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Opening The Largest Indoor Pickleball Court In CA & A New Ecommerce Platform And Affiliate Program
623 Plays1 year ago
Podcast interview with Pat Rolfes, the co-founder of Newport Beach Pickleball Events, The HUB, and Pickleball Superstore. The HUB has 3 locations in California, one of them being the largest indoor pickleball facility in California. Alongside his partner Steve Raack, Pickleball Superstore is introducing a new affiliate technology that will disrupt the industry. They've already partnered up with the APP. Could they rival Pickleball Central?
Steve Kuhn episode: https://youtu.be/m9DYSCTLli8
Nationals: https://youtu.be/RS0cHqf-MFs
• Pickleball Superstore discount: BrianL-104899 Use this URL: https://pickleballsuperstore.com/discount/BrianL-104899
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:26 Beginning
02:24 Why Pat is in TX
03:22 His is take on Nationals
04:54 Competing tours, APP
12:05 Can PPA and MLP co-exist?
14:58 Pickleball without Steve Kuhn
23:18 Gambling in PB
24:21 Pickleball's unique tournament format
26:38 Pickleball superstore & proprietary technology
29:43 Why Superaffiliate is different
31:56 Equity crowdfunding
33:14 The idea behind PBSS
39:03 PBSS mindset and history
42:33 PBSS technology
44:22 Partnerships
45:16 Technology in Pickleball
47:06 Why cookie based tracking matters
54:03 Affiliate programs effect on retail
55:55 Pro shops
01:02:02 Origins of his business experience
01:05:45 The Hub facilities
01:21:13 Bed bath and beyond conversions
01:22:32 Challenge with facilities
01:23:55 The Hub alameda
01:27:18 Building courts
01:31:58 Advice
01:34:55 closing
#pickleball #pickleballcourt
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Transcript
Entrepreneurial Journey in Pickleball
00:00:00
Speaker
An entrepreneur since age 11 founded a bottled water coffee brewer. Investor in Duper co-founded the Hub, three separate Pickleball facilities in the state of California, with one of them being the largest indoor facility in the state. And now, Pickleball Superstore. You know Steve on like a personal level, but also in a professional setting as well. What do you think Pickleball misses out on without Steve Kuhn?
00:00:26
Speaker
So I started, you know, Cafeo when I was 23, right out of school, I invented a bottled water coffee maker. Allowing the community, so when we say community-owned, community-focused, we truly mean it. We're allowing the community to own it. So again, he started Beauty Counter. In nine years, they sold it for a billion dollars. Will you, Steve, and Ted ever license Gigfiliate?
00:00:50
Speaker
We solve that problem for the pro shop. So we're the largest club in San Diego and we just do it in California. And the thing about California, we own the largest indoor facility in the country right now. And I'm sure that'll change next week, the way Pickleball is going.
Impact of Proprietary Technology on Pickleball
00:01:04
Speaker
So what happens when a proprietary technology that's sold for a billion dollars in the beauty industry comes into Pickleball? What does it take to build three of the largest facilities in California? This is a story of Pat Rolfes. This is building Pickleball.
00:01:26
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of Building Pickleball. My guest today is Pat Rolfes. He is the founder of Cafeo, the co-founder of The Hub, Pickleball Superstore, Newport Beach Pickleball events, and is a part owner in MLP and Duper. Thanks again to all the subscribers and my sponsor, Viori. Welcome, man. Hey, thanks for having me.
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, I have a bad habit of doing, uh, double takes on podcasts, apparently. Cause like did two with Raphael from gearbox. And then we had filmed our first one. When was that like April? It was.
00:02:03
Speaker
It was quite a while ago, but some of that was on me though, Brian, don't get too hard on yourself. No worries. Um, I'm glad that you can't, that you were willing to make the trip though. I like appreciate that immensely at this point. I pretty much want like all these to be in person. They're, they usually flow a little bit better. Um, but yeah, just, you know, like kind of tell everyone what you're in town for.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
Pickleball Events and Competitions
00:02:26
Speaker
So as you mentioned, I am a very small part of MLP and Duper. You know, thanks to Steve Kuhn for giving me that opportunity. A shout out to Steve.
00:02:37
Speaker
So I came for the one in Dallas and so, and just had that, which was great. And my wife just finished up playing in nationals and so we're enjoying nationals. And so it's about a three hour drive down to you here in Austin. And actually Jennifer's mother-in-law is down here, her dad's stepmother. So we're visiting her as well. So it all worked out and you know, say hi to some friends down here and do this. This is great. Thanks for having me.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. How did Jennifer do on the in the tournament? You know what? She she hung in there, you know, she's actually already a national champion. So she's quite the player and she didn't win it this year, but she's pretty formidable and and had a good time with her partner. So it was fun. Yeah. What'd you think of the venue over at Nationals?
00:03:24
Speaker
You know, I run a lot of tournaments, so Newport Beach Pickleball events. I started that with my partners Charlotte Sada and Patty Weber at the Tennis Football Club down in Newport Beach, you know, five years ago or so.
00:03:41
Speaker
And so we helped build that club with pickleball courts and my partner Ted Angela and I built the restaurant there and everything else. So we ran a bunch of tournaments. We actually helped structure the national championship series with USA Pickleball to give them the gold tickets. That's why there's always one at Newport.
00:04:03
Speaker
I'm very aware of how to run tournaments and focus on it. This venue got put together so quickly and the steel got put together so quickly that I think they're struggling a little bit with the venue and trying to help that set up.
00:04:20
Speaker
Nationals are still special. It's nice seeing all the pros there. I understand why USA Pickleball did the deal with the PPA and it was fun having Major League Pickleball there and so many people are coming to this so it was a big exposure. It was great. Last night they had a deal with Dirk Davinsky and Jason Kidd and
00:04:46
Speaker
Scottie Scheffler and all these, you know, athletes. So that was fun. So, you know, you, you see a bunch of stuff like that. So, you know, it's still nationals. That's pretty special. It'd be great. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm wondering like go still going. You still go to the, and attend these events, but you're also, also like you have business relations with APP because of pickleball superstore, which we'll definitely get into, but.
00:05:07
Speaker
just interested to hear like more about what your perspective is when you kind of go to different events and you attend them even though you have business relations with like I guess you could consider them like competing competitors. Yeah sure I mean you know I love the APP first of all yeah quality organization quality people
00:05:28
Speaker
They put on phenomenal tournaments. We have a great relationship with them with Pickleball Superstore. They actually came in as an equity partner and we have a program with them where we handle all their shop basically with their e-commerce platform and everything else. So they're a special company with a special group of people and they're going to continue to succeed. They operate
00:05:55
Speaker
extremely, you know, fiscally responsible. There's very smart people that are involved with this organization. So I'm super proud to be part of the APP or team up with the APP with Pickleball Superstore.
00:06:09
Speaker
Pickleball is such where it's still young, it's still in the infancy. I've been involved now for five years and I feel like a grandfather in this space because most people are a year or two into this thing. There's a lot of moving parts. We're seeing it with the MLP and the PPA. We're seeing it here at Nationals with USA Pickleball.
00:06:32
Speaker
You know, so there's still a lot of moving parts. We'll see where it all shakes out. But I think there's room for most of it, you know, room for all of it. And I'd like to ultimately see more things come together because there's a lot of smart people out there, you know, trying to put things together that make sense.
Challenges and Benefits of Multiple Pickleball Organizations
00:06:50
Speaker
Since you're a part owner in MLP and Duper, what were your thoughts on the tour wars and between them and the PPA? Yeah, that's interesting. And again, Brian, I don't want to overhype it. I'm a very, very small part of this. I got brought into Duper as a strategic advisor and when Jill Braberman was the CEO and worked with her a little bit.
00:07:17
Speaker
very exciting Technology that they have and exciting times they ended up merging with major league pickleball So that's kind of how my you know background to it all and my relationship, you know grew with Steve Kuhn, which was has been great You know, it seems to me challenging to To have these and I'm glad that and I don't know if it's done yet or not I know that they announced things but but
00:07:45
Speaker
The road to try to combine PPA and MLP seems to try to figure that out. I think it's going to be challenging, quite frankly. I think there's a lot of demand on the athletes. I think it's a lot of time.
00:08:01
Speaker
You know, the formats are obviously different with the PPA and the MLP and that's kind of the story. So I don't know if it could have sustained. I don't know what is sustainable in general. Is it merging it together? Is that more sustainable?
00:08:17
Speaker
Running them independently. Is that more sustainable? I don't think running independently was was gonna work And we'll see time will tell if if emerging it's gonna work right so It'll be interesting and I really don't have any insight on it. I love
00:08:37
Speaker
I love MLP. I actually love the PPA and what they're doing. I get both of them. I'm just a big fan of pickleball. I love seeing the pros benefit from this, so this is all great. I think the APP needs
00:08:52
Speaker
You know, more credit to a lot of this. They run great professional tournaments and the people coming up from that. And this is what's fun about Major League Pickleball. You're seeing a lot of the APP pros shine. Just shine at this level. Andre, like Megan Fudge.
00:09:10
Speaker
Ton of them. There's a ton of them, right? Alex, you know, and you know that on and on. And so, you know, it really, you know, they say, Oh, the APP is a stepping stone or second tier. It's like, you know, I'm not 100% sure that's the case, because there's some athletes that are, you know, really shining on the APP when you're seeing it, you know, at the MLPs, because that's where they're getting their opportunities. Yeah. But anyway, it's more pick of all the better. And it's some very young and
00:09:38
Speaker
And I think it'll I think it'll wash itself out somehow.
