Season #24 Episode#:15 Shaun and Bobby talk to Ian Westermann of EssentialTennis

Ian Westermann is a passionate, lifelong tennis coach with over 20 years of experience helping club tennis players reach their goals. A pioneer in online tennis learning, Ian launched the first ever tennis instruction podcast in 2008 (the "Essential Tennis Podcast") and began his YouTube channel in 2009 which now has over 254,000 subscribers, 71 million views, and 2,000 videos. He has dedicated his career to creating the most helpful, game transforming digital tennis instruction in the world and now has over 15,000 students in his paid, online coaching programs who play in 137 countries around the world.

https://www.essentialtennis.com/

Shaun Boyce USPTA: shaun@tennisforchildren.com

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Bobby Schindler USPTA: schindlerb@comcast.net

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(upbeat music)

Welcome to the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

Every episode is titled,

It Starts with Tennis and Goes From There.

We talk with coaches, club managers,

industry business professionals,

technology experts, and anyone else we find interesting.

We wanna have a conversation as long as it starts with tennis.

(upbeat music)

- Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the Atlanta Tennis Podcast,

powered by GoTennis!

Today's conversation is with Ian Westermann,

of Essential Tennis.

Ian is a passionate lifelong tennis coach

with over 20 years of experience,

helping club players reach their goals.

A pioneer in online tennis learning,

Ian launched the first ever tennis instruction podcast

in 2008 and began his YouTube channel in 2009,

which has almost 300,000 subscribers.

Ian joins us in this conversation

to talk about how we got to where he is

and possibly even what's next.

Have a listen and let us know what you think.

(upbeat music)

- Who is Ian Westermann and why do we care?

- Yeah, so I started online content in 2008,

is when I started the podcast.

I started the YouTube channel in 2009.

And back then I was just a lowly staff,

teaching professional, I was on the court 40, 45 hours a week.

And I honestly thought that was gonna be my career

for the rest of my life.

And I started that in 2004,

after graduating from Ferris State University's

Professional Tennis Management Program.

So since I was 14, 15,

I knew tennis was gonna be what I did the rest of my life.

I thought it was gonna be as a traditional coach,

but as I got through more and more repetition in years

and like a club environment,

honestly I just got more and more frustrated

with the friction that I felt between my passion for teaching

and student's passion for learning,

didn't just didn't seem to be on the same level.

And of course I had percentage of my clients

that totally matched with me and it was fantastic.

I was probably 15 or 20% of my hours,

which in hindsight I was very fortunate to have that many.

But the other 80% felt like they were showing up

for some reason other than stepping outside their comfort zone,

learning new skills and actually doing something different

than what they were used to doing.

And that's really what motivated me

to start publishing content.

And I have been doing it full-time now since 2011.

- Bobby, he just, he speaks to us, right?

I mean, having been at the Country Club

and having run a small club and then,

I mean, we know all those thoughts and then you think back

and you think, and those times on court

and you think sometimes like, okay, am I just,

am I just taking the money?

You're not really here to learn,

you're not really interested in being here for the coaching.

Why are you even here?

But then, hey, this is my job and you're a client.

So we find that balance in and it sounds like you get that.

And you moved from, I've got to go back and say,

okay, you graduated in 2004 from Ferris State, that's correct?

- Yep.

- So you move into online instruction

and that's most of what, I would guess,

most people know you that way.

Meaning, we go through a few hundred clients a year

as tennis coaches, but you've got hundreds of thousands

of subscribers online.

What was that like in the beginning where you say,

okay, you were one of the first to start doing this online

instruction.

If you started a podcast in 2008,

we basically had Adam Curry and then you.

It sounds like from a podcasting schedule point of view.

But online instruction, how did you think even that was going

to work?

Did you know you were going to do the courses and the packages?

But how did you figure out how to do it well?

Maybe that's the question.

- Yeah, I mean, in hindsight, my biggest blessing

is that I started so early in the whole content game.

I got the idea, I was at the time,

I was teaching at a private club in DC.

And I had about a 45 minute best-case scenario commute

in each direction.

I got six of the radio, I started listening to podcasts.

And they revolved around topics like personal finance

and how to live your dream job, tech and like tech news

and gadgets and stuff like that.

And so as I was listening to these podcasts,

it occurred to me that, well, these people have a passion

around some kind of topic.

They are putting out regular content,

they're growing in audience.

And then sometimes it was through advertisers,

sometimes it was through merchandise,

sometimes it was through courses

in the case of the internet marketing podcast

that I listened to.

And when I looked on iTunes for a tennis podcast,

I couldn't find one in 2005, six, seven while I was commuting.

