a device where you have a strap across the top.
Stayed on all day. I played with it twice, and I love it.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: It was a good design.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: And right next to him was another simple but brilliant thing.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Well, three vendors in a row. Because it was the bag.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: It was the bag.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: And then the knee brace, and then left or right? Left or right?
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Left or right?
And this is for me, people, because I am known to not know the score. And it's usually because I forget where I started when I served.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's usually because you're not paying attention to the score.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: Well, that too, because I'm really just there for fun.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: And I like to win, but I also don't care, so.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: But, folks, I gotta tell you, I saw her care because she went into a duper challenge.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: This was one of the events.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Yeah. With a coach, a duper coach on the sideline that was watching everyone's Shots. They played three games around Robin. Each person partnered with the other three people on the court, and we got to see how well they could compete. Now, my wife has been stuck at a 2.5 duper forever.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: 2.5, 2.8. Somewhere there.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: It's not 2.8.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: Whatever.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: 2.58. Maybe.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Maybe.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: But she's just been stuck there. And I'm like, she's been getting better, but she's not playing any events that are helping her move up. And oftentimes when she plays, it is just, la, la, la, let's have some fun.
Just being honest. That's why you're laughing, because you know it's true.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: It is.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: All of a sudden, she got focused during this duper thing like this.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: It wasn't all of a sudden.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: No, you chose to be focused during this.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: You just don't always see my good moves because you're, like, socializing.
[00:30:05] Speaker A: So anyway, she was focused, as I was saying, and the dude was like, what's her duper again? I'm like, 2.55. 2. Whatever it is. He goes, no, no. She's at least a 3 0.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: It's because my punches.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: You had amazing punches.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Got that butt down, bent those knees, put that pile up. Boom, boom.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: I think I even had a lobster.
Lobster or scorpion or whatever that thing is.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: Scorpion, Yeah.
[00:30:29] Speaker B: I don't know terminology, but I know the move.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: Lobsters are pickleball machines.
Scorpions are. When you get down, you put the paddle above your head, like a tail behind you.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Yep. I did one of those.
[00:30:40] Speaker A: Yeah. We need a sound effect for that.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: You probably have one.
Well, and people, I just want to set the stage for this.
This moment, because this court was, again, a rollout court.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: It was.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: We are literally in the middle of everyone. Everybody at the front door.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Basically, everyone can watch you on the way in. They do. It's the first court you see.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: It's the first court you see wide open. I'm playing with people I. I just met, and I have to figure out how to keep score at the same time because I didn't want that to ding me on my duper.
Ooh, that could be a shirt. And then I'm being judged by a coach, which, if you ever had that happen to you, all of a sudden, life turns super serious instantaneously. Wait, Instantaneously. There you go.
So, yeah, I probably was focused because I felt like I was in a pressure cooker.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it was awesome either way. So I liked watching you. I liked hearing his thoughts about you.
You played great, and you were with a. A. A celebrity.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: I was.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: You were with Nicole, who is a softball announcer, sl commentator on espn, who was paid to be at the event as a celebrity. So we didn't know that. We were just like, hi, Nicole. She's like, I don't know how to play very good. I kind of suck. We're like, whatever. Let's play.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah. She had just learned the year before, and then she said when she also.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: Had been hired to come out, typical.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: To be out there, to film the.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Event, to be a celebrity. Yep.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Yep. And then she came back as she left picklecon last year and began playing more on a regular basis.
[00:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah, she had a good time.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: I think she's fun. She was really fun.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: The other thing I wanted to go back to was, oh, Last chance. Any other. Any other awesome booths or things that you saw?
[00:32:37] Speaker B: Well, I'm really surprised that you did not bring up Puppy Yoga.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Oh, please. That was the dumbest thing there, and it was the most highly attended. It was so stupid. I was like, are you freaking kidding me?
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Well, for someone who likes to think about what's on the customer's mind, I'm actually surprised that you're surprised that. That it was so highly.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Never once did Puppy Yoga enter my mind as something that could possibly be of interest to a bunch of pickleball players at a Pickle Con event convention. Well, no.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: There's no way.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: There's no way. Eight hours of driving, there's not one single shred of chance that it would come on my mind. I wonder if they'll have Puppy Yoga there.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: Well, not only was it highly attended, but it was one of the things that people registered for early.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: It was also the stupidest thing I saw at the entire event.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: And it's not suv. It was pretty cute.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: I'm gonna close with this. We got in on a technology panel, and there was some wicked cool, googly stuff in there. There was several things real fast. Then we'll move off of this pod onto the next one.
One thing that is, I think, amazing is they figured out how to 3D print pickleballs that are quiet.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Now, they're different.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Behave.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: They do behave the same way, but they don't feel the same. So it's kind of weird because when you hold it in your hands, it's like a bunch of rubber bands kind of looking thing in a ball, but you can squish it flat and.
But when you hit it with a paddle, it's pretty quiet. Then when you hit it With a quiet paddle, like an owl. Or did Mosi have quiet paddles? Someone else had quiet paddles. There.
[00:34:06] Speaker B: There was a quiet paddle.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Mosey.
[00:34:08] Speaker B: It was another private company. Yeah.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: The game all of a sudden loses a ton of its sound. And you could play it in anyone's backyard and it wouldn't make the neighbors mad.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: And that's a thing.
So that was pretty impressive.
I talked to the chief technology officer for the usap, who everyone knows I have a long standing history of hating.
Not him, but the usap. I think they've done horrible things, made bad decisions. And I shared that with him. I said, hi, I'm Kevin Hoff, the guy online that, you know, absolutely shreds the USAP every chance I get because you guys make stupid decisions.