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's okay for there to be like a feeder organization. I think there might always be, but like obviously Paris Todd and the Johnson brothers are having like not just success, but they're probably being, not trying to say this, like it's just money, but they're probably being given or being offered something more on the table than what the PPA or MLPCs or just PPCs says like worth their value, like what their stock is. So they're being paid like what they're worth.
00:10:13
Speaker
So it's great that there are competing organizations. Well, I think it's really great for the athletes that there are. And Paris is a good friend of mine. Funny story about Paris real quick. The first person that Paris ever played with, the very first person in Newport, was my wife.
00:10:33
Speaker
OK, so that our head pro, Abby, called Jennifer over to play with Paris, who was coaching tennis at the time at Newport. And because Jennifer plays a very beautiful, soft game. And so anyway, very first time she played and I and I won't I won't say who won, but anyway, it was cute. And Paris will say the same thing. It was very cute. It was very fond memory.
00:10:58
Speaker
You know again I think that I get the feeder organization with the APP. I think we're seeing a lot of opportunities from the pros there and if you have one and I'll give you an example. If you have one organization and so take the WNBA
00:11:18
Speaker
So the WNBA, you know, you can do a guess of what the highest paid athlete is from the WNBA. No, it's like I think it's $125,000 that the WA pays the high and they're on, you know, ESPN and TV and yeah, you know, it's basketball. So, you know, having because they don't have a competing tour or competing league, you know to look at it.
Pickleball Superstore's Community-Driven Model
00:11:43
Speaker
So by having a competing league,
00:11:45
Speaker
you know, the really the people who benefit, you know, one are, you know, the fans and two are the players because now it becomes, you know, a bit of a bidding war or more opportunity for them to get exposure and get seen out there and, you know, more sponsorships and all the things that, you know, they need to make a living at it. Why can't MLP and PPA just coexist the way they are now? Like, I like that. Like there's a seasonal, like,
00:12:12
Speaker
There's I guess there's like regularly scheduled games and then you have like your championships in a sense like every quarter in a way. So we'll see if they can. Right. So here's my perspective.
00:12:29
Speaker
And I'm, you know, I see you at all these events, so you know, what a nut job I am, I'm going to these things, I'm just a big fan, and I know most of the players and the whole thing, so it's super fun for me. But it's a lot of pickleball to go and watch an MLP event and then go watch a PPA event that's like, you know, six, seven days at a venue, you know, watching pickleball. It's just a lot, because they're trying to save money
00:12:58
Speaker
by doing them on the same weekends. Oh, yeah, I would not advise that. It's a tough one, right? You wouldn't do like football during a regularly scheduled game during the Super Bowl. That's a good example. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So so so that's what's happening now. And I get it. They're they're they're trying to make these they're trying to be fiscally responsible with these leagues. But in doing so, it's
00:13:19
Speaker
It's going to dilute the product and it'll be interesting to see how it all again washes out. But at the end of the day, it's you know, they're paying for the player's time. So if you read the contract of the players, which I have, they're committing to X amount of days a year that they get paid. And so the players are going to do that to show up. They have to do certain things and do all these type of things to get their
00:13:46
Speaker
their payment which is fine and then they should they're in contracts so you know at the end of the day you're going to have to see who's you know where's that's going to there's only so many days that they're going to play there's only so many days that they can't play and
00:14:04
Speaker
It'll be interesting to see how that shakes out again because there's not complete alignment at the top, the MLP and the PPA in my opinion. And because of that, there's competing interest levels to it. But again, smarter people than I.
00:14:25
Speaker
And now there's a big money thrown at it. And when there's usually big money thrown at it and smart people, it gets becomes pretty complicated. So I try to keep things pretty simple in my life. So as much as I can. Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard people say that about Tom Dundon. He's just like a very intelligent guy. Not that he's like the only like he's the main player in all this happening, but
00:14:50
Speaker
Um, not to take any credit away from Steve Kuhn either. Um, but that, it was, that is one of my questions. Like, you know, Steve on like a personal level, but also in a professional, uh, setting as well. What do you think pickleball misses out on without Steve Kuhn?
00:15:05
Speaker
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00:16:21
Speaker
Well, I think Steve got in it for the right reasons. I think he was very passionate. I'll tell a quick story about Steve. So he invited me over to his home. Is that the one with the cord in the back at the time? Yeah, exactly. And we were there actually for game night. And so he has a very eclectic group of friends. And I was there with some of his,
00:16:48
Speaker
like super intelligent, you know, academic, you know, friends and we were playing these board games and it was really, really fun. We had a great time doing it. Well, one of the games, not all of them certainly, I ended up winning, you know, one of the games. The board came and I think that was the moment that Steve actually had real respect for me because I actually won a board game off of him. So, you know, he's a very, very smart guy and he got into pickleball for,
00:17:17
Speaker
the right reasons to grow it, to help the pros, to create a vision which I think people are really enjoying at the Hub. We just ran an MLP event style event and people loved it. My wife played in one and she really enjoyed
00:17:35
Speaker
That fun team environment from an amateur level right and so you know that's to me, you know Changing the game and changing the mindset and everything else and that's really what he's done. He's working on You know more courts and public courts. He owns pickle mall and trying to do more courts, you know there and everything else so and
00:17:56
Speaker
Anyway, great. I've never met Tom Dundon. I have friends that know him. He seems like a smart guy, obviously he is. And he did things very smart, as far as I'm concerned, buying pickleball tournaments, then brackets, emerging the two, and buying Central, and certainly the PPA, and how he put all that together with pickleball.com, and I just think
00:18:25
Speaker
From a business standpoint, I really appreciate the thinking behind that and what he's doing and everything else.
Key Figures and Strategic Moves in Pickleball
00:18:33
Speaker
It's still a long road to hoe. I think probably the only company, and I don't know, I'm not privy to any of this information, but that's cash flowing, is Pickleball Central. That is probably the one that's profitable. I think the others are,
00:18:51
Speaker
A long-term approach that will hopefully pay off for him. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean like I agree in the sentiment that Tom and his like strategic move to buy all those pieces and kind of like merge it into one is like a great business move but I can see like a lot of people you can see the like frustration in the comments in like different forms and
00:19:15
Speaker
social media because people would get frustrated. You're just like, Oh man, like this guy's just super greedy. And like Tom Dundon, he's like, Oh, his organization's super greedy. This is what happens when you take like a very like community driven product or like sport and hobby. And then you.
00:19:30
Speaker
Big players come in and just want to like throw money at it, but you make a good point that like You just said like in terms of cash flow the only one that's really like cash flowing is pickleball central and the guy from what I've heard from different people is just that Tom is doing his best to try and make sure that the PPA the pick pickleball comm and pickleball tournaments becomes profitable which if we want this to if we want the sport the community and everything that we have now to thrive and
00:20:00
Speaker
That's something that we need to have. We need some guy who like people were saying that that's like kind of the contrast to Steve Kuhn. It's like Steve, like you said, joined it for all the right reasons. Something that he may have been lacking was that he didn't know how to make it profitable. He didn't know how to generate revenue. Take something that was so incredibly popular. Like how do you make money? How do you make money with this? I don't even, I honestly don't even understand how MLP even makes money. Like I get there's like,
00:20:26
Speaker
people that buy teams and everything but I did hear that that's like kind of the contrast with Tom Dundon is He found a way or he's trying to find a way to make it profitable and I can see also frustrations with people's tournament experiences and everything and this is just I Just feel like it's like a growing pain
00:20:45
Speaker
Well, I think that's the right words to use. I think it's growing pain. So I've known Connor Pardo for four years or three years. I think Newport was the second tournament he ever threw a PPA tournament was at Newport. And we've done multiple ones. And same deal with the PPA, right? I mean, Connor works really, really hard and I think he gets a bad rap a lot of times.
00:21:11
Speaker
everything else but it's hard you know what he's doing is is hard and and then having a partner like tom that saw what the vision was with the ppa and said here's let me help monetize and again i'm not involved with any of this that you know this is just my perception it could be all incorrect but yeah
00:21:28
Speaker
You know, it's a big gamble that they're taking. It's big dollars. And these are, you know, at least Tom has, you know, got a big wallet to back this and see where it goes. The, you know, until they get the sponsorships and I'm talking non endemic sponsors until the McDonald's and the Coca Colas of the world and
00:21:48
Speaker
and guys like that start to come in you know it's it's a tough road to hoe until the media comes in and and people actually are really watching the sport not just the diehard pickleball fans but you know it gets mainstream that's when i i think where the money starts to come and i don't know how long that is and and everything else so
00:22:06
Speaker
So it's a run, and again, Major League Pickleball, from a fan experience, is great. I mean, it's fun to see it. You've been there. The energy's high and everything else. Selling teams isn't sustainable. But there's something there that makes it work. And I think the amateur level, again, with Minor League Pickleball and all that, and the college level, I think is great.
00:22:33
Speaker
I'm a big fan of Duper from a technology platform and I think that's getting better and better. I think that's part of the overall strategy that Steve had was to create Duper, create a rating system that was universal and dynamic. That would ultimately lead to gambling and tying into the lines, to form lines for gambling.
00:23:00
Speaker
So I think there's ultimately that revenue stream is going to be coming. So I think that's that business model on the other side from the, you know, duper MLP side. And that was the original, I don't know if it was the original concept, but that would have been an opportunity or still could be. I don't know anything about gambling. Like does it really drive sports that much?
00:23:22
Speaker
Sure. I mean, the NFL is it's all based off of that, right? So sports gambling is gigantic. Yeah. So it drives a lot of revenue. Let me put it that way. And so, you know, you as a NFL fan or not, but you reap the benefits because it's another revenue stream that's that's being driven.
