Mike Manzella on Growing Racquet Clubs, Instructor Shortages, and Soft Skills | Unscripted

[00:00:00] You're listening to CourtReserve Unscripted with me, Ashley Owens. What do you think? All right, how's that? Any better? That's great! All right, wonderful. Good job with your hot spot there. Yeah, hot spot for the win, I'll take it. How are you, my friend? I'm doing really well. How are you? I'm doing great. So it's spring break week. You're busy, you're handling the kids and everything else. So what's going on? What's next?

[00:00:49] What's new in this world other than spring break? Yeah, yeah. I tell you what, yeah, trying to build a business and manage three little kids under six is always a blessing and a curse at the same time. But all is good. I certainly don't have anything to complain about. But yeah, everything's great. Congrats on all the success over at CourtReserve. I've been following along closely.

[00:01:17] And you guys are doing a great job over there. Thank you so much. I'm really interested to hear more about you building your business because I think what you bring is a really unique aspect to instructors and clubs and facilities. So tell me what's been going on lately. What's your goal with the business right now?

[00:01:37] Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, it's interesting. Well, you know, look, my goal at the end of the day is, you know, to, you know, serve the racket sport community and in a few different capacities. But, you know, I'm about nine ish months in to doing this full time.

[00:01:57] Yeah. So I, you know, a little bit about me, I'll digress just momentarily. But I spent a good 20 plus years running and operating clubs, tennis and pickleball for quite some time. And I stepped out of the industry about four years ago to segue into corporate.

[00:02:22] I worked for a marketing and tech consulting slash staffing firm. So got a lot of amazing exposure there working with, you know, SMB companies and all sorts of different verticals and really expanded my the depth of my knowledge around marketing and technology. And I always kind of had an affinity for that anyways. But when I did that, you know, I started to miss the racket industry quite a bit.

[00:02:52] And, you know, I had one client that was, I was doing some kind of light touch advisory work for them. But I said, you know what, you know, I'm not particularly loving what I was doing. The industry that I was in was also starting to slow down. I said, you know, I think I could better serve, you know, the clubs that I once ran for so many years and in different capacities. And so what does that really look like? I think it's, you know, at the end of the day, it comes, you know, whether it's, you know, Paddle, pickleball, tennis,

[00:03:21] it comes down to one of three buckets. It's usually what I'm hearing and finding is that it's there's a growth bucket. So there's clubs in, you know, I finished a little bit more in pickleball that are, you know, clubs that are maybe under two years old. They're still thinking very heavily. And again, this depends on their market and where they are. But how do I get more utilization? How do I just start filling my courts? And, you know, how do we how do we do that?

[00:03:47] So it's, you know, a holistic approach in terms of meeting clubs where they're at and kind of building out that top of funnel strategy and that acquisition strategy all the way down into programs and staffing and process. And, you know, I often talk about the three P's, you know, people, process and and your programs. Right. So that's kind of where it starts for me. And then you have other clubs who are a little bit more mature.

[00:04:16] And, you know, you know, all of this. You've been doing this long enough, but, you know, that are thinking, OK, you know, my I'm getting some good growth. Right. But now what do I do with it? How do I really think about retention? And that's really the second bucket that I focus on is how are we getting alignment across all the departments, on all the staff, on creating retention.

[00:04:42] Right. And not only from the programming standpoint, but where does marketing fit into this? Where does where does technology fit into this with CRMs and workflows and kind of making sure that the whole ecosystem works? And then last, you know, for more mature clubs, especially if I find, you know, you know, pickleball clubs are getting there. But a lot of tennis clubs as well are thinking about we're already busy. Why would I need you? Right. Or why would I need anybody else to kind of come in and and help me out?

[00:05:12] And it's, you know, looking at and, you know, I was trying to solve this problem before I went out on my own as I was working for general managing two private clubs that were large and very busy, probably 75, 85 percent plus capacity or utilization. And it's right. It's looking at it and going, OK, well, how do we make sure that the health and the utilization of the club is being optimized?

[00:05:40] Right. Because as we know, right, it's like it's like Tetris. We want to make sure that, you know, during the peak times and off peak times, that clubs are doing everything that they can to maximize their profit density. But then also trying to how do they manage and better utilize off peak times while also keeping the approach of, OK, well, we've got to make sure that this whole ecosystem kind of works together.

[00:06:07] Because if we do something that's purely for the benefit of the club during peak times, it's going to increase the profit density. It might not best serve the members so that it's a sustainable, you know, model moving forward so that then it doesn't all of a sudden start, you know, bleeding into their churn.

