Episode#:10 Bobby Schindler and Shaun J Boyce

ATP: If you could change or improve anything about tennis in Atlanta, what would it be?

Shaun and Bobby talk about the social media discussion happening on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/groups/160108514063156/posts/8875762622497658/

Shaun Boyce USPTA: shaun@tennisforchildren.com

https://tennisforchildren.com/ 🎾

Bobby Schindler USPTA: schindlerb@comcast.nethttps://windermerecommunity.net/ 🎾

Geovanna Boyce: geovy@regeovinate.comhttps://regeovinate.com/ 💪🏼🏋️

This podcast is powered by GoTennis! Atlanta: Membership has its privileges 🤜🏼🎾🤛🏼

🏠 https://letsgotennis.com/

🫶 https://letsgotennis.com/join/

https://shop.letsgotennis.com/ 👟👜

💰 https://letsgotennis.com/deals/

https://letsgotennis.com/podcast/ 🎙️🎧

https://www.facebook.com/gotennisatlanta

https://www.instagram.com/gotennisatlanta/

https://www.youtube.com/@atlantatennispodcast

Do you want to read about some good things going on in the world of tennis?

https://letsgotennis.com/stories/ 🔥🪑

Check out our GoTennis! Atlanta Facebook page for deals, updates, events, podcasts, news, stories, coach profiles, club information, and more https://bit.ly/gt_facebook_page

Also, you can support this show (and save some $) by shopping at 🤑https://letsgotennis.com/deals/🤑

Or, donate directly HERE

Want to get into crypto? This is easy: https://www.coinbase.com/join/boyce_3s?src=ios-link

Want donate with Bitcoin? Here’s the address: 3EqTU1gQBLoieMeFLC1BQgCUajPpPMCgwB

Considering your own podcast? We (obviously) recommend Captivate: This podcast is hosted by Captivate, try it yourself for free.

Welcome to the Atlanta tennis podcast.

Every episode is titled, "It's 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 want to have a conversation as long as it starts with tennis.

Today, Bobby and I are going to have some fun for the next 10 minutes or so, we won't

make it too long, even though pretty sure we can talk for days on most of these things,

is our social media discussions.

So that mostly for what's going on right now for anybody watching live, which again is usually

just my wife, but maybe times will change.

So Bobby, we put out a fun question on the, what is this called?

Atlanta area tennis players, Facebook group that is run by a guy you know, right?

You tell us who that is, a guy that runs this, he's the admin of this site.

We think it's Michaela Arnold.

That sounds right.

That sounds right.

And Michaela, I'm going to just go over to him.

He also, I met Michaela back in 2012.

He was trying to put together a tennis ladder system for competition, and he lived in the

Marrietta part of town.

He was playing out of Harrison, and we just hit it off, stayed in contact.

But he has since gravitated, he runs a Peruvian restaurant in Roswell now.

He's the owner chef of the freaking, inking.

I want to make sure I pronounce this right.

Freakin, inking.

Freakin, inking.

I, N, C, I, N.

Yeah, okay.

And it's then Roswell, and he also has a food truck attached to it.

But he is a chef as well.

We didn't have one.

We didn't have one.

So he's very diverse, and he created that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that part of Facebook.

That group.

Okay.

So do we think he's Peruvian or maybe just like, Peruvian food?

I think he just like Peruvian food.

How are we?

Maybe he's Peruvian, but if he's got a food truck, we definitely need to talk to him.

Yes.

So we, we talk about Michael McHeal.

Is it me?

I always, he spells it McHeal, but I think he pronounced it.

Michael.

Okay.

The American version.

Yes.

I think he always would the American.

Not confused the people like me.

Yeah.

So we, we definitely need to talk to him.

But we used his Atlanta area, tennis players group that has a bunch of followers.

That it looks like it's a pretty vibrant group as we would say on Facebook.

And I threw one of our Go tennis questions up there, which is if you could change your

improvement, you think about tennis in Atlanta, what would it be?

We put that up on our Go tennis page for the Facebook page as well and got some responses,

but it really took off with what looks like now 76 comments, which is kind of fun for us.

To G 76 comments has been a lot of fun.