00:23:49
Speaker
And again, and also all the media and the sponsors and everything that goes along with that. So Pick'em All right now doesn't really have that element of it yet. Hopefully it'll come and then that'll make these tours and athletes and everything else get paid even more and these business models sustainable. Yeah, I'd probably put my life savings on Annalee in like every tournament she plays. She's amazing. She's amazing.
Innovative Tournament Formats in Pickleball
00:24:18
Speaker
Something else that you did mention was the MLP format. You're talking about mix. Something that does make Pickleball unique is we have a tournament format that involves both genders. And it's not necessarily lopsided. Typically, in most sports, people will generally skew towards like, oh, the men are more exciting. But in Pickleball, it's really not the case. The female games and matchups are usually more exciting. I don't really enjoy watching mixed, but I do enjoy gender doubles.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean in good points. It's funny. I think to me I really enjoy watching the women's doubles probably more than the men's because of the It's just exciting men. The men's can get into a you know, dink fest until it just you know barely comes up and then it's a quick hand battle and it's over right so
00:25:12
Speaker
So where women seems to be a lot more dynamic and at least right now, and they're all amazing athletes and great. I do like mixed. I understand what you mean by that. I like it all. I like the Dreambreaker. So people are asking me, who am I rooting for at the MLP? And I said, I'm rooting for the Dreambreaker. Because I love the format. I love the idea that it's a team format.
00:25:39
Speaker
It's equal men, equal women. They all have an equal role on this. I can't think of many other sports that are like that and good for Steve Kuhn to create that format and good for, you know, pick a ball community to embrace that format. I think people really do like it. I think it's neat from a team environment to see it.
00:25:59
Speaker
It shows that like pickleball does have with the right rule set. There is, it is a leveled playing field. Like it can be like the dream breakers are perfect example. You don't always know who's going to win. And they've like gotten to the point where they're putting females up against males. Oh, for sure. Like taking, just taking their money and walking away with it. Yeah. Taking them down. I mean, it's, it's certainly competitive a hundred percent. Yeah. You know, I, I was watching Megan fudge and, and, um, I,
00:26:26
Speaker
I forgot who she was playing with, but against in singles, but she won three out of the four points. Yeah. They're just like taking their lunch money. It's crazy. Yeah. Um, which that makes it like definitely very, very exciting. Something I definitely want to spend like quite a bit of time on and talking about.
00:26:43
Speaker
because we've already talked about like pickleball central is you know like cashflow positive and we talk about the use this very common term community you know in pickleball so i want to talk about pickleball superstore like i don't think majority of people know what pickleball superstore is yet because it's it like came off the ground fairly recently
00:27:07
Speaker
And it just needs more attention. So hopefully I can, uh, help facilitate that. But if you want to get into pick wall super story, we're like, what is it? How does it affect, you know, the average player for the, for once, not everything's focused on pros, but this is actually focused on, you know, kind of like your everyday rec player, um, and how you're using a like proprietary technology
Affiliate Technology's Role in Pickleball Superstore
00:27:31
Speaker
that.
00:27:31
Speaker
your business partner Steve Rack has taken from other industries and he's brought it into Pickleball and just like yeah your thoughts on really like the impact that it's gonna have. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Pickleball Superstore is a super special company and yeah and Steve Rack is the CEO of the company and I'm one of the major shareholders and a co-founder with Ted Angelo and myself and that company is special.
00:28:00
Speaker
You know the the culture of the company how we look at it how we give back to the community And really our business model that surrounds it and let me explain it a little bit. So So we're an e-commerce platform, right? We have 2200 plus SKUs we inventory all those SKUs we have customer service teams we we you know ship it and you know do all the things that you know other e-commerce platforms do and
00:28:30
Speaker
But one of the things that make us unique is Steve was involved with a company called beauty counter where he was the co-founder of it and beauty counter He developed a technology called gig affiliate. So gig affiliate is basically an affiliate program you get a code and You can hand that code to someone for a discount and the person who handed it to someone gets a commission on it essentially
00:28:54
Speaker
Well, the majority of affiliate programs are cookie based, which means that that code goes away and that relationship from the person who gave the code to his buddy to get the discount, although he got the one time commission, it goes away. They're no longer linked. So Steve identified this and he created a product called gig affiliate technology called gig affiliate and
00:29:22
Speaker
It gets embedded into the programming when you share your code. And I brought you a present here, Brian. You are an official gig affiliate of Pickleball Superstore. I made it custom for you for building Pickleball. It's great, man. It's your bag tag. And everybody gets a bag tag, by the way, at Pickleball Superstore.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yes, please do. Yeah. So so you can share that code by they can just scan it with their phone and then order up and they get a 10 percent discount and you're going to get a piece of that 10 percent back. The difference is is that you're forever linked to that person. So they move to a wacky state like California like me and and and you maybe lose connection, but they continue to buy from Pickleball Superstore because they can always get a discount now.
00:30:11
Speaker
and you're always going to get a commission on it. Now, if that person becomes a super affiliate as well, not only do, and it's free for anyone to do it, and then they can get a bank tag and they can share it with their friends and do all that. You get a piece of that 10% of commission on that. So it goes down two levels basically, and then it stops and it goes into a pool. But basically the concept is we take 32% of the sale
00:30:41
Speaker
And, you know, we're lucky if you if you take a dollar and say a product costed, you know, retails for a dollar, we're lucky to buy it for 50 cents at 50 percent margin. We're taking 32 cents of that and giving it back to the community as a 10 percent as a discount and then the other 22 percent to have the community outreach to market. It's basically marketing a sense some market and paying them to do so.
00:31:08
Speaker
And so at the end of the day, our margins are relatively small, but we would rather give it back to the community because we feel it's the grassroots effort. We feel that by pushing it out, having people talk about it in the community, that's really where Pickleball is all about. We can buy Google ads, we can get a banner on the PPA and things like that, but we would rather take our marketing dollars and give it back to the community.
00:31:38
Speaker
So with that logic and this technology, which is exclusive to us, um, no one else in the industry has this. Cause again, the CEO, Steve rack and my partner owns it. Um, it allows us, we went the next step with this. So we actually just got through a regsia funding. So we're governed by FINRA and the sec. We allowed people to come in and buy a percentage of shares, same common shares that I have in the company.
00:32:08
Speaker
And for as little as $100, they can come in and be an owner of Pickleball Superstore. In fact, it gets limited to $2,500 and you could buy more, but you'd have to meet some financial standards. But the point being is that we now have owners all around the United States. I think we're up to 45 states that people are part owners of Pickleball Superstore.
00:32:34
Speaker
And we're just about ready to go out with the second round because we sold out of this in like 13, 14 days. I forgot what it was something crazy. So we're now getting reevaluated and and our evaluations going up. And so the next we're going to do it again and basically so more and more people can own part of the company. So we're allowing the community. So when we say community owned, community focused, we truly mean it. We're allowing the community to own it.
00:33:01
Speaker
We're then using the community to help spread that word because we have unique technology in doing so. It's super exciting. We're super pumped up on it. Whether you buy a yola paddle, whether you buy it from
00:33:21
Speaker
You know, YOLA, Pickleball Super Sword, you know, or any other e-commerce platform. It's the same paddle. So what does the company stand for? You know, what is the company going to give back to the community with? What is the company going to, you know, help the local community? Are they going to give back to the players that are in the parks and helping promote your company?
00:33:42
Speaker
So that's really what we're all about. And and we're excited about it. Our growth rate is phenomenal and, you know, cash flow positive again, making money. And, you know, we're not and we're not getting the funding to raise the money. It's not a money issue for us at this point in time. It's it's a marketing community issue. We really want the community engagement. We really want the community to be part owners of this journey because we believe we'll be more successful in doing so.
00:34:12
Speaker
I think it's a good move that you guys aren't spending a lot on marketing. I think this is very contextual. I think in pickleball, the people and the community will do the work for you in a sense. Pickleball is the greatest example of word of mouth. You look around at your local courts.
00:34:33
Speaker
Like how are paddles really being sold? Usually affiliates. You're exactly right. Yeah. And it's cool. It's great to see it. Like it's that word of mouth is like, man, if anyone wants to see a great example of how that works, just look at pickle. Oh, it's amazing. And I know a lot of, you know, pick them all manufacturer paddle manufacturers. Garrett with carbon is a good friend of mine. Amazing products. We saw a ton of his stuff.
00:34:57
Speaker
you know at the end of the day you know garrett doesn't necessarily care if carbon sold on pickleball superstore or if he sells it or it's sold on another platform he's getting his brand out there and selling it it's the same product it's like buying tight detergent whether you buy it at walmart or target or costco it's it's the same product so
00:35:17
Speaker
If you're able to be tied into this and if you're part of this community and you make, you know, money, you know, in the process, you'll be more willing, you know, and you like the company and what it stands for, you'll be more willing to say, I want to buy this brand here or that brand here and do all that kind of stuff. And then the advantage for the affiliates is that, again, it's not cookie based. You're linked forever in our programming.
00:35:42
Speaker
And, you know, when they're there, they can buy balls and they can buy gloves and weights and hats and shoes and, you know, blah, blah, blah. Again, currently 2200 products. We got a lot of skews. Yeah. Check out the paddles. You guys have a lot of the big name brands. Oh, we have all of them. Some smaller ones that aren't up there, but name like one retailer that is like selling every single brand. Right. So yeah, it's great. I mean, you guys hit all the major brands.
00:36:08
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And again, like we said earlier, there's 400 new manufacturers coming to market. It's a lot. And my partner, Ted Angela, which really reached out and helped with all the vendor relationships, everything else.
00:36:24
Speaker
He would say, you know, we're pickleball superstore, hence superstore. We got to have a huge selection, you know, so people can really see and understand what's out there. You know, so, so we have a lot, a lot of stuff. Pickleball is so odd because like, if you're paying full price for a product at this point, I think you either like live under a rock or you just like don't have friends. Like it's.