And so eventually the thought just popped into my head,

well, why is nobody doing this in tennis?

And B, why don't I give it a shot?

I started with the podcast, which is very easy

compared to video, got the wheels rolling there.

And honestly, it was just crickets early on.

The bad news is there was no path to follow.

The good news is there was no competition.

And so it was kind of just a wide open space,

kind of wild west still on those content platforms.

And so just the fact that I put anything out

with some kind of regularity, with some kind of energy

and like passion behind it meant that I got traction

and I grew an audience.

And so the business model part of it took three and a half years.

Between when I first started publishing stuff

and when I actually figured out how to monetize,

took a little bit over three years.

And during that period of time,

I was just putting out as much pre-stuff as I could

while I was still on the court 40, 45 hours a week.

Bobby, why didn't we start our podcast in 2008?

What were we even doing then?

I had just gotten married so that was a big mistake.

(laughing)

And there went the podcast time.

There went the podcast.

I had a baby girl and a new wife.

So I started late and yeah, that's right or two.

She was just, I began to be the chauffeur right around the end.

So yeah.

And you still are.

So no.

(laughing)

You mean, and I'm still chauffuring around.

So yeah.

So 2008, that starts, you figure all this out.

You say, okay, you take that, somebody else's business model

and you bring it into tennis.

Is that essentially, you say, okay,

these other people are doing it this way.

You bring it into tennis, which means,

you're the type maybe like us that can say,

hey, just because tennis does it one way,

doesn't mean we shouldn't do it like these other guys

who are actually good at it.

- Yeah, that's correct in a nutshell.

The guy that, so Will Hamilton, who runs Fuzzy Eleballs,

he was the first one to go really hard

into the internet marketing space

and start borrowing from the business models

and the tactics and the strategies that they were using

over in like the how to make money online space.

And the original guy that he started following

and then very shortly after I started following

his name, Jeff Walker, and his product was called

the Product Launch Formula, which is kind of funny to think about.

His product is about how to launch products

and he would launch that product

and just make tons and tons of money.

And so Will and I were going to his conferences,

we were consuming his product

and it was kind of through that internet marketing style

of packaging content and selling it

through a specific marketing process

where we were finally able to start creating

some significant revenue.

Until up until that point, I tried advertisers,

I tried T-shirts, I tried donation model,

I tried, every other kind of monetization I could think of,

but nothing really got a whole lot of traction

or brought in a substantial amount of revenue

until courses started taking off.

And for me, that was in 2010 that I created my first course,

the second version of my first course,

I launched an early 2011.

And when that result came in,

that's when I quit my job and said,

I'm just going to give it a shot and see what happens.

And when in full time and said,

this is going to be my thing.

Yep, yeah, I told myself if this promotion brings in $20,000,

then I'm going to quit and just give it a shot.

And it ended up bringing in 80.

And so I was like, all right, I know I can go back

and get another teaching job.

I felt very confident about my ability to interview

and provide value to a club and a program.

So I was like, worst case scenario.

And by the way, I had a one year old at the time

when I quit my job.

So it wasn't a non-pressure decision,

but I felt like I had enough confidence in my ability

to go back and get a normal job that,

and I also knew that 10 years down the road,

if I didn't give it a shot,

I would really, really be kicking myself.

So I decided to just give it a try and see what happens.

- Yeah, I think that's a lot of the pressure that says,

okay, which one do I want?

Do I want the regret of having never tried?

Or am I going to put my family at risk?

Because I think back to my father and he tells us a few stories.

He said, they were two or three times

that I thought about just jumping into certain things

and I just couldn't do it.

I had two kids and they were just certain things

he just chose not to do.

And we talked about that a lot, Bobby,

where Bobby and I and my wife are the managing team.

And we say, you know, what are the things

we're going to jump into?

How much time can we decide we're going to do this?

'Cause we all have our jobs, we all have our kids,

we have our families.

But how much can we put in good content?

How much can we help people?

And you had a heyday of 2018, 2019,

where you were just full staff and how did that work?

That was your drone, NSCort.

I mean, you were killing it at one point, right?

Yeah, I reached a certain point where...

So the first three years after I quit my job,

I would call just kind of coasting,

where it was just trying to figure out,

is this model actually going to work long-term?

It was kind of figuring out the business model,

is this sustainable?

Like, is this even going to work?

And with just myself working on the business,

we reached, I reached a plateau,

like revenue-wise pretty quickly,

and then it leveled out from there.

And I started having a thought kind of similar, like mindset,

well, I could probably just keep doing this by myself,

like in a spare bedroom, and make it work.