And we decided we wanted to get together and do a quick live conversation about it on the

YouTube as well as we'll put it out as a podcast as well.

But we kind of narrowing down some of the main themes and some of the questions.

And I'll let Bobby start because one of the questions that the first thing that came out

was get rid of pickleball courts.

It was the first question that first answer that jumped in there.

So how would you respond to that?

Okay, we're changing something about tennis.

What does that have to do with pickleball?

That's a very good question.

I think it's just the animosity or the attention that pickleball is getting because I've recently

saw tennis fighting back saying, you know, there's how many new people or how many people

playing the various paddle and rocket sports and that tennis outflanks all of them combined.

The recreational tennis player is still more than paddow, badminton, and pickleball combined.

So I think people are seeing their courts.

Tennis courts being turned into pickleball courts and saying, what is going on here is this

something we really need.

You know, there's different ways you can look at it as a club, especially in Atlanta as a club.

I think it's interesting and it's potentially a money maker because for the first time something

is in the economies of scale and the club's favor where we've talked about tennis is predominantly

free in Atlanta because it's so accessible, where with pickleball it's not.

So you will see, or your people are trying to create clubs.

You know, we know about pickle and social that will be opening up here fairly soon.

It's going to be a pickleball only facility as well as a bar in restaurant and I think a couple

of beach volleyball courts and corn hall, but they're trying to use the pickleball to make

the commonality to create an environment where you come and spend several hours obviously.

Not just playing pickleball but hanging out socially afterwards.

So I don't look at pickleball as a director.

We have it winter mirror.

We have 10 hard courts on our main facility.

We have two hard courts in one of our other, one of our other little outcows of winter mirror.

But we turn two of our tennis courts into six pickleball courts.

And you know, they get a lot of use and we do have some crossover, but predominantly I'd

say that the pickleball is appeal to a lot of young kids surprisingly.

That's who really is the big shock to me that has embraced it.

The teenagers I think look into go out and maybe pick up basketball now it's pick up pickleball.

And just go out and exercise, be outside, walk the ball around with their friends.

So I don't see it as a threat.

I actually think long term it could be a good way to introduce kids to the game because with

a pad, I'll like that.

It's got to be closer to the kids' body.

So I think from a learning standpoint it could be very instrumental in helping to teach tennis

long term.

So, but you know, I get it.

People look at it and say gosh, one other thing going after tennis, tennis doesn't need it.

But I think you got to spin it and say hey, if it gets more people outside, gets everybody

healthier.

Maybe it'll to the odd, everybody looks at pickleball as being the step backwards after

you get a hold there.

I don't want to play tennis anymore.

It's making me cover too much court.

You might look at it and say hey, I enjoy this.

Let me take the next step and go play tennis.

And you know, there's been a lot of injuries impeccable because it's a stop and start sport

in a short amount of space.

So I'd be curious to get North of Peter can say, you know, is it really that much easier

on your body than people think is supposed to tennis?

So, look at your demographic as well.

How many injuries in pickleball?

Who plays pickleball?

Exactly.

Oh, they've already had a hit for place.

Yeah, it's older.

So, yeah, it's it's it's it's it's like said, if you're interested, but I again, I get it.

I see the people's response, but I think there's room for everybody.

Yeah, and I like that.

I've seen the high school kids at your facility out there.

And I think that's a great draw.

I think it's easier to get into, I think other than basketball, some of the other sports

were size matters, I don't think pickleball has that same limitation.

So I think that's good.

I think it's bringing people into brackets sports in general.

It's bringing people outside.

And I would be interested to see actual numbers because the ones I see were you say, there's

not that much crossover.

Do you really, did you have some major backlash about the tennis courts being switched into

pickleball?

Pickleball courts, no, Mark Wiley out in the QLS same thing.

No, he got praised for it.

So there's a way that we can, if there's a way to look at the numbers and take away the response,

it says, well, I feel that it's really doing this to tennis or I feel that.

Well, let's look at the numbers.

Let's find out what's actually going on.

Because we talked to in one of our interviews last year, Mike Inberdown, who's literally the

guy building the pickleball courts.

He says, yes, we're building a lot of pickleball courts.