00:36:46
Speaker
It's what I'm trying to say is like it's great that pickleball is one of those it's just like a sport that people can get into and you don't have to pay full price for things and With pickleball superstore if you become a super affiliate through the gig affiliate program, you're not having to do extra additional work It's not like oh man, like if I want to get an additional like 10% I have to do more work No, it's just like hey
00:37:12
Speaker
I'm getting 10% off products. If you want to get 10% off products as well, here's a link. Yeah. Here you go. Scan my card. Yeah. Yeah. And then if you want to do it, you know, and, and be an affiliate and make money and share that news, that's great too. So you're exactly right. It there's a, this industry is still very new. Yeah. So, you know, there'll be some shakeout. Obviously 200 paddle manufacturers aren't, isn't sustainable. Um,
00:37:39
Speaker
But it's an exciting time and and it's a very competitive industry. And so we want to hit the grassroots effort. We want this community. We want people to be part of this and own it. We want them to make money on it if they want to. You know, as they tell their friends, they might as well make commissions on it. You know, so that's.
00:38:01
Speaker
That's really who we are. I mean, that's the brand better. It's crazy that like pickleball among all like the amazing things that people have gotten from it, I've been able to kind of like create a, you know, somewhat of a career out of being a content creator through pickleball. But like something that I think is like so big is, um,
00:38:22
Speaker
being able to make money. Like, uh, yeah, I almost lost a thought, but like affiliate programs, like that's insane. Like there's really, you can't do that with many other major sports, right? How many Amazon is very popular for their affiliate programs, but I don't think they are paying out nearly as much as big ball is. Correct.
00:38:40
Speaker
Yeah. And it's just like incredibly easy. And if the community of pickleball, I don't know what the last numbers or figures were, but if that keeps growing, then there's just more opportunity for people to just, you don't have to make like major amounts of money, but you can just make like enough, like, Hey, if this month I want to go eat somewhere nice, or maybe I want to like buy my like partner a gift or something like you can do that without really lifting your tournament fees. Your tournament fees is a good example.
00:39:08
Speaker
Yeah, whatever you want. Yeah. I mean, it's you're exactly right. I mean, the opportunities are unique. And again, because of our technology, which is not a lot of technology in this space. And so it's nice that we have technology. But because of that, we're able to do that. And then my partner, Steve, quotes this best. You know, we don't have a scarcity mindset. We're not saying this is mine. I'm going to keep it. And don't, you know, don't let anyone in. We're like, no, we're the opposite. You know, everybody participate.
00:39:37
Speaker
And I'll tell you my numbers are completely open and transparent of margins and the whole thing. And this is what we're doing. And then let other people compete with what we're doing.
Adapting Beauty Industry Strategies to Pickleball
00:39:48
Speaker
I think it'll be difficult for others because of this mindset. As soon as we get enough people on it. So again, he started a beauty counter.
00:39:57
Speaker
In nine years, they sold it for a billion dollars. And it wasn't because their sales were high, which they were. It wasn't because the EBITDA was good, which it was. It was because they had 60,000 super affiliates on his gig affiliate program. And so when the next company came in, they said, oh, I like that brand. And I like your 60,000 super affiliates that really are now tied to your company.
00:40:23
Speaker
and and that became super powerful and that's our goal and we think pickleball is the ideal to your point the ideal market for this technology and that's where really the whole premise of pickleball superstore came from is because of the technology and who we are my partners and
00:40:40
Speaker
I've been very fortunate to team up with really hardworking, smart people. And so it's exciting for us. I mean, this is going to really resonate, I think, throughout the parks and the local clubs and the players, the people who actually buy it and use them and everything else. So it's fun. We're excited about it.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah, before we even like started the, got the cameras rolling, we talked about like that, how pick a ball, something that it's lacking is just like the leveraging and the use of like technology. And it's cool that there are like ways that techno, I mean, look at.
00:41:21
Speaker
Pickleballtournaments.com could use. Are you guys gonna help them with that? Oh you're killing me. You're killing me. My wife won't let me do too many more things. You guys like kind of like created like I don't know how many people really knew like beauty counter but
00:41:38
Speaker
This proprietary technology you haven't really heard of it right like in other industries other areas So it's cool that you're bringing something like pickleball specific To this industry and it's like something It is very new. I think it's definitely like you'd use the term before disruptive Which I'm a huge I have I come from a tech background. So I
00:42:01
Speaker
for me it's like really really refreshing and rewarding to see you're like oh this is how anything at this point with like the amount that technology is being used in the world now is like how does anything keep up with the way the world is working and the way the world is growing it's like there has to be an element of technology that
00:42:24
Speaker
can help facilitate things and in this way it's help facilitating people spending less money but also at the same time making money which is I mean that's kind of hard to beat. Yeah I know it really is and and you know the other thing that it just I like so much about it it's just so simple it you know I'm not that smart of a guy Brian so I'd like simple things I try to keep things very very the kiss method right keep it simple stupid
00:42:50
Speaker
So, you know, this is great. And you can go right on pickleball, superstore.com, go to, you know, log in, go to your super affiliate, see your homepage. You can see your numbers in real time. Who bought what from you or, you know, you get monthly, you know, revenue coming in in real cash, you know, delivered out monthly. So.
00:43:13
Speaker
It's really transparent, really simple to understand. These bag tags are a game changer, I think, because now you don't have to remember your code. You're just, oh, no, here it is. And it's on your bag, right? Thank you, COVID, QR codes. Yep. And it's all free. You have to pay for anything. This is all part of our community.
00:43:33
Speaker
Part of what we're doing to to get the community engaged And again for us we look at it as a you know one who we are as as a company But two is as a marketing expense like we pay 32% out
00:43:50
Speaker
I can do that with Google, but I think Google's doing just fine without my money spent, right? So anyway, and we just believe this is where Pickleball is, this is where we started, right? The grassroots, the parks, the this, the that. And like you said, it's the community and talking to your friends and, well, what pattern are you using? Oh, you use that one? Yeah, I just got it.
00:44:13
Speaker
kind of stuff so it's it's fun it's I think it's gonna do well it is doing really well it's trending amazingly well so but the whole strategy of letting others be part of this and own a piece of this and and help push this out even further that's exciting and then having relationships with APP that's exciting and we're you know announcing soon and don't announce it here we're doing a relationship with PPR so all the
00:44:38
Speaker
certified coaches with PPR. Sarah Ansberry. Sarah Ansberry. Her videos are hilarious. Oh, she's great. Sarah's great. Great teacher. She, she'll create videos despite the weather and it doesn't matter like what weather conditions, right? If there's like 20 mile an hour winds, she's like still going at it in the video, right? She's talking about it's hilarious, but she's cool.
00:45:01
Speaker
So all those coaches now, if they want, unfortunately meaning, but they're all part of the program, right? So this is ways to do more and more outreach on this and push this out. And again, it's because of the technology. Technology is like a beautiful thing. When it's also like married into a sport like pickleball where technology isn't, well, I guess, paddle technology. Okay, I kind of take that back. There's a lot of technology used in different ways.
00:45:30
Speaker
But it's cool because pickleball is such a grassroots thing and right, right. You're just playing outside that you don't need to like technology to get to play together in a sense. But to see like a technology like this brought in, you're like, Oh, okay. Like this is great. It's nothing like two over the top with technology. It's letting allowing the game to remain what it is. Wow.
00:45:51
Speaker
giving people a little bit more. And yeah, the whole idea behind community-driven, community-based, and I appreciate Steve's sentiment on the scarcity mindset, right? I've talked about it in the past, but it's hard to be able to give if your hand is always closed and you're always like, you kind of got that fist, right? But if you have it open,
00:46:18
Speaker
You can share more, you can experience more. To me, that's what I've experienced with Pickleball is that that's really what it comes down to. It's just like all these good memories and moments that people have with each other. They're just friends. We probably never would have been friends with Pickleball. It's crazy because today's the first time I met you in person.
00:46:40
Speaker
Yeah, so it's super cool. And like I've talked to Steve on the phone plenty of times, which is great. But yeah, it's just being able to meet people that you probably never would have otherwise. Yeah.
00:46:51
Speaker
Right, and that's where we're taking this technology and we're marrying it with the community-based aspect of it. Yeah, it's exciting. It's already successful. I just think it's going to blow up from here on out. The cookie-based thing, and I could talk about this forever, but the cookie-based thing in the technology, from a content creator standpoint, that is huge. You guys are really, in a way, you're probably inadvertent.
00:47:22
Speaker
unintentionally did not realize that you're helping out content creators like myself. And I'm gonna name Chris Olsen again for like the 10th time, but I figured now's a good time to drop his name, Pickleball Studio, because he's been mentioned on pretty much every single podcast. But just like content creators like for us and like our videos will live on the internet forever, right? They live on YouTube forever. But the way you talked about how the cookies issue that problem,
00:47:49
Speaker
Like if our videos are living on the internet forever and we have these codes and then people, if they go to the website, they buy the product and we're under the impression that if they brought by the product using the code that we should be getting kickback, right? Right. But if it's all cookies based and that there's a disconnect and that doesn't happen, then we're just directing people to a brand and.
00:48:08
Speaker
Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that, but if we're making the effort to create a brand awareness, then we would like to have a mutually beneficial... Well, a long-term, sustainable, beneficial relationship. The problem with the cookie base is it's not long-term or sustainable. You brought them a customer. They said, here you go, Brian, thank you very much. And then that's it. Your relationship is over, essentially.