And like, I see like the model is here,

and I'm gaining traction in terms of building

like a loyal following that appreciates what I'm doing,

they're supporting me consistently, you know, financially.

Or I could start building things bigger than myself,

and create a team around what I'm doing,

hire people that are better at editing,

that are better at customer service,

that are better than web development,

that are better at the graphics,

and like all that other sort of stuff.

And see if we can make this significantly better,

bigger than what I can do by myself.

So that started in 2014.

I hired my first full-time video editor,

and we were kind of off to the races from there,

after getting a couple of people on board

on the video side of things, I started thinking,

well, I can only make so much content.

So if I can bring on other coaches,

and maybe kind of try to clone myself in terms of the presentation

and the content creation and the course creation,

then why can't we just keep making this bigger and bigger

and build the brand of essential tennis,

as opposed to it being just like the Ian show,

having all of us be unified under one roof

in terms of our methodology and our approach to content,

or approach to coaching.

And so for solid like six years, that worked,

and we kept growing and we kept scaling,

and then that bubble kind of popped,

I would say in like mid 2020.

- I was gonna say, let me guess, somewhere summer 2020.

- Yeah, I can't quite put my finger on it,

but I feel like something happened right around there

that kind of disrupted a bunch of stuff,

and then things started to decline.

And it definitely wasn't a COVID thing,

like at first that actually gave us a boost,

'cause tennis was kind of the official socially distanced

like activity that people could go out and do.

So we actually saw a big uptick in our organic views

and traffic in the summer of 2020.

And I think it was,

B, there was a lot of coaches that were trying to figure out

what the hell do I do, sitting at home

because our clubs were closed,

they're even their outdoor municipal courts

were shut down and locked.

And so I think there was a big entry for coaches

coming into content around that time,

and the audience of kind of eyeball started spreading out

a little bit more, and then things started winding down for us.

And I feel like our spot towards the top of the mountain

in terms of like the keyword search results

and stuff like that started slowly kind of winding down

around that time.

- All right, Bobby, I've been monopolizing the time.

I know you wanna talk to Ian too.

So what you got, I've gotten us up to Ian's A day,

and then the time I want, also I'll eventually ask,

like what's next for Ian, but I wanna let you jump in

'cause I've been monopolizing the conversation so far.

- Oh, no problem.

I've enjoyed it and the proof I've been listening,

I'm gonna go backwards a little bit.

Firstly, were you Ferris with Tom Dackels?

- Yeah.

So I'm gonna share that for you.

- That's another question.

- Well, I was there.

You share that with Sean, that's Sean and I,

Tom was our tester, our used to be.

- Yes, yes.

- So I thought that right around the time that Tom was at Ferris.

So we have another person that we share.

When you started, your podcast was focusing on coaching.

That was the focus of where you were going with it.

- Yeah, so my core itch that I was trying to scratch

was my dissatisfaction with the passion that my students

had to want to learn.

So from my selfish perspective,

I just wanted to spend time making stuff,

spending time with people that valued insight

like beneath the surface, I would say.

Everybody, everybody that all of us work with,

like on the court, they've all heard the bender knees

and over your shoulder and keep your eye on the ball.

Sadly, those things, those cliche phrases,

continue to be like a large staple in our industry.

But I wanted to spend time with people that were tired of that

and wanted something completely different

that took them out of their comfort zone

and got them growing like as a player.

And so that was kind of my main motivation was,

I wanted to attract more people

that valued that thought process,

like essentially a growth mentality as a tennis student.

And so that's what really kind of litifier under my ass was,

I need to build like this community of people

that value what I value so that we can kind of nerd out

together on how to get better at tennis.

Now, I might be jumping a little bit here,

but because you do use a lot of familiar words,

you're looking to change, and I love the out of the box.

And that's one of the things I tell my student,

you're never gonna get better until you're willing to fail

and go out of your comfort zone.

So are we really talking about human nature

and trying to get them to embrace a little bit different

or perspective on life?

- Yes, it's rare.

And that's maybe the thing that I'm most grateful,

like the fact that it ever worked at all blows my mind.

Like you're looking back, I really didn't know.

I really had no idea if it was gonna lead

to any kind of business that actually could support my family.

Just the fact, like I remember incredibly clearly,

the first listener submitted question that came in

from the podcast, and it blew my mind

that somebody listened to the episode, got to the end of it,

wrote down the email address and sent me a question

so that I could help them with their tennis.

That motivated me and inspired me so much

that somebody else out there, not only,

and I'm sure you guys have been through this same experience

like many times, when you put content out there,

it's kind of like an echo signal like going out,

and a certain percentage of your energy

that you throw out there is gonna come back to you again.