And we're not really seeing a major backlash.

The clubs actually want it.

So it could just be a fact, it could last five years, it could stay that way and be a nice

addition to the club.

But it's fun for us to see online, the response, the back and forth of what people think.

Because it's one of the things we're going to do with the podcast, one thing we're going

to do with Go tennis, which is we're going to ask these questions.

Let's find out what people want.

Let's find out what's on out there, which leads me to my next theme that I have found

in the comments, which is about indoor courts.

My personal comment was I'd like to see more indoor courts.

Now I understand there's a, there's always a money question there.

The other response, similar to that was more indoor courts, more clay courts.

There are issues there.

You don't have a your facility and we can talk about what we know personally.

I think that is a better way to do it rather than saying, I think Atlanta should do X.

But at your facility, you don't have indoor oracle.

Correct.

I do not.

And I, I ligand I laugh because I, I sell the same thing, the gravitation to the indoor courts

that everybody's pushing to where, when we first started 25, 30 years ago, everybody wanted

clay courts.

I was at White Collins Country Club for 14 years and it was in that we wanted indoor.

It was why can't we get clay?

Yeah, we have an aging population.

Why can't we get clay?

And that was always pushed back on our way out of room and subsequently since I left.

They've added clay courts.

But I think like everything else, lifetime fitness came in and kind of did a test for everybody

saying, will people pay for a higher level club, a facility that is just physically nicer.

And the answer was yes, you know, they came in and took health clubs and gyms to a different

level.

And they were very good about price positioning.

But I think they showed that people will pay for it and then you throw in our climate, which is

predominantly warm, but we do have a lot of wet.

And especially in a year like this where wet has been so prevalent, it brings back to the

need for private courts.

And what we said always, and the irony of the course is there are very few tennis-only clubs

in Atlanta.

Most of the clubs are attached to subdivisions, which don't usually put, you know, a roof on.

And then you have the few tennis privates, which would be the old towns.

And I don't know what to do if it was called anymore, which have old town in East Cobb.

You know, when they put on a little roof, you have John Screeck down the street from me that

had was originally built as part of a subdivision, but is now run by the guy's a universal

tennis academy and they have four indoor courts.

But it's not HVAC or heat, it's just covered.

So, but there's different shapes.

Bottom line, it's like adding pickleball, it's like adding indoor courts.

If you're going to run a club, as a marketing, or what is the need?

There's a need for this.

So what is going to be the differentiator to get people to join my club as opposed to go to their

neighborhood?

And, you know, even lifetime when they read did, where I could club at the south, they thought

that this would be by adding pickleball and raising, I mean, so adding tennis and raising

the level of the facility and being able to offer alcohol because it's a quote unquote

platinum facility, they would get a lot more.

Their business was not to grow.

They used to take off of the 100,000 people that belong to lifetime clubs in Metro Atlanta

and get some of those to come over and join the RCS facility, the North Coast facility because

now you all have heard indoor tennis and outdoor tennis.

And, you know, it's taken some time.

It wasn't an immediate obvious success.

Let's put it that way.

Yeah, and we know a lot about the club side of things.

A lot of the comments I'm seeing are targeted toward city facilities or public facilities.

Public, even the right word anymore.

But the question being, are they doing those demographic market research?

And, you know, do we talk to the UTA guys?

Is there going to run a few of those facilities?

Do we talk to a guy, we talk to some of those people that might know a little bit more about

what, how do you make those decisions?

Are pickleball courts going in at the cab, for example, or blackburn?

Or are they just words and facilities leave us alone?

I'm going to think the interesting to see from a public facility point of view how that is managed.

And if it's that different from a club where you still have your membership, you still have the people

who play at your facility.

Yeah, and we know because we get the conversations whether it be through our players or people

that we meet.

There's a lot of people out there that would love to own a quote unquote tennis facility.

And our first retort is, well, as long as you don't expect to be rich, you know,

it's as possible.

Yeah, but if you're doing it to think it did you're going to be this, it better be a passion project

and something that you already get rich.

Right.

Or be exactly because you're not going to get rich because you get just do the math on and extra

planes.

Okay.