00:48:36
Speaker
with pickleball superstore. That's not the case. That then lives on forever. And so 10 years from now, again, when the person moved to California or New York or wherever that, you know, they're still buying product or maybe you never met them because again, because of your outreach is huge. Yeah. Question that did come up is will you, Steve and Ted ever license gig affiliate?
00:49:00
Speaker
So it's Steve's technology. Pickleball Superstore doesn't own it. We just have the exclusive rights to it. So he's already doing that. We just have the exclusive rights to it in the pickleball space. So he's doing it.
00:49:17
Speaker
I don't feel comfortable that you know we leave a huge huge brands and names and companies and and it's not my business that you know you know you know share those names but but gigantic names like you be like going damn like why is he hawking pickleball gear.
00:49:35
Speaker
So, you know, it's impressive, you know, this technology is disruptive for sure, you know, but and it's just part from pick about superstores standpoint, it's, it's just part of who we are. Again, now you take the legacy of funding and we let other people join in and now we, you know, carry all the products and we have our customer service teams and you know, we ship the next day and all those things to now back it all up. Yeah.
00:50:02
Speaker
Cause if you fail, you know, if you don't deliver on time or if you don't do all these other things, it still doesn't work. You still, it's still business one-on-one. We just have the technology which gives us our unique advantage and especially in this space. But yeah, I know the technology is being used out there with other, you know, in other industries for sure. Okay. I was going to say like, this is, yeah. Oh, it's amazing. Like great technology. It'd be a shame if you only use it in one industry. No, no, no, no.
00:50:31
Speaker
So you guys, Pickleball Superstore has the exclusive rights to it. Will Steve ever license it out to anyone else in that Pickleball space? No. That's our contract. We have a contract and we own the rights to it in the space, in the Pickleball space, exclusively.
00:50:54
Speaker
I bring that up for another reason, which is like another benefit to now knowing that information is like, if you want to be in the next crowd fun community fundraising.
00:51:06
Speaker
uh round that is like huge if you know that there's not going to be another brand that can leverage the technology like this like that's kind of like a hard to say no to if you were interested in the fundraising aspect right wanted to be a minority shareholder like
00:51:27
Speaker
Yeah. If you know that no one else is going to have this, then it's kind of a no brainer. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, this channel is not soliciting any financial information. I'm not a financial advisor. Pat Rolfes is not a financial advisor. Yeah. Yeah. And again, we limit the minimum is like 10 or a hundred.
00:51:45
Speaker
It's a hundred dollars. Okay. The minimum is a hundred. Right. And the max is 25 max is 25. And unless you then go through it, you know, additional financial, you have to verify your financials, everything else. And this whole thing came from the jobs act, you know, like a dozen years ago, whatever. I don't remember Bernie Madoff and all that and sold a bunch of money, but the government basically, you know, put this in place.
00:52:10
Speaker
So, you know, people can't invest their life savings and we don't want people to come in and say, Oh, here's a hundred thousand dollars or whatever. We don't want that. We want the community to own it. We want, you know, Betty from Arkansas who plays at her park with her friends to be an owner and have, you know, a hundred dollars worth of shares. I mean, you know, whatever. And it's great because as opposed to like most private equity deals, they usually have like.
00:52:36
Speaker
they can usually cap some of the investors, but if some investor comes in, he's like, Hey, I want to put 10 million in. Then like 90% of it goes to that one person or group, right? Like there's not much left in the pot and not many slices left in the pie for other people, but the way you're doing it is like, cool. We're creating a bunch of slices as opposed to just like allowing one or two people to go to just take the chunk.
00:53:00
Speaker
Right, and we're fine financially. We're very financially stable, but that's not the intention of what we're doing. Again, it's truly community-based. Again, think about it. We're in color 45 states. I don't know the number, but that's a big outreach of people in their local parks with these bag tags talking about the company that they own.
00:53:29
Speaker
Now they have technology that they're making money on that and they're sharing that information. It's pretty powerful. And then we're going to expand on that and continue to grow that. So that's where the power comes in. The power comes into the community was because of this gig affiliate technology that really allows us to make this link and this tieback to it. And then that's what we opened up.
00:53:52
Speaker
people can own part of it as well. It just goes back to this non-scarcity mindset and community owned, community focused. That's what Pickleball Superstore is all about. You've been in the industry for a while and you're very well tied. You're good at forming relationships, right? You know a lot of people and a lot of people know you. So a question I do have is about this retail space.
00:54:18
Speaker
How do you think affiliate programs affect the retail space? Cause I talked to a founder previously, he was like affiliate programs are great, but what they, the drawback behind that's happening kind of behind the scenes is that it takes money away from these retailers and retailers are somewhat necessary for pickleball to like, uh, to thrive in a way. So just want to get your thoughts.
00:54:44
Speaker
Well, so let's talk about retailers, right? So where is a pickleball retailer? Does it hurt a Dick's Sporting Goods and everything else? The answer is yeah, but I think Dick's Sporting Goods is going to start to hurt already because of Amazon and
00:55:01
Speaker
And you know all the e-commerce platforms that are out there I mean look at what having to the malls across America and I mean heck Steve Coons did pick them all right so I mean there's a lot of empty spaces out there because of the technology of e-commerce and e-commerce platform right I mean Amazon continues to
00:55:19
Speaker
get bigger and bigger and there's a reason for it right so I think that's one now we at pickleball superstore have a program for pro shop so we understand from the pro shop and again partly because you know we own oh by the way we own the hub and I brought you another present
00:55:41
Speaker
Oh, hell yeah. Dual presents for you today, Brian. I live in Texas, so I could always use it. Yeah, dual presents for you. So the hubs are, and we'll talk about that in a minute, but they're very large clubs, the largest in the country, one of them.
00:55:56
Speaker
and we have pro shops. Well, the majority of clubs are much smaller, right? And so having pro shops there, it's really difficult for them. They can't handle the investment of $50,000. They can't handle the, you know, procurement of it and just the point of sale aspect and everything else. And then all the changes that occur, you know,
00:56:23
Speaker
They can't buy just one or two paddles when they sell it, right? They need to, you know, okay, great. Put another order in for, you know, a case of them, right? Another 20. They don't have the funds to do it. They don't have the ability. And then again, like we said, all the paddles that are coming to market, all the different products and the shoes and the
00:56:42
Speaker
the glasses and the gloves and the weights. It's just too much, right? So at Pickleball Superstore we utilize this gig fillet technology and we do a program for pro shops for the retailers. So the comment that your buddy made or the man that you mentioned made is that
00:57:00
Speaker
He needs to understand the technology and how we can work with it. So what we do is we put a program together for pro shop owners that one they can buy wholesale for the products that they sell often balls and weights and grips and stuff like that.
00:57:16
Speaker
And then the next is they become basically a super affiliate, right? And they demo paddles. They buy demo paddles from us. And so you as a club member has this great experience because now you can demo, I don't know, a hundred different paddles, right? And so.
00:57:32
Speaker
The inventory cost for the club owners is very, very low and they don't have to replenish as much. And it's just very simple and it's all online driven and everything else. And you, the member, gets to use a paddle and tries four or five different paddles and says, yep, this is the one I like. I want to use this paddle. Now you scan the code and you go to Pickleball Superstore, get your discount.
00:57:53
Speaker
and the pro shop is now connected to that person and they are now making money and revenue from that sale but the sales continue off into the future if when they continue to come back so that's our virtual pro shop model and
00:58:09
Speaker
It really helps the retailer and the pro shops. It really makes a big difference because most of these guys, I mean, as you know, there's a ton of pickleball places, you know, popping up all over the place in eight courts here and, you know, six courts here, 12 courts there. Maybe they don't. It's not enough to be able to carry, you know,
00:58:34
Speaker
Five hundred square feet of product in all the skews and you know everything else, you know, it's like it's just not enough It's just you and then capital investment is super high so we solve that problem for the pro shops, which is basically in my mind the retailers of
00:58:50
Speaker
pickleball, right? You would never because you're a pickleball player, obviously, would you ever consider going to Dick's Sporting Goods and buying a paddle? No, I would buy a paddle blind online. Like if
00:59:05
Speaker
Reviewers are like hey this battle is great. I would rather buy it through there, but the people who are shopping at dicks are The brand new people. Yeah, it's like I'm buying the kit for 50 bucks and it comes with a couple of you know I mean it's just so that's not worth it
00:59:21
Speaker
Real pickleball shoppers and players that's not what they're buying they buy their first set off Amazon or dicks or whatever and Then they fall in love with the sport and then it's like okay. Yeah, and now I'm going to a specialty You know places like pickleball superstore and now I'm gonna figure out what I want and they figure that out from seeing their friends You know on the courts or at their club demoing different paddles will say yes. I really like this carbon paddle not the pitch carbon everybody and
00:59:48
Speaker
But I do love carbon. I really love paddles. Yeah. But you get it, right? So, you know, that's where we fit in. And that's where this technology makes us different. And that's how we help all these pro shops with our wholesale program. And then this tie back to this gig affiliate technology.
01:00:07
Speaker
got it do you guys when you're talking about all this something i just couldn't help but think about so like when you're trying out paddles like i wish more people got this opportunity or like i guess maybe not enough people know about this but pickleball central something that they're like
01:00:22
Speaker
Something I always thought they did great was their return policy. I used to have friends who would buy six paddles in one month, and then they'd try them all out, and then they return them at the end. Does Pickleball Superstore have something similar to that? We don't. In Central's policies, not really sustainable. It's going to be difficult for them.
01:00:43
Speaker
Because same deal, right? I mean, I know a lot of people who go and they buy six paddles, they use them, they test them, they bang them around and then they ship them all back saying, okay, I bought this one or I found another one cheaper over here. And now they just got all these juice paddles back. So we try to be very fiscally responsible, try to do things that make sense.