And the fact that anybody out there

listened to what I had to say and was like,

yeah, I'll take some more of that.

Like I want more discomfort, I want more challenge,

I want more growth in my life.

There's no question that's a small subset

of the general human population.

And I think that's a large reason why we have such

a generic surface level, like echo chamber

of tennis coaching because the students

only want to be challenged so much.

The coaches get good at providing

that kind of surface level service.

The students are like, thank you very much.

Here's my money.

And then there's this vicious cycle of mediocrity

that feeds back on itself, like year after year after year.

- And I appreciate the fact your courage is enough

to say all this out loud.

I watch one of your videos when you were telling the people

about the different stages of learning.

And I was like, I love it.

And I completely get it.

But boy, oh boy, you're gonna hit a few people

a little close to home because you're talking

about their behavior.

And that's the fault of the line we walk, really.

But like you said, I'm looking for the person

who wants to learn, like you, it's like,

hey, I want to be as excited as you are to learn.

So I get that way to code.

So I completely get it.

As I said, always loved what you did.

And I will say from Justin Observer,

when Sean told me he made contact with you,

I was excited because I was like,

out of all the guys that are doing this,

I've always appreciated you.

And I felt like it was an ego trip.

It was a sincerity.

And I think that comes across.

So taking that, when you said,

when you started to get successful,

that's what we always talk about.

Where are we gonna find the secret sauce?

Was it consistency?

You know, just being it there and through,

just being there every week and saying the things

that people start to realize,

hey, this is coming from the heart.

This is what this guy's all about.

I want to hear what else he has to say.

And is there anything that you can look at,

hindsight and say, outside of COVID and just changing,

was there something that happened that we said

that it's an, that might have been a misstep.

There could, you know, there could have been avoided.

- In terms of my content strategy or business strategy?

- You're just continuing on.

How do you keep it fresh?

You know, and how do you anticipate where,

and this is the difficult part about any business

when you start to scale it?

Like you said, no matter what you were talking about

in video, I go through,

and I had a tennis management company

where we tried to run different facilities.

And like you said, how do we clone ourselves?

It's a labor-intensive business.

They would hire PTM or ERS tennis,

and they thought they were getting me.

And somebody else would go in and say,

well, we know you hired the company.

You know, I'll be there.

You're gonna see me, but so, you know,

stuff that is obviously on both sides of our business.

You know, but like you guys did a fantastic job

of always presenting a course or instruction

that was sincere and it said,

we're doing this as much,

and I don't think it's a bad thing to say

because we enjoy it and we enjoy teaching.

And hopefully we will, you know,

you get the same effect by watching.

- Yeah, so first of all, I wanna just reflect back

the respect towards you guys.

It's one thing for me.

I've been outside the machine.

Like I've been outside the system for 15 years now.

And so I can say whatever I want,

without worrying about a director of tennis

or a tennis committee like chairperson

or, you know, members like being offended.

The fact that you guys are sitting here

and you can't be fully transparent.

And but the fact that you're being,

at least partially transparent, you can say whatever you want.

Obviously because you have to go back to your clubs

and stay employed.

The fact that you are pushing the envelope,

like in this platform, I really respect a lot

while being inside the industry.

So I wish more people would do the type of thing

that you're doing here.

Secondly, going back to your question,

having done it so long,

there's over 2,000 free videos on our YouTube channel.

And there is a cycle of burnout

that I've been through a couple of times now

where I chase the words, the titles, the search terms

that I know will give views.

And that's what grows like our audience.

And there's a Venn diagram, like overlap between what

people want to watch and what's sexy and very click worthy

and what I want to talk about, which is much more growth

oriented and more nerdy and much more beneath the surface.

And also counter-cultural, it kind of goes against the words

and the phrases and the methodology of a normal tennis

lesson, which, as we've already discussed,

isn't necessarily for growth.

It's for entertainment or exercise or socialization

or something else.

So in that Venn diagram, overlap between what's

very clickable and what makes me feel fulfilled

and happy and satisfied that I spent time

talking about that.

I kind of used up that little sliver over the years

a couple of times and retreated back into what

just what I want to talk about even though it doesn't get

the clicks.

And I went through one of those cycles right

about at that peak in 2020, where I got tired of chasing

the views and the clicks.

And I started just making videos that I wanted to make

and on topics that I wanted to talk about.

And it was bad timing.

I feel like that was right about when we hit kind of a new level

of saturation in terms of number of coaches, uploading

numbers, hundreds and thousands of more uploads

per day of coaching instruction.