So again, to make it affordable, make it where people would join.

But I do think of the last few years what lifetime is done, which injected the quality

does matter whether does play a role, if you can make it affordable and make it reasonable.

And then use like James Creek, the model for the University of Tennessee Academy guys run

that facility and their big things to concentrate on their their academy.

That's something that they can offer to the tournament level juniors that you're never going

to get rained out.

And I'm right down the street and I can't offer that.

We're going to get rained out.

And you know, and we have liability issues.

So it's not like very, we can go on the court and say, okay, we'll get away with it today.

Listen, you can hurt your arm.

You can hurt your elbow on top of the fact I'm going to put 10 kids on the quarter, 15, 20 kids

on the court.

And I'm also going to lose that many tennis balls.

So it's, it's just a bad decision all the way around.

So you know, I do think again a successful, properly placed and that's the other bad part

because I mean, I know TJ Middleton years ago was looking at building and probably now

is crying because he was looking off of exit 12 on the Georgia 400 corridor as a future rowing

area and boy was he right.

And if he would have done that, that's my head.

Yeah.

Because that's it.

We talk weather.

We talk court access.

We talk not getting rained out.

We talk up to 400 corridor, which is where a majority of the tennis players are.

So we go then one of the next concerns is the out to spread, which I'll see.

Yep.

I'm going to do that anyway and I'll just do what I want to do to bring in more people.

We'll let out to worry about that.

But one of the comments I saw had 51 miles to their tennis match.

That was crazy within a league and that's nuts.

And I'm going to use to that at the double A level and we know that's just part of the deal.

That's just, we are.

But I wouldn't think that the typical tennis player on a weekend has time for that.

I want to see more family involvement.

And if I've got to go halfway to Alabama, wait, that's all right.

It's a third of the way.

But it's also the thing to think.

It's too far.

It's just too far.

But from that point of view, the weather, the more interesting question to me went along the lines

in this thread was about two level events.

And I think that's a fun question.

We may ask that one next time in a similar way, which is where would you as the Atlanta

tennis fan like to see the tournament?

So whether it's a 250 or a 1000 or we move flushing meadows down here.

I don't care.

We can argue about getting on the schedule.

Right now we got a 250.

Were we to make it better?

Bobby, I know you got some ideas.

Well, I've long been a fan of moving up to the Georgia 400 corridor.

I'm also a fan of, you got to look long and hard.

And I always tell the story, since I was involved with it, the first year the senior tour came

to Atlanta.

This was Jimmy Conners.

They came in October.

And they were hoping to start franchising their tournaments.

So they found somebody who had just made some money in telecom.

He wanted to get into sports.

He had a 40 to 50 million laying around that he just wanted a little hobby.

And they said, great, well help you.

You'll find it.

We'll show you how to do it this way long term.

You'll take over the sustainability.

And I knew that the people that were promoting it.

Jeff Benton's who's dad Ray was Jimmy Conners agent.

And one of the founders of ProServe.

I knew Jeff from his days in Emily.

And he also worked at Lifetime Fitness.

Not like I'm sorry.

Yeah, when it was still windy, helped before it became what it is now.

So we've known each other years.

And they were coming.

And I believe it was 98, 99 was the first year.

And they said October, I said great, did you guys bother to find out whether the Georgia or Georgia

Tech was in town?

And they looked at me cross-eyed and said, what are you crazy?

You know, this is tennis.

This is in football.

I said, OK.

So I was the sideline announcer for doing all the pre-match introductions and keeping everybody

abreast.

And kind of to prove my point a little bit.

But also because I knew there was a desire for it, I would announce scores of games that were

going on that afternoon on the Saturday afternoon matches.

And I think when some obscure all burn and this is before the rise of the Mississippi, it was

either the Mississippi State or Mississippi was playing.

And the crowd went crazy over the score.

They, you know, the powers that be made very clear came over to the booth and said you've made

your point, stop announcing football scores.

So I think you got to look at the entirety of what is going on.

And it landed here one city.

You know, that's face it.

I mean, this is, you know, we get the best to the best come here.

So to sit there and say, is it 254, land to appropriate?

I would say probably not.