01:01:06
Speaker
You know, we do have, you know, some products to use products on our website, but all in all, we don't do that. At our store, you can come in and demo a paddle for free and take it and use it and do that kind of stuff. So that's great. And again, we're doing more and more of these virtual pro shops that will push this out to
01:01:24
Speaker
our partners out there if you want to demo products. But really, Brian, it's because of our gig affiliate program and our technology that we get to the users at the park. Now, Susie, who's an owner of Pickwall Superstore potentially, or at least a gig affiliate,
01:01:40
Speaker
hey try this paddle use it and then here's my discount code so they're more willing to even help sell different brands of paddles out there in the community because now they benefit from it so now we think of it this way we have people sharing this stuff everywhere because we're sharing
01:01:57
Speaker
you know, our revenue basically because of this technology in our platforms. It's no secret that you, you know, like part owner and like co-founder of like hub, big wall super store. Like these are all, it's not like a coincidence that you came up with like the facilities and then you have the pro shops and you have this like affiliate program. We talked about this before the cameras rolled on, but I was like in the tech space,
01:02:22
Speaker
a very common practice became offering people a suite of products, right? Like Apple, you have your computer, you have your phone, you have headphones, everything kind of comes together so you don't have to mix and match, you don't have to shop elsewhere, but like where's all this like business savviness come from?
01:02:40
Speaker
Well, you know not wanting to lose money You know, I mean I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family I'm the youngest of five my father was a brilliant man invented the equalizer and three different class of amplifiers in the stereo world just a brilliant man anyway, so, you know we're all basically entrepreneurs and make down our own paths essentially, but
01:03:06
Speaker
So a lot of this is just, you know, from that upbringing, you know, I started my first company, I think when I was 11, you know, and all sorts of different
Entrepreneurship and Community Building in Pickleball
01:03:15
Speaker
things. But, you know, it's that just comes from that. And but, you know, bad decisions are made along the way as you go to. So you remember the dot com boom, you may be too young for that. But
01:03:24
Speaker
So on the tail end of that, everybody is making money and a friend of mine comes up with a company called craftproducts.com, right? And so, you know, my brother and I, he threw in, I think, a hundred grand. I threw in 50 grand into this company and we joke about it today that I have a $50,000 windbreaker, right? Because, you know, it was the tail end of the dot-com boom. So I tell everybody, like,
01:03:46
Speaker
look, pickleball's phenomenal and great and everyone's passionate about it, but general business rules still apply. So you gotta do things that make sense fiscally. So I started, you know, Caffeo, when I was 23, right out of school, I invented a bottled water coffee maker where you put like a five gallon bottle, you invert it and press back your bottled water coffee.
01:04:09
Speaker
And 35 years later, right before COVID, I started selling the company out. So that's been my main company for 35 years. And now I've sold it. I was going down a semi-retirement path and found Pickleball, basically. So for me, I'm a systems guy. I understand business. I understand passion. I understand all these things to put it together.
01:04:33
Speaker
I've been very fortunate in my, you know, pickleball community and space to meet people like Ted Angelo, people like Steve Rack, you know, Patty Weber, Charlotte Seda, you know, Steve Kuhn, you know, Robert Quicksilver, Justin Beloof with USA Pickleball. I mean, just really, really great people that have, you know, helped shape this. And so,
01:05:03
Speaker
You know, I joke about it, but I'm dead serious. Pickleball has been like an entrepreneur's playground, right? And you really, again, if you keep general business rules and you have a good plan and you execute it, you know, it's still growing like crazy and there's a lot of things. I'm concerned a lot of people out there
01:05:24
Speaker
aren't doing general business. They're just rushing to market with things. They're making these decisions that don't really make sense. I see all these facility franchises popping up and everything else. They're not even popping up yet. They're just being sold. And it's like, I just don't know if there's that many good operators out there. And are these plans good? Because I haven't seen things that make sense yet from an operational standpoint.
01:05:54
Speaker
So we own the hub, right? And they're big clubs. And I believe in big clubs. So we're the largest club in San Diego. And we just do it in California. And the thing about California is that the barrier of entry is really, really high. And so if you can do it, it becomes pretty sustainable because the idea that competition is going to be right behind you is probably not going to be the case.
01:06:19
Speaker
But we own the largest club in San Diego County. We own the largest indoor facility in the country right now, and I'm sure that'll change next week, the way Pickleball's going, but that's in Silicon Valley, and it's a beautiful facility. And then we just bought the largest fitness in Pickleball Club and just converted a fitness center that's in an old naval hangar on Alameda Island right on the bay. It's absolutely gorgeous.
01:06:46
Speaker
We have 1,500 fitness members, eight indoor pickleball court, and seven outdoor pickleball courts. It creates this indoor-outdoor effect. Very, very cool.
01:07:01
Speaker
All these clubs make sense and we have our revenue buckets and in our system big systems guys we have our systems and procedures and and Making sure that we do everything fiscally responsible and correct and give the members the experience that they're looking for Because we're clubs. We're not just here's a court to play on you know, we address sound we address, you know community we addressed, you know, I
01:07:25
Speaker
lounge areas, food, beverage, all sorts of different things, right? And we're not, what do they call them, entertainments, which are a great model, different model. It's a restaurant model. We are big pickleball clubs for tournaments, for huge, we take a philosophy like, we need, if you were to join a club,
01:07:49
Speaker
You know, I know this is going to sound funny, but having 20 courts or 26 courts or, you know, whatever is a good thing because one is you can have, you know, seven, 800 members, you know, be supported. And so anytime you go there and you drop in, you don't need to arrange a game at your skill set. You're, there's so many people at your skill set that you're playing with because really you want to play with people at your own level.
01:08:14
Speaker
right and and that's the beauty of big clubs that you know we have and a critical mass of people and then we allow all these different areas for people at their skill set to go play now you're seeing different shots it's not the same three guys you always play with you know you're dropping in whenever you want it it makes the environment and the atmosphere you know really nice now it's hard capital investments much higher when you're
01:08:41
Speaker
scaling up to this level and everything else, risks are bigger. And so you got to make some really good decisions. So, you know, we look at these things very, you know, seriously, and in how we do it, but so far, extremely successful. And, and again, I'm going to give a big shout out to my partner, Ted Angela, who is a
01:09:00
Speaker
great operational guy and works super, super hard. So, you know, I'm super lucky when it comes to getting my partners with all this. It's awesome, man. It's awesome to see that Carl Schmitz from USA Pickwall is the managing director of facilities and equipment.
01:09:17
Speaker
Um, I had done an episode with him in the past, but when you talked about the way you guys do facilities and you guys only have three, and I don't say only in a negative way, I say that like, Carl said the model is crawl, walk, run. And he's like, he kind of said the same thing that you're saying is that there's a lot of people rushing into it. And it's great to see, but you're also like.
01:09:42
Speaker
It's great to see if it's done with caution and it's done with the knowledgeable intent and experience. The way you talk about systems, pretty much every big founder I've spoken to has talked about, they've just mentioned systems. It's just came up, that's just something that's inherent in successful founders. But yeah, it's great to see that you have, the one in San Diego is one of the largest, was that largest outdoor?
01:10:11
Speaker
Largest outdoor in San Diego County. We have 26 courts, but in a grandstand stadium that's shaded, it's covered. You guys had that one event, right? Yeah, the MLP teams, the Heart Eights are down there, and we're talking to a couple of MLP teams to make a couple of our locations their home courts, which will be fun so we can- That's super cool.
01:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, you know, create rivalries and the whole thing. So which is, you know, those are the experience that we're talking about. But if you had a club of, you know, 12 courts, you just can't do it. Down in San Diego, for example, you know, in our facilities in general, the same with Northern California and Alameda, we're building, you know, a bar cafe that overlooks, you know, a center court with bleachers and the whole deal. And down in San Diego, we have a
01:11:00
Speaker
full grandstand that's covered with the 60 by 60 foot sail 34 feet high. It's very, very cool. It's the whole place is very cool. I'm very proud of it. But, um, so, you know, it'd be fun to have MLP teams that make their home courts and then we can have rivalries in Northern Cal and Southern Cal in this particular case. And, and, you know, how MLP team owners, which, you know, they're, they're,
01:11:25
Speaker
They need to make money to help them build their brands as a team owner, help their athletes, help their ownership to generate more revenue for them by creating one-off events for them or with them, I should say.
01:11:41
Speaker
You know that the facility side of it and I you know kakash mitz is a friend of mine in Super smart guy another smart guy out there. There's a lot of them. It's hard to build these facilities that like we do and you know, San Diego We built it, you know, it's on
01:11:59
Speaker
Four acres of land and basically built the thing ground up. It took us a year and a half to build it. So So they don't just pop up is the thing but so yeah We're I think the largest club owner on the west coast certainly in well, I don't know about the west coast certainly in california. So But it's all done you know correctly in my mind they're all profitable they're all
01:12:22
Speaker
making sense and the members like it, our attrition's very small. So to me those are the right signs of a business, right? You put a good plan together, you pivot where you need to, but having big clubs it's hard to do, but we think that the way we do them, we've been successful with them, which has been nice.
01:12:46
Speaker
That's awesome. It's I like that idea that like the pro you're creating a home base for pros or at least like the teams because man this is like another great thing about pickleball is how many times are you gonna see like Steph Curry come up to your like local court right and right and how many times can you play with them and
01:13:04
Speaker
I don't know if you're going to necessarily be able to play with these pros, maybe on like a very off day, but even just being able to share like the same facility and you see them practicing on another court. It's very cool. It's cool. Like there's a place here, Austin pickle ranch, and you see like Ben and Colin practicing on like the far court. But, um, so I mean, I also did want to talk about that ties into Austin pickle ranches.