And I think to keep the machine rolling in the positive

direction it was going in, we would have had to stick hard

to the core to the greatest hits.

When Neil Diamond, the sweet Caroline for the 10 million

time, I respect that so much that he's

able to just stick to what everybody wants to hear instead

of-- I'm sure at some point, he's

wanted to sing something else.

And I've kind of gone through that cycle of topic burnout

several times.

Just to be able to stick with the game and keep clicking

upload, but balancing that with how do I cash flow a business

is a tricky kind of tightrope to walk.

So with your clientele, where would you

say, across the board, level player was

an higher level player, was the recreational player

looking for a pill?

Where did you find your--

what did you see your audience as?

Yeah, I have a very narrow avatar that I'm targeting.

And thankfully, I've stuck to my guns enough in terms

of what I want to talk about that I almost never

get a student that shows up.

I mean, it's been years, honestly.

Since I've had a student that showed up looking for a pill.

And I thank God for that.

Every time I go out onto the court,

and it's another person who's there for the same reason

that I'm there that's such a huge blessing.

But in a nutshell, my core follower

is somebody who is--

I would say average age is probably around 50--

50/55.

It's not our average viewer age, but average person

who actually invests in time to come work with me

and buys courses and stuff like that.

If somebody who's been in the sport for usually

a couple of decades probably started

when they were in their teens or 20s,

played for a while, took a break because of career and family,

picked it back up again.

And now they've been playing for five years,

they've been back maybe 10 years,

and they've been stuck and plateaued for at least two or three.

They've taken lessons from every coach in their local area

that's available to them at every local club.

And nobody can give them the answer that satisfies them

about why they're not improving anymore.

And that's the person who comes to work with me.

So in a nutshell, they've been around the block

a bunch of times.

They've tried all their local resources

and service providers.

They're not improving.

And they want to know the answer, why am I still a 35?

So you're not giving yourself nearly enough credit.

They're coming to see you.

Yeah.

Tennis is the situation you guys share.

But it's about what you're saying,

and the way you're saying it, especially being an older person

who not going to get sold this easily.

They're appreciating the sincerity you're bringing to it.

And using taboo words like, oh, effort means something,

not who's on the other side of the court.

It's about how much you want to put into it

is going to determine how good you get.

And those are tough words.

Like you said, there's--

everybody's out there for a different reason.

And you've got to find it, obviously,

strike the chord that hits the most.

But you wanted to resonate with one or two.

And it isn't a good business model, frankly.

And I think you go through ups and downs,

but I'd be shocked.

I believe that your core followers are extraordinarily loyal.

Yeah, they are.

And I try to pinch myself and remind myself

on a regular basis exactly what you just said.

I try very hard to keep reminding myself.

So I don't take it for granted that we

do share in that passion for challenge and discomfort

and growth and whatever other word you want to put to it.

They want to know the truth.

And in a nutshell, I think the core service that I provide

is I provide the truth.

When they go take a one hour lesson

from the staff professional down the road,

as I described before, that coach

is used to providing a particular type of service.

That's wrapped in a particular way

designed to give a particular person

certain number of steps, a certain level of heart rate,

and a certain number of tips per hour,

where they feel like they got a lot of value out of it.

And what I provide is, in a lot of ways,

the exact opposite of that.

And so anytime somebody goes to the trouble of coming out

to the middle of nowhere, aka Wisconsin,

and they want to really know what's behind the curtain

and find out what's really holding the back.

Even if it's really bad news, even if it's like, dude,

and it usually is, by the way, your habits

are way worse than you think.

Because they haven't seen themselves on video before.

They haven't seen themselves slowed down before.

And so I respect anybody who puts themselves

in that position tremendously, especially,

there's cameras all around the court,

and they know they're being recorded,

and they still come out and put themselves in that position.

And so I need to, I try hard to keep reminding

myself of that, but I need to do it more, frankly.

- And I like, sorry, Bobby.

I like that he says, "I provide the truth,

but it's an interesting struggle from a business point of view."

Because he also said, "When he started talking about

what he really wanted to talk about,

the whole thing stopped working."

I still need to, it's like in Atlanta, Bobby, what we do.

You gotta teach the ladies out to teams

where you're going out of business,

whether you love it or not.

Maybe we all want to do this one thing.

I specialize in what I specialize in,

but I gotta go do the thing that pays the bills.

And I think that's interesting that sometimes we get

to do what we want, but the rest of the time,

we do what we have to.

So I'm curious, Bobby, if you're gonna ask

because that kind of that last step of saying,

"Okay, already," and I did watch your most recent video,

and that dates this podcast specifically.