[00:06:27] So that's essentially what I do is I'll look from a data perspective with more clubs that are mature to figure out, OK, how do we come up with the right matrix here? What's the what's the best ecosystem that best serves your club? So it's really those three things. It's growth, retention and then really ensuring that utilization is being maximized. Well, I can tell you that I play at a club locally. I play tennis at a local club. Right.

[00:06:57] And from that player standpoint, from from just the player side, like I can see we're going in in this mature club and making sure like the right programming, the right time of day, the right, you know, the right type of people on the courts. But I want to ask you a question because I see this, you know, courts are we're going on 10 years and we still get mature clubs more on the tennis or the, you know, larger scale country club side that Mike, they're still on pen and paper.

[00:07:26] They're still on a whiteboard. They're still on Google sheets. So it's very interesting. And does it surprise you that even in today's market, in today's age of technology, that these established large major clubs are still very not techie? It's amazing, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing.

[00:07:49] Yeah, you know, I think it's it's it's a really interesting landscape in that because, you know, when I think about the clubs that I was involved with, even let's go back 12 to maybe 13 years ago, which is it's a while, but not all that not all that long. And yeah, you know, I remember still like, you know, having pen and paper court times. Right. And you'd have to be up on the bulletin board and you'd have to like flip through it every day.

[00:08:18] But, you know, and then, you know, just recently, maybe a month ago at a very reputable tennis and pickleball resort in California, director approached me and said, we're still doing it this way. Right. And it's like, you know, he's like, you know, what can we do? Yeah. What can we do to like, you know, and and, you know, they had a little bit of tech, but it was very decentralized. Right.

[00:08:42] Like they were using like three different systems between their spa and in, you know, and their and their courts. And I think in their, you know, their web, their web platform. And it was it was very all kind of disconnected. So, you know, helping kind of come in and centralize that that technology. It's it's it's as you know, right. It's a bit of education as well in terms of just understanding what's really possible.

[00:09:05] And then kind of, you know, giving, you know, the the operators, the directors, the owners, the GMs, the playbook to, you know, execute on these things. So technology is certainly, you know, a part of it. But, you know, and it's it's with the advent of AI and tech and Martech and all these things. There's never been a better time to make this investment because it is no longer enterprise level stuff.

[00:09:36] Right. Like you don't need to be doing, you know, one hundred million dollars plus a year to afford this. You know, even someone like me, solopreneur, very small team. I can spend fifty dollars, one hundred dollars on a monthly subscription and have, you know, massive tools in my toolbox to help me grow and scale my business. And it's no different for for clubs these days.

[00:09:59] They just need to you know, they just need that resource for someone to come and say, hey, yes, this is available and this is what you can do. So I think sometimes, especially I have some friends that I think are great business people. They've been CEOs and COOs of different types of organizations, not tech companies necessarily, but they're a little afraid of AI. They don't understand how it works. They watch a lot of TV. They watch the news.

[00:10:28] And I think that some of that mentality is still in some of these more mature, older clubs that have done the same thing for years. And they're just really afraid of it. And unfortunately, in our opinion, I mean, you're going to have to learn to use AI to stay relevant in the future and to do things quickly and more productive. And I mean, all these things that you're saying as well. So how do you get the mentality unless you replace that person? Yeah.

[00:10:56] To get the new thinking coming into a mature club. Yeah, it's it's it's an interesting question. I think, you know, I don't know if I have the exact right answer, but I think reframing. You know. Zooming out, unfortunately, I think AI is actually as a brand has not very has not done very well for itself. So I have to be I find depending who I'm speaking with selective about.

[00:11:24] Using the word and the term AI. Yeah. Because I think it's a brand. Especially for more of that legacy based mentality. You know, there is some negative connotations with that. So I think reframing it into, you know, more of like a digital type of transformation. I think that's a little bit more friendly.

[00:11:50] And AI is just kind of a part of that transformation as opposed to pinning it at the very top of of the conversation where, you know, you're certainly likely going to get some pushback. So I think it's changing the narrative and reframing the discussion based on, you know, who it is that you're speaking with in the organization. Well, you think, too, that there's so many young people coming out of school now and, you know, coming off playing college and pro teams and things like that.

[00:12:18] And they're getting into the club industry and the facility management. And just imagine what their club is going to be like in 10 years with the information that they have at hand and what they can do at hand. That's right. I think that's really exciting. So where do you see instructors in the next five to 10 years? Do you think that we're going to have an issue having enough instructors in the tennis, paddle, pickleball world? Or do you think we're going to keep up?