But as we, you know, we talked about.

There are other things that go into the level of the tournament.

So what do you do?

I loved back in the day and the, in the, you know, the mid early 90s, peach tree cities to do a

satellite, you know, which they could do over.

And it was unbelievably well attended because that was the thing to do in peach tree city.

So I just always liked the idea of being a little bit smaller.

So you could conceivably do it in a roswell, do a tournament in an alpharata or a

built in.

You're looking for the base supporters.

And to me, that's where, and I think the alta demographic or that stats would show you, they're

base their strongest base is in the north, you know, Georgia, 400 North corridor.

So if, if I'm looking for that, that's where I would start.

I think downtown is a tough, it's tough ride.

You know, northern Georgia will do it once, but they're not coming back.

And then as we laugh in, in fact, you're in, okay, Saturday and Sunday, they're playing

three o'clock matches in a hundred degree heat.

That's just another thing that stops people from coming back to see that second match.

You know, that's what always makes the tournament less than successful and doesn't show up well

on TV when the cameras, it's like, well, this is Atlanta, the most popular, you know,

name tennis city of the world, the most popular tennis in the world.

And they can't fill out a stadium.

It's tough.

It's tough.

But that's the course of them.

They all throw back, stone mountain artists, which we want to get into.

Yeah, well, we'll let the Olympic go.

That's the, the uniqueness of Atlanta.

And I've got a, I don't know what my theory is, but as I traveled the world over the

last 20 years, people looked at me funny when we, everybody got together and they said

where they were from.

I was the only one ever from Atlanta.

Yeah, everybody travel in the world was from LA, New York, Paris, Sydney.

They were, they were from all over the place, most basically, LA.

But I was the only one from Atlanta.

Atlanta is, you call it, you say it's a tier one city.

It's not you calling it that.

But Atlanta being a tier one city, we like our good stuff.

Yes, we are called the Kingdom of tennis.

And that's just because we've got the biggest social leagues.

Yeah, we're a different kind of tier one city.

We're still a, I don't want to say, small town.

But I think we've got a lot of people here that don't leave Georgia.

You know, I lived in LA in LA, believe it or not, is a lot like Atlanta or was because

downtown LA, when I was there, there's just 30 years ago granted.

There was nobody who lived in downtown LA.

My brother still lives in LA.

He lives in downtown LA.

So you know, it used to be downtown was a place that you committed to did work.

And within that, you had downtown LA, you travel west towards the beach.

You would hit Beverly Hills in century city.

And you continue west and you're eventually going to hit the Pacific.

And I was Santa Monica.

Well, that was all considered LA.

Atlanta is, as we say, Metro Atlanta, constitutes, I'm in coming.

We're 35 miles away from what you would call downtown Atlanta.

And I grew up 35 miles from New York City on Long Island.

And we weren't called New York City.

But yeah, it was, we were very separate, very different.

And two different types of people resided in those places.

And that's always been Atlanta.

Atlanta has always been a great convention city or was a great convention city.

It was never a touristy place.

And again, I think that just those are the little struggles that Atlanta has always had creating

that next level of an identity.

You would think with such a diverse population, the arts would be outstanding.

We'd have so many different theater groups.

And you know, it's money.

There's so many different factors that go into it.

But it's tough to put a, you know, take it and throw and say, this is what Atlanta is.

I could answer that.

Yeah.

And I think that's funny because you said you talk about the diversity, which is very true,

but does not, does that not make it harder for an identity?

Yeah.

Because it isn't.

We're not all the same.

We're very different.

I mean, even Atlanta, I think it's very different from Atlanta.

I go to California.

And it looks like what I'm used to, but it's different.

There's just a different.

And maybe that's a field, but from an Atlanta point of view, you look at

pastry city to coming to top County to Gwyneth County to downtown Atlanta to

bucket.

It, they're just different things.

They're very different things.

And we have, you know, single entity out of trying to do their thing.

And they just say, hey, you guys are in one of these counties.

You get to play tennis.

Have fun.

Yes.

It's Atlanta.

There's traffic.

I hope you enjoy your, you know, you hope you enjoy yourselves.

But in this case, looking at the pro event, it's that fun.