That's how I introduced myself to him.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. I'm glad I wasn't with you.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: He was like, yeah, we know you. You're on our list. No, he didn't say that.
I said, but honestly, I go, it's not because I think you guys suck. I want you to. Or that I want you to suck. I said, I want you to succeed.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: That's funny.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: That was my little tagline for the day. I want you to suck. I want you to succeed. Have you connected with him yet? He said, yeah, we've connected. Yeah, he's going to, actually. He's. He was very willing to listen.
He said, you're right. We made this stupid decision, this stupid decision, this stupid decision. And I listed a couple of them out for him. I said, I want you to know I'm building my own training certification for referees because your sucks.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: I said, I'm a friend of Bob Swiss Helm. I think what they. What they do is incredible, but it's too complex for the everyday tournament. And you've made it so that it's very expensive to have a tournament with referees to be sanctioned, because that's the only way people get, you know, a rating from you guys anymore. And I'm like, so now Duper's killing you. Oh, I hate. You know, I hate pickleball terms. I get it, bro, but you guys didn't do it.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: So someone else is going to do it because. Yeah, but he's. He's like, you're right. You're right. You're right on all these points. We're doing this, this, and this. And some of the things they're doing are really cool. They're rolling out digital scoring for all referee games, not just pro referee games.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: Because up until now, it's still been on paper, flipboarding paper, flip the clipboard, move your clip. Like all the boring stuff.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: I'm like, well, we do all our games on, on tablets for our amateur. So he's like, well, what are you using? I'm like, pickleball tournaments dot com. I'm like, it's been around for a long time like that.
So he's like, well, not for referees. I'm like, yeah, that's fair. I mean, they still could do it. But you're right, it's not a referee software.
So that's cool that's coming. But some of the other cool things that were coming that he talked about were around technology behind paddles, balls, regulations, governing bodies. He went to that conversation.
He might have to me, called out somebody in particular who he does not like at all. That is part of a competing governing body. But they only govern pros. Okay, so again, I think the USAP is being short sighted. Let them govern the pros. Hey, you go govern 50 people. We'll govern 50 million.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Right?
[00:36:57] Speaker A: Like it's not like, big deal. Let them have one tenth of one tenth of one tenth of 1/10 of 1% of the population.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: So that was interesting.
But I called out lots of people. I called out. I felt bad about this. I called out chicken and pickle.
The lady had said, oh, it was a women's. We were. It was a women's event.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: All women panelists, the marketing.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: We'd only got like 20 minutes and there was a pro event happening down the way on a court.
She's like, well, let's maybe we'll cut this short so we can go watch the pro event. And I stood up and I was like, they're like, who has questions? I stop. And I said, I have a question for 20 minutes. We were talking about how we like put down women and women don't have an opportunity and all this other stuff. And now you're taking away the opportunity for us to hear from women so that we can go watch pickleball. I go, that doesn't make any sense to me. And I sat down and then I was like, oh, shoot, that's chicken and pickle. We wanted to talk to them.
Forgot we wanted to talk to them. But I didn't care because that was stupid.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: And she was a marketing professional. She should have picked up on the.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Fact that she was the one ruining the women's opportunity to tell us what they had to say.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: So she's obviously not public relations because that was not a PR A good public relations.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: She's not.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: Human resources love chicken and pickles. We love that.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: So it's not. It's not so much organization as this woman just making a bad judgment call.
And again, if they hadn't been announcing stuff over a panel, maybe she wouldn't have been tempted to cut off the event so early.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Well, I'm glad. It was awesome.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Overall, we have other stuff we can talk about.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Well, we can. It's already been 38 minutes.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Well, let's just talk one more thing about the technology.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: The gentleman from. Who works with Core and the professional pickle ball pros, 3P, P3, whatever they have, come up with two balls. One is biodegradable and one is combustible.
[00:38:57] Speaker A: Okay. Combustible means you can light a fire. Compostable. Okay, we're on the same page here.
It's a fully compostable ball, so you play with it, and over time, it just turns back into dirt. What'd you say the first ball was?
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Biodegradable.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: That's what compostable is.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: Well, he said two different balls.
Okay.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: One is biodegradable, like a percentage of it is over time. But this one was the first fully sanctioned, approved ball by USAP for regular and tournament pickleball play that is fully compostable.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: And this is a big deal.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: Or compostable, depending on where you're from.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Well, whatever.
I say things wrong sometimes.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: No, you said combustible. That's totally different than the two things I said.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: I'm lovable because I say things wrong.
[00:39:42] Speaker A: You are. Didn't our very first episode start with I'm lovable because. But I said it, and you said it was because I was weird or something.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Maybe.
[00:39:50] Speaker A: I think our very first episode. We'll have to look at the flashback machine and see what it said.
Anyway, long story short, man, we are so sorry that it's taken us a little while, but this. This delay of one or two weeks of not being on with you guys, it has teed up some really cool conversations to come. So we've got three or four people that we met at this event that are all going to be on our podcast. In fact, we record the next one, I think, on Wednesday.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Tomorrow.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: Oh, gosh, that's tomorrow already. So, yeah.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Stay tuned, people.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: All right. Well, sky, what do you want to say? Anything else?
[00:40:25] Speaker B: Just that you're ahead of the game and.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I think it's. We're ahead of the game. And tell your. Wait, tell your friends. Let's get it right Tell your friends.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: That we're ahead of the game and so are you oh, I'm only a butt slinging and working overtime Got a song and I'm the singer the melody, the vibe I'm a prodigy Logically I'm impossibly wanted Then they'll remember my name.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: They'Ll remember my name.