[00:12:46] It's another good question. You know, everything that I've read is that it's, you know, it's it's there's there's a bottleneck. And everything that I've read and have experienced myself between, you know, you know, going back, you know, 10 years ago and trying to hire and staff clubs myself. You know, that's that's part of what I can help with now. But, you know, I think here's here's the thing.

[00:13:14] You know, it's just helping a club fill a director of pickleball position a few months ago. And the reality is, and again, this is market dependent, but this is more of a smaller to mid market club. And, you know, the reality is, is that if a club goes and posts a job and there's a lot of amazing platforms out there, we can discuss those platforms all day long.

[00:13:39] But the reality is right, is that unless you're in a hotbed market, you're not getting a lot of applicants. And the majority of the applicants that are coming in are, you know, require some sort of sponsorship, which, you know, we all know the challenges behind that. So I think the conversation, at least for now, the short term answer is that I think clubs need more accessibility to affordable recruitment. This is also my world. When I left, I was actually doing I was a direct hire consultant.

[00:14:07] So I was doing a lot of executive type searches. It was not in the rockets industry, but I became very familiar with how it's done and, you know, thinking about how that applies to, you know, clubs is that the challenge with it, right, is that it's really difficult for, you know, unless you're at a private country club, it's really difficult for clubs to, you know, spend 20 or $30,000 on a direct hire or retain search.

[00:14:37] Right. And the reality is, you know, clubs need more than just the director level placed. There's layers behind that, whether it's another full time head pro or just a full time staff pro or a part time staff pro. So, again, this is where the advent of tech comes in. It's like, how do we, you know, and there are, you know, people doing this as it is, but, you know, offering more accessibility because the conversation isn't about.

[00:15:05] It's about who's going to apply. It's the people that you're looking for are likely already working. So how do we create technology or a service that allows clubs to go out affordably and attract other talented people with a better opportunity to bring them to their club? And, you know, that's where, you know, I spent a good three, three and a half years doing for, you know, you know, other businesses outside of the racket world.

[00:15:33] But to me, I think that's the short term answer is that we need more accessibility for services that allow clubs to have that in their back pocket. Number one. Then the second conversation behind that is, OK, how do we build better infrastructure around creating a bigger, robust talent pipeline?

[00:15:58] Because we know, given the growth of, you know, tennis, pickleball, you know, Padel, there is going to be a sort there's already a shortage. I don't really necessarily see that change changing. But there needs to be a better grassroots infrastructure of building that collectively.

[00:16:16] And I think, you know, once that is is solved, then, you know, we'll have a lot more success, you know, not only within the industry, but for for clubs to be able to, you know, have more. So if they do just post a job, they're going to have a lot more talent that they can actually hire without having to go out and, you know, work with a with a with a staffing firm. Yeah. Or poach their neighbors instructor or or portion of their neighbors.

[00:16:43] Yes. And that's what happens now. Right. Is that it does? Well, I mean, especially in the pickleball world, we have major markets to have five, 10 clubs within a 30 mile distance. And they oftentimes, you know, just, you know, poach the the best guy down the street, which, you know, is not always the best solution, in my opinion.

[00:17:03] But how do you think that, you know, these up and coming maybe pickleball clubs, paddle clubs, you know, are going to be able to offer, you know, the the living, the benefits, you know, and make sure that, you know, folks are credentialed in a way that is going to, you know, you look at golf, right? Golf and what they do to get golf certified and tennis and pickleball and paddle is is not there yet.

[00:17:29] So how do clubs hire making sure that they're getting the talent that certified to teach and to do the things they want them to do? Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, at the end of the day, and again, it depends on the level that they're hiring for. But at the end of the day, it's for me, it's always soft skills first. I have to hire the character of the person, you know, more more than anything else.

[00:17:56] And, you know, and I've made this mistake myself where I've brought in, you know, whether it's a coach or another director, very credentialed on paper. They look phenomenal. They've got every certification in the book. Like they've been doing this for a while and then they start and they just don't connect with the people. And, you know, and I've also had it the other way around, right? Where you have someone who's just a phenomenal personality.

[00:18:24] Everyone wants to take lessons and groups and clinics from them and they have half the paperwork as the other guy does. Right. So to me, soft skills are a lot more EQ, intuitive, hard skills, you know, can be can be trained up.

[00:18:41] And those resources, if clubs are well equipped, can be provided, you know, over time to help, you know, you know, skill up someone who maybe needs a little bit more time to kind of mature into a particular role. So, you know, that's that's always kind of been, you know, my motto is, you know, you hire the person and the attitude first. Skills can be, you know, trained in our in our secondary.