Say, yeah, we'd love to see that.

I saw one comment saying, we need more ping pong tables.

Yeah.

Well, that's why I like Facebook sometimes.

Because you get these things that you just kind of look and you go, huh?

I don't understand where you got there.

But it's fun.

We'll hopefully do these more.

I saw one more that I wanted to mention where was it?

It was junior programs that don't cost parents an arm in a leg.

And we were, we were talking about this.

And having standing in the junior program business running tennis for children and you're

running a facility that understands programs for kids that often, you get what you pay

for.

So there is the ability to say, yeah, there is affordable tennis programming out there for kids.

But you get what you pay for.

And people have to understand that.

And one of the things we're going to try to do with Go tennis is help with some of that.

Because I'm watching tennis channel.

I'm complaining about the commercials.

But then I try to think, OK, well, how much am I paying for this product?

You know, is there kind of pay extra like Pandora?

I can pay extra to not have the commercials.

And in that case, is there an ability to say, hey, well, we've built our tennis programming?

We're sponsored by Cadillac.

And we're going to run a Cadillac commercial every five minutes, two year children.

For 30 seconds, and we're going to stop tennis and run a commercial.

So I'm probably going too far with my analogy here.

Or you can pay full rate and we won't run any commercials.

There's a way we have to tennis coaches are going to make a living.

And tennis isn't cheap if you want coaching.

It's free if you want to practice.

Go find a board.

Go find a wall.

Go practice.

Practice is free.

You know, hard work is extra.

But in this case, you get junior programs, things cost money.

Unless we're going to offload some of those costs to advertising, which I'm guessing may not

get a great response either.

Well, I think the good part about the overall response is that as I call it, you're struck

a nerve with the question, it's, you know, it, you asked one question, like you said,

looking at all the different responses, how far it can go.

Each one brings up a different set of variables, which makes it even more fun.

That one, for instance, even your tennis general analogy, it's like running a tournament.

The sponsorships pay for the event, the ticket sales are the money.

Tennis channel doesn't exist if it's not for the cables overall, Comcast, paying them

so much per subscriber.

That's how it exists.

Their profit is their sponsorships.

They could not exist without, they need both of them.

And that's how close tennis channels always from going out.

They created this model that they thought we're going to be able to mimic the golf channel

and command the same prices.

And they've never have.

And that's why it's always teetering on not seeing the tennis channel anymore.

And that's why they look to pickable because they need something to sustain, to keep, it

keep an audience growing because, let's face it.

Look at the demographic of the NeilSons of the tennis channel.

It is often less than one, which is pretty much for any station, just you're going to register

of one just when being on, you know, being of register stations.

So same thing with tennis and Atlanta, what the good part, we struck in there.

We start going to earth.

We hopefully, we might not have all the answers.

We have ideas.

We have a little more background in it so we could maybe throw some more out there.

Again, great part about the kids.

But here's a big problem that immediately from us being in it, screams that we've discussed, is

the lack of leadership from the top that we don't have, this is why you have to go to

a certified professional.

Well that would weed out a lot of the guys who go into the subdivisions with their basket,

offer a cheaper and people to say out of convenience and more economical will take it,

not realizing what that you are.

If you create issues that the child can work through at a 12 year old, they're probably not

going to be able to work through as a 14 or 16 year old and then we're going to have to tear

things down during a time that they should be getting more point play in advancing in that

direction.

There's always something, but I get the great part about just the discussion was creating the

discussion and seeing where people go and that's what we're trying to do.

This is the commonality, tennis is where we start, now we've gone into business and again,

great thing from being involved in the business side is that it's a product.

So a lot of the things that we face in tennis are similar to what a restaurant faces.

So where can we help each other?

What idea worked to increase your base in the restaurant business could that be transferable

to tennis and you know, to maintain it.

Yeah, to see where we can go.

And then again, we have the commonality work and we go and it's fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, that was we got we got all the fun questions on the thread and you got a troll or two,

actually less than I expected.

But you know, this typical question is this sandbagging and what would you change like Gary's

common and he's like I'd make my back hand better.

Oh yeah, I can't complain about that.