01:13:26
Speaker
There's no exaggeration when you say that courts are difficult to create, not even just like if you get it built up like the management.
01:13:36
Speaker
I'm sure that's even more difficult, right? Like being able to create a recurring revenue stream, but being able to create it because Austin Pickle Ranch, which is now on a garage rooftop, that wasn't the original plan. The original plan was to actually have this like, I think it was like 16 or like 18 courts, like 12 of them were going to be like covered. They're going to have like six volleyball courts, food trucks,
01:13:57
Speaker
I saw the marketing plan and like this, the slide deck, right? They sent it out and it just fell through. They said there's like issues with permitting and just development issues and just like rising costs because around the time it was happening, it was during COVID and this was post when everything fell. So things were coming back up.
01:14:14
Speaker
So yeah, it's definitely it's difficult. And it's interesting when you hear about like the brands that are franchising, which is crazy that they're selling franchises without them being built or operated yet. Crazy.
01:14:29
Speaker
Again, general business rules apply if you can't go to a venue and touch and feel it. Damn. Yeah. I mean, I can put together a performer on a spreadsheet, too, you know, and, you know, the thousands of them. And I guarantee you that I haven't made a projection be right yet.
01:14:47
Speaker
it's you know it's just one of those things right it's a dangerous game to play you want real numbers yeah you're playing with a lot of people's money and investors too and if they get this like bad taste in their mouth if anything falls through you know you might be getting ahead of yourself right right right if it goes bad or sour then yeah it just doesn't look good for the sport in general
01:15:08
Speaker
No, it's tough. We've been fortunate to have that first-year location, the majority of them, they're all self-funded, so we didn't go out and borrow people's money and play that game. But it makes you even more focused on the bottom line and you have more skin in the game and all those type of things.
01:15:28
Speaker
But, you know, it's again, it's a fun space. You know, when Covid hit and we built out Newport and, you know, again, I helped. I don't want to take all credit for these things. But, you know, we really changed and we are now today and I'll tell you another story, but we really changed thousands of lives. You know, people were just they come up to me and they thank me all the time. I was at our club in Silicon Valley in this
01:15:53
Speaker
woman and her husband were practicing on one of the back courts and and she stopped me and she said you know I would just want to thank you for doing this you know usually my husband and I would sit at home we'd have a glass of wine or two and we'd watch a movie and it was night after night after night now we come here you know four or five nights a week and we exercise we've lost weight we're healthy we're doing all these fun things together she's just like thank you I mean you've changed our lives by putting this facility you know right here in our
01:16:21
Speaker
in our community. And again, back to my mantra of community is, you know, you build these clubs into the community as well. So you want that level of support from everybody.
01:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, I know it's fun, it's great. It's gotta be super rewarding. Obviously financial means are great because you have a family yourself, but man, when you hear people talking about, man, you changed my life in a certain way, it doesn't really get better than that. It's killer. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice. It's fun to see, especially at my age. I mean, you're a young man. I'm an old man.
01:16:54
Speaker
I'm Asian. I could be like 75. Good point. Good point. I'm 85, but I look good for 85, don't I? No way. That's what I... I'm sticking to that. How old are you? 85. But I look good for that now. Changing the narrative. Yeah, it's good. It's awesome, man.
01:17:15
Speaker
man, pickleball is just so crazy. Like I think that's like huge, right? Like when people get older, they start to, we start to get set in our ways and we start to think that this is going to be our life for the rest. This is going to be the rest of our life. Now, once you reach like a certain point, I guess you hit a bunch of milestones, right? You hit like we, I got kids or you graduate from college or you hit retirement.
01:17:36
Speaker
And to be able to give people something to look forward to. And I mean, man, you probably know, like how difficult actually you have a lot of friends. So you probably don't know, but it's difficult making friends as an adult, right? And once COVID happened, people started becoming, you know, kind of more like a sheltered in a, in a way that's probably not the best word, but it's, it became more and more reclusive. Yeah, it became, yeah, it became easier to stay at home. Right. Yeah.
01:18:01
Speaker
And now like pickle, all this thing came along where you can not only be outside, but you can, like you said, you can lose weight. You can meet a bunch of people without, there's not like a high cost and some of the best things in life really are like somewhat free. Right.
01:18:17
Speaker
Well, from my perspective, Brian, is that, you know, I'm actually a 58 year old man. I'll tell my real age. But, you know, I'm not going to go to a bar, you know, I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to, you know, I have friends from my three children and when they were playing youth sports especially and I did a lot of coaching and I did all that and.
01:18:39
Speaker
and business associates and things like that but other than that it's hard for a 58 year old man to really go meet friends and I don't necessarily want to talk about business and I don't want to talk about a bunch of different things so now I have all these people I go play pickleball with I hang out it's fun no one even necessarily knows what I do and I love that it's just fantastic so
01:19:01
Speaker
I think it totally changes life. I mean, I can be competitive again at my age. I hadn't competed in anything for 25 years until I found Pickleball, right? And so for me, like you're saying, all these milestones, you have children and I'm so focused on my business and now my kids are all grown up and they're out of college and
01:19:21
Speaker
And it's, you know, my wife and I get our life back together and we find this thing and we're traveling around going to MLPs and nationals and playing pickleball and opening up these clubs and meeting tons and tons of people. It's it's fun. It's great. Most people would have stopped like once your kids are out of the house. You're like, cool. Now we get to just chill. That was the plan. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That was my plan. And my wife will tell you, you know, God bless her. You know, she's like, you know what? I knew it. You just can't. And like, no, that was our plan. She goes, what about that retirement plan? What?
01:19:51
Speaker
Anyway, so it's again, it's an entrepreneur's playground. It's getting harder and harder now as is More and more coming in and the passion and because everybody has the passion for the sport, right? So now it's becoming harder and harder I'm just afraid that people are coming in with passion and they're not really thinking about business You know general business rules apply. Yeah, and they're not thinking about that So I went and looked at for example a bed bath and beyond went bankrupt I went and looked at a building in Southern, California and
01:20:21
Speaker
And maybe you can get 12 quarts in it. And the realtor wanted $100,000 rent a month. I'm like, you're joking, right? And I'm like, well, I can't do that. And he said, I'm not even going to give you a counter or whatever. I'm not even going to give you anything because I don't even want to insult you. I mean, it's not going to work. And actually, the environment wasn't what we wanted anyway. It was too small. But the guy called me back and he said, oh, by the way, I leased the building.
01:20:49
Speaker
to a guy who's gonna put in pickleball courts. I'm like, good luck.
01:20:54
Speaker
Yeah, I just, it's silly the stuff that's happening and there's no way that's going to work financially. It just doesn't pencil. I may be just a rich guy that wants to have his own private club and dump a hundred grand a month. But, but, um, anyway, it's again, general business rules got to apply with all
Innovative Facility Designs and Challenges
01:21:13
Speaker
this. And when you saw that space, like, is there something special about these spaces? Like, why are people taking them up?
01:21:21
Speaker
So again, we look at things differently than other people do with clubs and not to say that they're right of how we do it by any means, but, you know, like, again, entertainments, you know, I'm not getting into that space, but I think that they're great. And I think as I met the people from Chicken and Pickle and my wife just played there yesterday, actually. And, you know, so I think there's a room for everything.
01:21:48
Speaker
A lot of these mall-based locations and Bed Bath and Beyond, they don't necessarily create a club environment. What they create are courts indoors that's more of a drop-in feel. And can you make a business model work out of that? Yeah, probably. If you do that right, and I haven't wrapped my head around it too much.
01:22:10
Speaker
But it's not in my mind what we want and it's not in my mind as sustainable as building a club-based community type of thing. But again, everybody has different ways of looking at it and everything else.
01:22:30
Speaker
But most of the, you know, anyway, so we just think things a little bit differently. What's been the biggest challenge with the facilities? Well, finding them, you know, you know, are you guys pretty much always looking at large scale operation? Yeah. Yeah. We, you know, we, you know.
01:22:45
Speaker
Alameda and San Francisco Bay is unique where it has, you know, fitness and we built 15 courts and that would be the smallest that we'd go. And quite frankly, I'd love to have 15 more courts, which it was 30. We just don't have the space there.
01:23:01
Speaker
But I don't think we'd ever go smaller than that. And it's because it has fitness and it's because it's a unique location that we made the decision to do it. And it's an amazing facility. I can't wait to have you come up and check it out. It's very, very cool. I'm going to make a trip to California. Yeah, do a little road trip. You can go up and down the coast.
01:23:22
Speaker
But again, we'd like to see larger facilities, but larger facilities are hard. But we feel that if you can do it and do it right, it makes a lot of sense. The investments are greater. Everything's greater. But we're looking at it from a long-term business model. This isn't something that we're trying to just
01:23:45
Speaker
Do turn around in six months and say okay good now sell it, you know, that's that's not who we are You know, we're this is a sustainable cash flow business that we're looking to build I I think that's the first time I'd I guess like lifetime in a way does it but I Don't think they had like 15 courts. It's usually like two or three They usually dump it on top of the basketball court, but I guess they were doing it, too. I
01:24:07
Speaker
Um, but man, that Alameda location looks awesome. Like because it's multiple floors, it's not pickleball in a separate room. Like I've been seeing that I see it as there's a local gym here. It's called the collective and they just have the pickball court in a separate room, but just being able to see the Alameda location where it's two floors, the pickleball courts are here. The workout center is on top and below. People can like look over, they can watch it.