But I did watch your most recent video,

and I'm curious if you know what's next for you,

because as you said, the online space got really saturated.

That's why Bobby and I said,

"We're not worried about creating content

because the content's already there."

Our question is, can we help aggregate the content

for those that are audience and say,

"Okay, Ian's got, we think Ian's here, right?"

And we got these other people that are creating content.

And it's already there.

Like you said, 2,300 videos at least

on your YouTube channel just as an example.

But what's next for essential tenants?

What do you think happens?

I don't want you to give away any secret

that you've figured out for your online content

providing competitors, but I'm just curious.

What do you see in the future?

Because you've been in this space, so to speak,

as long as Will Hamilton, and that's a long time.

- Yeah, I guess we're both getting kind of old now.

And it has been a long time.

- So first of all, it's an objective perspective

for you real quick.

You graduated in 2004.

I graduated a few years earlier than that.

So, no, you still got plenty of time.

You're hitting your second strut.

- I had that, I had that comment.

Thank you, thank you for the reminder.

I appreciate that.

So, A, don't sell yourselves short.

Like the two of you, it feels like everything

that could possibly be said about tenants has already been said.

And to a certain degree, that's true, and that's accurate.

Like you can only make so many videos

about forehand power and like the kinetic chain

before you start going a little bit nuts.

I'm just speaking from personal experience.

So, but that being said,

you to have a particular life experience,

like set of experiences that has kind of brought you

to where you are now as a human being.

And there are certain people out there

that will resonate very strongly,

not because you necessarily tell them anything new

or different or even necessarily insightful,

but because you go about it a particular way,

communicate in a certain style

that resonates with a certain type of person.

And so, I want you to, and everybody else listening

to hear loud and clear that while it is very crowded

and it is very saturated,

there will always be room for individual voices

as long as they're consistent and they're clear

about their values and what is important to them

and what lights them up and what kind of fulfills them

as a creator and as a coach and as a service provider.

There will always be little niche, like sub audiences.

That can be grown that still provide a lot of value

back and forth, value coming from the creator

and value bouncing back from the audience.

So it's much harder now than it was 15 years ago

to grow an audience, but that doesn't mean that it's not worthwhile.

And so I respect you guys a lot for doing this

even though you see that how much competition there is,

but I just hope people who feel like they provide

a unique perspective don't get too discouraged

from just making an effort because it is, in my experience,

it's very, very much worth it.

Not just from a scratching the itch perspective

and just feeling good to get certain things off your chest,

but when you can have those things get off your chest

and then resonates strongly with and improve the lives

and the games of other people around the world,

that's just such an incredible opportunity

that I wouldn't want anybody to miss out on

just because they feel like it's too late.

So anyway, sorry, a little bit of a side rant there.

In terms of like moving forwards,

what I'm personally kind of settling back into is,

I guess I would say in the last 12 months,

it's been a process for me coming to terms

with letting that growth dream kind of die.

And I don't mean that necessarily a morbid sense

where it's like, who knows?

I hopefully I'm doing this for another 10, 20 years

on the internet and hopefully I fully understand

that we might have another wave.

I know things are cyclical in business in general

and they're cyclical on the internet.

So I'm not trying to make it sound like it's like,

woe is me or like pessimistic or anything like that.

But the reality is a lot has unwound for my business

in the last like three years

and it's taken some time for me to process through that

and just sit and be okay with looking back

and letting go of like the picture I had in my mind

three, four or five years ago is for the time being,

it's on the shelf.

And so that's been a process.

Letting go of that and then figuring out

what do I really want to do?

Has been a kind of a journey for me

and I would say just in the last two, three months,

I've settled back into being comfortable with the idea

that I like making things.

I like providing resources that are helpful

and valuable for other people.

I love the reciprocity of like putting those things

out there into the open and then receiving back appreciation

and money from other people that like value it

and want to purchase other resources or like my time.

That feedback loop of creation and publishing

and reciprocity really brings me a lot of happiness

and a lot of fulfillment and more and more

on a day to day basis.

I'm trying to just remind myself of that very simple

basic idea and get back on the horse again

in terms of just putting in the reps

and putting out the content.

And it's hard when all the graphs are like going down

into the right to get back on the horse

but I'm just making the conscious decision to do that

and just go back to basics

and start clicking upload as often as possible,

trying new things and see what happens

just on a day to day basis.

- You can't be responsible

but the world is going to batch it crazy as well.

(laughing)

- Yeah, you're talking about it.

I mean, we're in a completely kuku.

And again, in that's a fine line that you said about clicks

and everything.

Listen, I'm back in the day.