But if we wanted to, I want to go with one more and we both know Grovo and he makes a comment,

stop trying to monetize this sport.

And I asked him specifically, can you tell us more about what that means?

Because again, we're making a business, right?

He says companies come in and take over facilities, hire anyone looking to teach.

They advertise the lights out of it and bring in kids by the bunches.

The bulk of their budget is in advertising.

They pay below market to teaching pros because of this.

The quality is poor and kids don't get the proper start into the sport causing them to drop

out at a later time.

The turnover with pros and facilities is through the roof relatively speaking.

And their only goal is to make profits.

So I've got a couple of guesses that's to where that's targeted.

How would you do you picture this as large management entities coming in trying to make money

rather than a local coach running a facility who may not even be capable of handling it?

I think there's a level of incompetence in every industry.

So you can't rule that out.

I would defend the other side just as vehemently just because it's tough guys.

You look at, you think Harrison, okay, here's the city run facility.

I know it's changed, but there was a time that Cobb County wouldn't allow the teaching

pro or a teaching pro to actually be the director.

So if you wanted to be the director at a Cobb County facility, you were not allowed to teach

at that facility.

So we all know tennis is a labor intensive business.

So the margins are not that great to begin with.

Then you throw in as you put in somebody of what we've talked about a third person or another

entity that you are, whether it be the city, a landlord, a subdivision.

I'm at Windamir.

I don't get a salary.

What my deal was, I get exclusivity.

And I get a hundred percent of everything we generate and through that, I get guys to work with.

Now I'm of the belief from a managerial standpoint in a business standpoint.

I'm only as good as my number two.

So I want the guys around, guys and guys around me to be as good or better than me, which

means I got to spend more.

So my margins for me, there's not, I don't eat off the other pros, like some of the other guys

do and I get it.

And I look at I had daughters in cheerleading and I laugh and my other daughter is in theater.

And as I said, even though it's a different name, it's the same thing.

They grow, they get excited.

First time they've really seen a profit.

They're not sure how to scale it.

So the thing that was the enticement because the ratios were better, it was a little bit smaller,

it wasn't as expensive.

The reason you went then went there as they grow, well, those things go away.

So now what is, can I raise the level of what I'm offering because I've grown yet, if you're

the instructor or the owner saying, "Wow, this is the first time I've actually made money."

And when it would be nice to take a family vacation.

And it's tough.

So again, it seems a lot of the questions you look at, they answer as obvious.

There's so much goes into all of this, which is fun.

Again, that's why we can discuss it.

That's why get a perspective of somebody else and say, "Okay, this is what I think.

So how can we make it better?"

And again, I think it goes, we've talked to the teachers and they grow.

How many goes to the idea of how well did you play?

Where did you play?

Well, you're a coach, bill balla check, didn't play football.

Nick Balletary was a lawyer.

All the stories that debunk the idea, your science teacher wasn't Einstein at school.

Your biology teacher, but Mr. Cooperman was outstanding, and I'll never forget him.

He taught me the value of work.

We just tend to need to be cultivating that image of, well, this guy just walked off tour.

Or can you go out and get a three, five, four, a player say, "Hey, you have a great app to

you to work with kids.

This is going to be what you do."

But again, in a facility where you only have so many hours to eat, too many times, the guy,

will just say, "I'll do it myself."

Or, "I'll show do it herself."

And that's not growing a program.

That's being a head pro, that's, you know, making capitalizing and making, you're not growing

the program.

And I think that goes to a lot of people being in these positions because they're so much

that so many of these guys probably shouldn't be in those positions to begin with.

So, you know, two different variables playing into that.

But again, fun discussions.

Yeah, and I think go to us in the Atlanta, and his podcast can help bring what we would consider

insider information.

So, hey, we've been doing this for thousands of years.

Here's how it's done.

It doesn't mean it's done right, but here's how it's done.

Here's why it's done.

You know, what somebody wants to respond to, one of the professional men's players came out to it.

I'm just don't understand why women don't make as much money.

Okay.

We can talk about, I don't want to touch the third rail right now.

But, you can have those conversations, but we can also go to the out-of-player.

Okay, here's why out is doing this.