[00:19:09] Yeah, I agree with you. I take some classes locally here and the coach makes it so fun. I feel like a rock star leaving the tennis court. Right. And that's what it's about. Right. I mean, because I don't care if he knows how to do the back end systems within. I want to have a great time on the court in my 90 minutes, you know, as a player for sure. That's right. I mean, it's just so incredible. So I guess one of the questions I wanted to ask you, you know, we do a lot of education at Court Reserve.

[00:19:37] We go around the country. We talk with a lot of club owners and club directors and a lot of conversation comes out about that instructor pay, especially in the pickleball clubs that, you know, maybe you're working with today. You know, what have you seen that works best? Is it commission? Is it that the, you know, the instructor may be if they if they're not on salary, maybe they rent the court and then the player pays them directly. What have you seen that works really well for both the club and the instructor?

[00:20:08] Yeah. You know, I think it again, it does depend on the model of the club. But and and also I think that, you know, preferably for me, I like to bring people on who are go getters. They don't really need to be handheld and necessarily told what to do. They have that growth entrepreneurial kind of, you know, fabric, you know, in them.

[00:20:34] And if those are the people that you're bringing onto your team, I prefer to try and incentivize with different, you know, packages around, you know, maybe it's a maybe you get a small retainer, a base pay. Plus, you have growth opportunities and commissions based on X, Y and Z, whether it's clinics or it's a little bit higher level.

[00:20:58] Right. If it's a head pro or director based on metrics around, you know, that that club, you know. But but again, if you have people that are on staff that don't have that mentality, they're not really motivated by that. Right. So they're they're fine just coming in, getting their hourly clock and in and leaving.

[00:21:22] So I think in a perfect world, you would surround yourself with as many of those type of people and you would create your, you know, your the structure of your pay around something like that. You know, and then the reality is, too, you know, because there are limited resources, you are going to just need your five hour a week, seven hour a week pro to fill in some gaps. So, you know, just having an hourly rate for that person who's maybe already got a full time job

[00:21:49] and they're just kind of helping you fill in a little bit of dead space. You know, that that certainly works, too. But, you know, if you're if we're talking about people that are doing 20, 30 hours a week or more, you know, for me, I want them invested. I want them invested in the club and with that mentality. And there's really no other way to do it outside of that. Yeah. What do you find that, you know, professional services like getting them education around,

[00:22:15] like how to actually interview people or hold a staff meeting? How are those things viewed in the clubs that you're working with these days? In terms of accessibility to that information? And I'm just being open to. Yeah. The reason I bring it up is I have a young coach here in our community and he wants to be a director of rackets for a club, but he's missing those skills of the business.

[00:22:44] So how do you bring somebody in and automatically expect them to be able to do those things? Or how do you teach somebody to do those things? Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Well, you know, I think that, A, I would assume that if you don't know how to do it yourself as an operator or an owner, you should probably figure it out first so that you can train them.

[00:23:06] And if you don't have the bandwidth to do it, bring out, you know, a third party resource to come in and help them train the staff to do whatever it is that you're looking to do. But, you know, yeah, I think there's, you know, when we talk about skills, the way I look at it is right. There's the on-court part of it, which often, and, you know, there's plenty of resources in the industry, great resources that people can lean into in terms of what's happening on the on-court.

[00:23:35] But, you know, in terms of the soft skills stuff, right, that's, you know, personality. But then there's also, you know, some things that you could learn in terms of, okay, onboarding. You know, one of the clubs that I'm working with right now, we're working on, you know, their onboarding structure. So when they come in and bring in a new employee, whether it's front desk, whether it's a coach, whether it's at director level, what does their onboarding roadmap look like, right?

[00:24:05] So that way they have a very clear structured process in how to do that because it does a couple things. A, it's going to help with retention. So, you know, because oftentimes we've seen it all over the place, right? You make a new hire and it's just like feast or famine. Go figure it out. Here you go. Here's your card of balls. And you're teaching on Tuesday at 530. Here's your class schedule. Go for it. Right.

[00:24:35] But what does that look like? Right. Because, you know, we want to make sure that we're getting trained up on court reserve. Right. Any other softwares and any other programs that, you know, you know, materials, resources that you have. So that's a significant portion of it. And directors and managers and owners have to be, you know, thinking about that. So that way they are setting up their new employees or 1099s to have success. Right. So, A, they don't lose them.

[00:25:03] And B, they can hit the ground running as quick as possible. You know, also marketing, sales, technology.