I was a polypsi guy.

That was my major communications.

I was going to write for a guy that ultimately became vice

president of the United States.

I'd bite my lip on a daily basis on what I see.

And this is for everybody.

I'm not particular about who I support.

I just think the whole process is down to 80s

and a hand basket.

And like you said, I'm not good at extrapolating.

I won't speak for Sean,

the easy part for me about doing this

is I drive great enjoyment.

We have a good time for Sean's a friend.

I'm fairly ignorant.

So I don't look at the big picture.

Maybe that's why we're not going to quote,

as successful as we want to be.

But we do it for sincerity.

And hopefully it translates into something.

But again, listening to your talk,

it just makes me sound like,

"Part of it, we gotta shake the people a little bit."

And that's the fine line.

Like you said, what we try to do,

we try to poke the bear a little bit.

To me, there's tennis is just reflective

of any big bureaucracy where it's gone.

So you can take tennis and substitute it for something else

and we're not that far off.

Okay?

The amount of money might be different.

The amount of power might be different.

But the outcomes are not that different.

So we're talking about life.

And it's tough when you do it.

And one of the things that's helpful for us

is we have each other and we have other people involved.

And again, I thought that was great.

What you did that you brought more people in

to your videos rather than you see so many people.

So I'm the star I'm doing this.

Then the clock is ticking.

If you're the only reason people are coming,

it's just human nature.

We're eventually gonna get bored

and feel like we heard everything.

And you shared the spotlight wonderfully.

You gave everybody their opportunity.

And you know, that shows, again,

speaks to me the person you are

as well as the message you're trying to get out.

And I think EBS and Flows, unfortunately,

in this world right now,

they're just gonna be part of the game.

We're all gonna have them.

So yeah, I think I'm working located in Wisconsin.

Halfway between Milwaukee and Madison.

So it's cold there.

Have you thought about a warm weather climate?

Yeah, you know, over the years,

I've made a lot of life decisions.

And at the end of the day,

family's kind of the most important thing.

And I grew up here, my wife grew up here.

So we went out to DC

'cause we were tired of the Midwest.

We both went to college in the midway.

We both grew up in the Milwaukee area.

And yeah, coming back here was like,

not logical at all in terms of building like a tennis company.

Thankfully, it's almost all completely like remote.

So like the values that I create

and the value I'm able to deliver

without the internet, there would be no business.

And the content is still distributed widely enough

that I'm coaching as much as I wanna coach.

I don't wanna coach anymore than I do.

And frankly, that's about the only reason why we would need

to move to like a more conducive climate

is if my business was built on the back

of like me being on the courts,

then we would need more like immediately available,

you know, humans like to step on the court with me.

But that's just not the case for me, thankfully,

because of the content.

All right, Bobby, I'm gonna hit it with King and tennis

if you're good.

Oh, this could go on, I will also get this.

I know, that's what I'm saying now.

I feel like we could just keep going,

but it's just good.

Let's go for it.

Yeah, go for it.

Let's do it.

All right.

So Ian, my favorite question, I love it

because we get some of the best ideas

from some of the best people out there.

My question to you is, if you were King of tennis,

whatever it takes, if it's just in Wisconsin,

if it's the entire world,

if you're King of tennis,

is there anything you would do or change?

Yeah.

And I'm sure you probably get a lot of answers

to that question that are related to

like the growth of the game.

And my answer is not gonna be as,

is not gonna be so altruistic.

It is altruistic.

Like I personally believe it would be

for the dramatic benefit of the sport.

I'm not smart enough and I'm not anywhere near close

to the top enough to have any understanding

of how to fix our like participation problem

or people going to pick a ball or anything like that.

But just based on my little corner of the sports

and my little corner of media in our sports

and my little corner of like instructional methodology,

I feel like if I could snap my fingers

and change one thing about the game,

it would be the universal acceptance

and even excitement of video being involved

with the amateur game of tennis.

There for whatever reason, I really can't explain it.

You guys are probably, your tennis pros.

So you've probably been around golf at least a little bit.

Video was adopted in the game of golf

as far as being a training aid, a teaching aid,

a learning aid like 20 years ago.

And it blows my mind that my students still get

looked at sideways for setting up their phone

on a tripod to record themselves

so that they can find out what the hell

they're actually doing on the court.

And because there's so much resistance

and friction and I don't know if it's like an ego thing

or like a part of it is like,

are you better, like the nuts, you know, kind of thing.

There's so much and even coaches, like same thing.

There's, we could talk about this for like two, three hours

easily.

It blows my mind that video is not a normal part

of a tennis lesson.