Hey, out-of-because we know people at out-of, and we can have that conversation.

Maybe we can take some of that wisdom of the crowd and help the businesses in Atlanta be better

at what they do.

That's one thing to go to.

And, of course, the podcast.

And as usual, our 10 minute conversation turned into 40.

There you go.

And again, that's the beauty of Atlanta because we are so different.

We have a subdivision.

We have a private club.

We have, and the amenity is a part of a golf club where most places are dealing with one

or two.

We're dealing with public parks that are, I mean, gosh, unbelievable public parks in foresight.

That I just see from being a foresight and being in fault in that you sit there and go,

oh my God, these baseball fields I die.

If I could have played on these baseball fields, considering what I grew up with playing

in the York when you're playing in March and it was freezing and the ground was rock hard and you

were afraid for your life because you know what got a bad, bad, bad balance and you look

at the facilities, these kids got to go, wow.

So there is a lot of money being spent and that's great part.

You get all this.

So the level of the criticism goes up.

This far, you know, it's a different criticism because you can't complain about the facilities.

You can't complain about the public parks.

They're amazing.

They do a great job of getting you the facility.

They've had a hard time figuring out how to administer it.

They've been different methods through the years again, which makes it a completely different

discussion.

That's the fun part that we'll be able to get you private club tennis directors, neighborhood

subdivision, tennis directors, the one or two tennis clubs, tennis directors and then go

out of state to some place, I'll say, well, how do you do it in your state?

Because when any entity always comes to Atlanta again, it's the head scratcher.

We're different.

We're different.

Again, and I always go back to T2.

That was such a, they took the time.

I remember when he was starting, he had his little circle and he took his compass and he goes,

this is all what covering.

Everybody's like, well, go, here goes.

No, we're going to start here.

We're going to saturate it and we're going to gradually expand because we did not want to

subject somebody to a 51 minute drive.

As we talked about, we all think when we think initially of Atlanta tennis is the driving,

the traffic.

He did T2 did surveys and identified that sandbagging was really the number one issue with

the majority of players.

He was very conscious about scores and made you record your scores.

And if you repeatedly, 1606, so you weren't staying a 30 player, sorry, your scores don't justify

that.

That's, again, but he was a small business.

He was a small business and not a huge.

So they were able, they took their time and did a lot of the stuff right.

As we talked, Alta is grown so exponentially and such a short period of time.

If you really look at seeing the things, how do you stop the monster once it starts growing?

Because Dawson, Dawsonville, where the north city of Forsyte, once in, hey, what are you

talking about?

I can throw their places.

I can throw a rock.

The outlet mall is Dawson and two miles south on 400 is coming.

Why is that a difference?

We've had a big deal.

We've had a lot of drive in Dawsonville.

Yeah, well.

So it's a good idea.

I'm going to be a city and can assault.

So it is Alta's start to make regions.

Right.

And you know, start saying, okay, this is what we're going to do.

And then we're all going to meet.

You know, make it more of a tournament could be fun.

You could actually enhance the experience by keeping everybody close and then say, okay,

for the semi finals, we're going to come here and the finals, we're going to come here and

make it even that way to address it.

I'm sure we'll get any power, marketing director at Alta, we'll get her on the podcast and ask

these questions.

And what are you doing?

We know that they, we spoke to them at length on pickleball and pickleballs coming out this

summer.

And we know during their discussions, they did a lot of market research to try to get it right.

So it's not like it's their just stone spaghetti.

They aren't out there talking to people trying to figure it out, trying to make the best experience

for everybody.

But we know it's ultimately the consumer that makes these calls and that's why it's great that

we have these these forums and this ability to tap into the consumer and say, hey, you know,

what bothers you?

Well, there you have it.

We want to thank Rejovenate for use of the studio.

Be sure to check out Rejovenate.com.

If you're interested to improve your fitness health and wellness and not interested in a commute

to the gym, check out our other episodes.

At Atlanta, tennispodcast.com.

Also, find us on social media and let us know what you think about our conversations.

Mostly, click that follow button, whether you listen periodically, you can follow us in your podcast

app, which helps us keep the show going.

And with that, we're out.

[MUSIC]