[00:25:11] How are we creating more accessibility to that type of information so that, you know, a club is thinking about the entire alignment, not just in terms of, okay, if, for example, if we're running a, you know, pickleball 101 or tennis newbie program, right, for three weeks or six weeks. What does that acquisition look like?

[00:25:40] Once they complete that program, where do we want them to go next? What's that pathway look like? You know, and in having competencies and pathways and curriculums, this isn't anything new, but, you know, how do we layer in marketing and technology to help offload some of the coaches to automate that process?

[00:26:01] But then also when I'm on court, I have to be thinking about, okay, on week five, this is my trigger as the coach to talk about what they need to be doing next. Is it a social that I'm inviting them to? Is it, okay, I need to start, you know, talking about getting them signed up for 201, right?

[00:26:19] And having these SOPs and these processes kind of, you know, mapped out so that way clubs, not only from the ownership management level, understand what's happening, but that on the, you know, boots on the ground level, those pros understand what's happening. And do they have the skills necessary to deliver said things, right? So there's a lot of kind of, it's like peeling back an onion, right?

[00:26:44] It's like, you know, you got to have all these things in place and there's a lot more to it that, you know, clubs could be doing more with. And, you know, that's one of the things that I truly enjoy doing and helping out with, but that's just one, that's just one example. Yeah, we had a webinar last month that was all about summer camps. And one of the attendees was like, we were talking about how to market the summer camp and people were like, oh, we turn it on in December. We do early bird registration in January.

[00:27:13] This one coach, she gets people fired up about next year's summer camps at the current summer camp. Why not go ahead and get them locked in, get them excited. And then it's done, right? I mean, it's keeping that idea in motion that you're talking about right now. So now do you still play? Do you play any of these great sports that you get to support or? I do, you know, not as much as I would like. I still do when I can, but, you know, I have three kids under six.

[00:27:40] So that unfortunately cuts into some of that playing time. But yeah, I still get out there somewhat regularly when, and, you know, whether it's tennis, pickleball. I just tried Padel for the first time a few months ago and absolutely love that. So I plan on, you know, continuing that journey as well. So are the kids learning to play any of the racket sports yet? They are, yeah.

[00:28:08] Yeah, we got, you know, I'll take them over to the club that's nearby me on occasion. You know how it goes, right? When you're trying to teach your own kids. So, you know, I'll keep it pretty fun and loose. And then I'll bring in some of the other coaches from the club to do more of the formal coaching. But yeah, they've done a little bit of tennis, a little bit of pickleball. And, you know, I think it's just wherever they end up taking it is, as long as they play it, you know, I'm happy.

[00:28:35] It's such a great, you know, lifelong sport. And, you know, I think it's just, it's really great for anybody to pick up and learn. There's so many benefits. Oh, for sure. I mean, all the data is out. We got to keep playing no matter what it is, no matter how old we are. So that's right. That's right. Absolutely. So what's next for you, Mike? So what are you looking forward to in the next six months? Oh, gosh, that's a good question.

[00:29:03] I think, you know, it's been so fun being, you know, a little bit earlier on in this and building this company. And I think that, you know, I never anticipated. In fact, I just made a LinkedIn post about it today. I never, you know, in January, I left corporate in June of 25 and went all in on this.

[00:29:31] And it was obviously a big risk with the family. But I just intuitively felt like that there was an opportunity here. And in January, I was scratching my head going, I was working with, you know, two, maybe three clients at the time, enough to put the food on the table. And that was about it. And I'm going, you know what? I don't know. I don't know if I made the right decision.

[00:29:55] And sure enough, by the end of Q1, I had like three more opportunities come through and clients come together. And then I just had started starting Q2. I just had another one fall in my lap. So, you know, for me, it's really just kind of continuing the path that I'm on. And, you know, I think that, you know, I'm always excited to serve clubs in different capacities.

[00:30:23] And, you know, I'm not necessarily really looking to do a whole lot different. I'm just going to kind of keep going and looking forward to, you know, having more of these conversations over the next three to six months. Yeah, for sure. Well, and the great thing about what we do, the kids can scream, the dogs can bark, and we can still like do great work behind the scenes and still do podcasts. Yeah, you probably hear it on my end as well, right? Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining me on Unscripted today. Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right.

[00:30:53] Thanks so much, Ashley. It was a pleasure and I look forward to keeping in touch with you. All right, you too. Take care. Take care. All right. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you'd like to learn more about how Court Reserve became the go-to club management software for racket and paddle sport clubs, come say hello over on our website. There's a link in the show notes. Bye-bye.