And it blows my mind that video is not a normal part

of playing tennis for tennis players.

There's only upside in finding out

like what is actually happening out there on the courts.

The revelations that are available

by being able to have a third party perspective

besides your coach saying like, no, you didn't follow through,

it's a whole other layer and level of understanding

and insight when you actually see yourself move.

And as a coach, it's a whole other layer of insight

and understanding when you see your student

and 200 frames a second.

And you realize that, oh, that weird jerky thing

they're doing with their arm isn't happening

until after they've actually hit the ball,

this has nothing to do with like their follow through.

There's like something going on there

that doesn't make sense.

And the ability to explain that

and actually target the right elements at the right times

is severely limited when coaches don't even know

what's happening on the other side of the courts.

So if I, yeah, if I was king of tennis,

I would snap my fingers

and I would make video normal for the entire game

on the instructional side, on the player side.

And it would open the eyes.

There was like so much condescension

and like, I keep losing to like worse players.

There's like a game style like shaming around like pushers

and like people think there's so much better than they are.

And they just have this like layer of,

this like separation between themselves and reality

that makes it so hard for coaches to communicate with students

and makes it so student, so hard for students

to receive messages from coaches.

And if we can just wipe all that out

and just all be on the same page,

I feel like the game would be more accessible,

it would be more friendly.

People would be less judgmental.

They'd be more accepting of other levels

and other playing styles.

And lessons would be more valuable.

Students would learn faster.

Why are we not doing this?

- It is, it was fear.

Are we talking about tennis?

We talked about life.

- Oh, geez, I have my--

- It's not suspicious.

- It's suspiciously like life to me.

I don't know.

I don't know.

- I found Bobby's theme for the conversation.

He's like this.

- Oh, I don't know.

- And plus he opened up Pandora's Box again.

Okay, I'm with you.

Where does it start?

Where did tennis go?

So like you said, using golf is the role model.

The things that happen in golf that don't happen in tennis.

Just this year, and we spoke about this a thousand times,

the worth of a PGA card as opposed to a USPTA,

USPTR sponsorship, or a certification.

Sorry.

That is the problems are inherent in our industry.

That our industry from the top down did not support us enough.

Came up with the formula, as you said,

and that they propagate and technology.

Let's just say technology across the board was so not a part of it.

I remember, and again, let's go back.

I'll update myself on this.

As you said about video, I was in a program,

the first serious program I started to play when I was 12.

They offered video with eight millimeter cameras.

Excuse me, to the table.

- That's incredible.

Dude, that's so exciting.

- If anybody knows what the next time you're in a camera is.

And it was.

It was unbelievably exciting.

And like you said, the worth of seeing yourself,

and I say this to my students all the time,

as a player who starts off older,

one of the things you miss out on so much

is not just watching yourself watching other people

and saying, do I look like that?

Because you don't have the time.

So you're trying to rush.

Adults want to be told.

They're trying to catch up.

Man, I started late.

What do I do?

And so much, somebody at the time,

is the simplest things.

Go watch.

Go watch yourself.

Like you said, my favorite line from the Rocky Horror Picture Show,

again, dating myself, I'll remove the cause, not the symptom.

We all diagnose the symptom.

What's the cause?

And you're right.

And it makes it interesting.

But like you said, this is, we can go on.

So let's schedule them again next week, Sean.

- We'll see you again tomorrow.

- We'll see you tomorrow.

- We'll see you tomorrow.

And again, I don't know if you've heard

there's 80,000 recreational tennis players here in Metro Atlanta.

If you ever want to come down and spend a week,

let's see if we can't do an e-in tour.

And I'm always into having other people

hear different opinions.

Because if you agree or it can't hurt,

being they're gonna agree with you,

agree with what you're believing in

or they're gonna go someplace else.

Any of those three options makes your life easier.

So I'm all for them.

- Well, I love what you guys are doing.

Really respected a lot, especially as people

actually working from inside the industry.

Again, I really respect you guys a lot

for giving people a look on the inside.

What coaches are actually thinking,

what they're actually feeling,

what they're actually going through.

Peek behind the curtain.

I think it's important for club members,

people who are participating in the game.

They need to be educated about how hard it is

to do the job that you guys are doing day to day

and the challenges that are just inherent in that career.

So thank you guys for doing what you're doing.

And like I said before,

I don't have any answers as far as like

the big, big, big picture in tennis,

but I'm always happy to shoot the breeze

and talk about what we're passionate about.

So thank you for having me on that episode.

I hope your listeners really enjoy it.

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- Well, there you have it.

We wanna thank Rejoven8.com for use of the studio.

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