01:24:31
Speaker
Also being able to tie in like, okay, these people are already at the gym. So this probably is going to like resonate with some of the audience who's like, like you said, like some people who can compete again, right? Might be some people who are like, are retired from sports or they, you know, like they plateaued in college or high school and then they see pickleball like, Oh, like this could be my, another chance, another opportunity to like get into something fun.
01:24:56
Speaker
Also, gyms are typically like, put your headphones in, you work out, that's it, right? That's exactly right. But that pickleball is like, hey, there can be more to the gyms now. It can be more social. And not that there's anything wrong with plugging your headphones in, that's usually me. But man, when you see an opportunity to socialize too, it's like, whoa, this is kind of changing the landscape.
01:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. No, it's very cool. And actually, I'll kind of flip the script on you a little bit, because here's what we're seeing. So we're seeing that pickleball that people get really passionate about it, right? They fall in love with it. But then all of a sudden, injuries start to occur, and they strain their handstrings, or plantar fasciitis, or whatever it is, right? And so we're now seeing that a lot of the pickleball members
01:25:44
Speaker
are stoked about the gym and the you know the steam room and the sauna and all the other recovery that we have in there so they can you know work out and get stronger and more flexible and everything else for pickleball it's interesting it's different than it's it's not oh i'm the fitness guy and now i'm gonna go you know try this new sport pickleball it's all the pickleball people saying i need fitness so i can continue to sustain my pickleball habit
01:26:07
Speaker
because it truly is a habit for these people. So it's really interesting. So my wife is an amazing athlete and she's in amazing shape and she will tell you, not me, but she works out more for them playing pickleball and she played pickleball every day, but she works out more just so she can continue to play pickleball and not get injured and not hurt herself and continue to play at a high level, all that kind of good stuff.
01:26:32
Speaker
It's a very cool mix and Lifetime dipped their toe in it and they're an amazing company and everything else. This is a unique scenario that we had. We didn't have tennis courts to work from. We built all this out.
01:26:51
Speaker
Basically you had indoor soccer that we removed and we we built indoor pickleball and then we added outdoor pickleball all from scratch essentially, so It's very cool. It's a very unique club. We're very very proud of it and It's you won't see anything else like it. That's for sure
01:27:07
Speaker
And it's on, like, a real surface. I don't know if it's just, like, typically just concrete. Is it just concrete that are on most, like, cords? Yeah, so we do things with Acrotech. It's just the supplier, the PPA, the paint supplier. It's actually another funny story. But Brad Carroll, and I, you know, he used to be in the water coffee business. And I, again, owned a cafe, a coffee bureau manufacturer, and I used to sell to Brad.
01:27:36
Speaker
probably over 25 years ago, we sold a long time and then we got reconnected into the space after the fact and he now owns Acrotech and I own the hubs and pickball superstores. That's a funny story. So anyway, shout out to Acrotech because he makes great products. So we don't use pickle roll and not that it's not a good product. We don't use any of that. We pre-surface all the materials on concrete and multi-layer with Acrotech. Invest heavily into the quartz to do it right.
01:28:07
Speaker
We pride ourselves on professional courts. This is where the basis of this stuff comes from. And if you ever play on one of our courts, I mean, you'll see. I mean, it's as good as it gets. And again, we team up with AquaTech to be able to pull that off, and they do a great job with their products. Yeah, that's great to hear.
01:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, I'm probably coming from like a, uh, probably like an ignorant, uh, viewpoint or perspective, but like my. Sentiment towards the pickle role and these like, um, sport, sport court surfaces. I, I dislike them strongly. I don't, I won't use the H word. Right. I dislike it strongly. I just like, I'm like, you're going to put all this work, all this money, all these resources. You're also going to get people excited about and you get people onto the court.
01:28:56
Speaker
And then they play on this like surface, not to dog on pickle rolled or any of them. I get it. Like I also get it because they're, they're, they're still helping grow this board and getting people playing. But man, I'm like, I'm, I'm with you on the sentiment of like, Hey, if we're going to do it, do it, right. Let's get people to get them to feel what pickle ball is actually like. Right. In the past, like couple months, I've played on all these different surfaces that just weren't,
01:29:24
Speaker
General like your general like typical pickleball court, right and I loathe it. I just like didn't like it at all. It's like this, right? Not great. Yeah, I know and I mean I just I know it costs more do it the way we do it I get it and I also don't like freestanding nets even the professional ones we we form into the ground and
01:29:47
Speaker
do it properly and the whole thing. We try to do all of our courts, you know, individual netting as much as possible and safe and bigger and, you know, larger size. And, you know, so I mean, all those things are important. And I think back to all these people rushing the market in these facilities is that they're just taking the was a field of dreams, you know, build it and they will come attitude.
01:30:12
Speaker
But I don't believe in that. I think you got to do it correctly because ultimately people are going to say, I only want to play on good courts. I'm not going to do that. In Newport, we did a lot of tournaments. We built a huge facility and did a lot of tournaments. They're all permanent courts and everything else.
01:30:32
Speaker
we took over the tournament space for a long time because people were sick of tape lines and temporary nets and all that kind of stuff. So the more people play pickleball, the more you're like, I want a court with proper dimensions on the side so I can do an ATP or an Ernie, I don't want to go backwards and hit a fence, I don't want this, I don't want that, I want the surface to be correct, I want the colors to be correct, I want,
01:30:59
Speaker
you know, all these things. And so the customer is getting more and more sophisticated, you know, the players in general. So and then they're, you know, from a club perspective, again, then they're willing to pay a little bit more than I get it. You can go to, you know, your local park and play for free. I understand that. I have no problem. I still go and play to that.
01:31:23
Speaker
But those courts aren't professional grade courts and the whole thing, right? After a while you're like, eh, I really like it over here. And that's where all the players now go. So you get it, right? It's part of build it right.
01:31:39
Speaker
Yeah. And know what you're doing. And that's my concern of this big rush to market with people just listening to others that don't necessarily have a good enough track record to, to be able to do it correctly.
Advice for Aspiring Pickleball Entrepreneurs
01:31:52
Speaker
There's still a huge learning curve for a bunch of people out there. To that topic, as we're like nearing the end of this, what advice would you have for business owners that are trying to get, or people who aren't business owners yet, but want to create businesses in pickleball?
01:32:07
Speaker
You know, again, general business rules apply, right? What, what problem are you solving? You know, what, how does your profit margin works? What's your distribution look like? How are you going to market it? Um, if it's a facility, you know, what are your, what's the demographics in that facility? What is, what's your cost base? You know, what technology are you using your programming? You know, all these,
01:32:32
Speaker
all these things, right? So it's a lot and it's super hard. You know, I understand some most entrepreneurs that I know and business people I know. And again, I'm going to reference my, my partners, you know, Ted Angelo, Steve rack, Patty Weber. So I'd say these people work so hard. I mean, all the time. I mean, I'm, I can't believe Steve still works as much as he does like at his age.
01:33:00
Speaker
Well, he's younger than me. Oh, is he? Oh, he's just never off the ground. I'm just better looking. So, no, he's, you know, you know, Charlotte Seda, you know, works super, they just all work really hard and they're smart. Yeah.
01:33:15
Speaker
And so we're all aligned. That's the other thing that I would really caution people on if you're going to partner with someone. My other companies, I didn't really partner with anyone. I did. I'm with my companies and I was fine. This has been really interesting and fun. I don't know if I could have done this when I was 30 years old to partner with people.
01:33:37
Speaker
As a collaborative, as I am now, the older I get, the more I look for collaborative relationships and other people's skill sets and realizing my limitations. But nothing replaces hard work. Nothing replaces smart people. Nothing replaces knowledge. It's hard to, you know,
01:34:06
Speaker
35 years of business experience before I got in. I've been in business now for over 40 years. I told you I'm an old man. It's hard to replace that knowledge, even though it wasn't necessarily in this space. And even though I'm not necessarily the smartest guy in the world, but it's a knowledge in the learning lessons of dealing with people, dealing with vendors, dealing with employees, systems, procedures, all the things that go along with that and working with people in general.
01:34:35
Speaker
You know, again, I was just lucky, you know, as I moved forward to meet, you know, all these incredible people and USA Pickleball and PPA and, and MLP and my partners and, and we came together to, in a collaborative effort to build something, multiple things special. And again, I'm really lucky to be in that position. That's awesome. Yeah. Is there anything else, anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to cover before we wrap things up?
01:35:02
Speaker
Um, you know, I appreciate it, Brian. Thank you. Thank you, man. Made it easy. You came to me and I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, you know, like getting the word out of, uh, what you're doing with building pickleball and, and pickleball superstore, especially in, in the communities that we do, um, and push that out to the rest of the community is exciting. You know, we want more people like you involved with it. I mean, again, back to opening it up to everyone. So.
01:35:29
Speaker
You know, basically, that's it. I just, you know, this has been a fun experience for me. And so thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm glad that we got to the first time we're going to air it will be in person as opposed to the remote. But yeah, I'm super happy to be a part of the team and supporting big wall super sorts.
01:35:46
Speaker
I've always been very supportive and very interested in technology and how we can help change how humans operate in the space of this world. And if we can make things easier, if we can make things like give more resources to people, I think it's a beautiful thing that we can do for people.
01:36:05
Speaker
Yeah, man. I appreciate this too. Yeah, sweet. People will underestimate how hot it gets in Texas. There you go. So yeah, I appreciate that. But yeah, thank you. And I'm super excited for everything that you're working on. Yeah, it's really cool. And I'm sure I'll see you at nationals. Yep. You're gonna go back, right? I'll go back. I'm gonna go back. Build that gas tank before you go. Yeah, that's a secret. We're not getting into that. Cool, man. Well, I appreciate your time and thank you again.
01:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, thanks bro. Talk to you soon.