Special Episode - Rallying at the Rally House with Nick Dawson

[00:00:05.440] - Tony Roig Welcome to Pickleball Therapy. This is a special episode of our podcast. Super happy to be here at Rally House with Nick Dawson. Nick, how you doing today? [00:00:11.640] - Nick Dawson What's up? How are you, Tony? [00:00:12.560] - Tony Roig Uh, I'm doing great. How you doing? [00:00:14.330] - Nick Dawson I'm doing great. I'm excited to have you guys in the house today. [00:00:16.480] - Tony Roig I love it. So, uh, I wanted to introduce Nick, talk about his facility for a couple minutes just so you understand the other side of the house, and then Nick and I are gonna have a conversation about what I'm doing here to, you know, because he was curious about, hey, tell me a little more what you're doing here. He has a lot of professionals here in his local facility, but this is our first time coming into the Rally House here in Carlsbad. I gotta remember, I'm in multiple places these days. So here in Carlsbad, California. And so Nick, let's start the conversation. Just introduce yourself a little bit to the folks out there and a little bit of the story of Rally House. [00:00:47.580] - Nick Dawson Absolutely, yeah. So we got into the space here March of 2025, so been here a little over a year. I started playing pickleball during COVID A lot of people put a court in the backyard, started playing backyard. [00:00:58.730] - Tony Roig You decided to build— what is it, 11 courts? We have 11 courts. We're going to 11. [00:01:02.210] - Nick Dawson We're going to 11. Yeah, exactly. We play to 11. Let's put 11 courts in. [00:01:04.940] - Tony Roig I love it. [00:01:05.520] - Nick Dawson So we have the club here now. It's been a journey, that's for sure. But we're off to the races. We've got a very strong community that's following and we're building here. And it's been a fun first year. [00:01:19.240] - Tony Roig Yeah, we were chatting about that earlier and you mentioned to me that like, you know, obviously when you guys started, a little bit of, uh, you know, always a little anxiety, right? Because you're like, just, you know, and you mentioned the Kevin Costner thing, a field of dreams. I'm going to build it, will they come? But you mentioned what was really cool to hear about in this community, and I know other folks listening around the country will have this and around the world will have similar experiences where, you know, you built this beautiful facility and then you said like 60, 90 days, all of a sudden it started to, you know, like, like really build. Tell us a little about that, how the community came together behind the facility. [00:01:47.290] - Nick Dawson Yeah, it was. So we did our soft launch, like I said, in March. And I mean, the first 30 days, you know, sparse. There was people coming in and playing. It was word of mouth. We grew primarily through word of mouth. San Diego has a big community of pickleball players and a very, you know, not enough courts for sure. A lot of markets are like that. So I would say, yeah, 60, 90 days in is when we started to see the traction and our accounts were growing about 30 a day. Of people that were creating, downloading our app to, you know, come and play here. And so we built a community, and I would say within 6 months it was really— the flywheel was spinning. We were figuring out clinics and classes and starting to really develop the programming behind it. Open play was starting to take on a life of its own a little bit, and then now here we are. So the corporate events was another big key thing. We started doing those early, and that was exciting to see a lot of the, you know, the businesses in the area wanted to host pickleball. [00:02:41.590] - Tony Roig That's beautiful. And then, you know, you have the, the spillover effect too, where like, dokumatsu corporate events, hey, this is pretty cool, right? When can I come play again? Yeah. Uh, and you mentioned also like word of mouth, I think you said was really important to your, um, your growth initially in the community. And maybe players out there don't— and let's play with that a couple different ways, right? One is, um, without getting into the weeds of it, like you— I mean, you know, building a facility like this, these facilities folks don't like appear overnight. And, you know, and, and Nick and I were talking about earlier You know, to play pickleball, we need facilities, we need equipment, right? Any paddles, balls, and hopefully you want some guidance. So if you want some direction, that's where, you know, my, my team comes into that, that piece of the equation. But tell us a little bit about, like, you know, I mean, a, a thing like this is, you know, I assume months of work, planning, financial commitment significant, and things like that, so that players out there kind of get a sense of, like, what you're bringing to the table. [00:03:32.060] - Nick Dawson Sure. [00:03:32.380] - Tony Roig And then we'll talk about their role in that process. [00:03:35.270] - Nick Dawson Love that. So permitting is huge. That was probably the biggest step for us that I wasn't prepared for, because you got to work with local municipalities. There's all those checks and balances. They want to make sure we're converting a big warehouse, it has to be safe for the players. You know, you gotta, you gotta go through all those procedures and processes and all the paperwork. Um, it's, it's taxing. It took us about 11 months to get the full permit sign-off with our certificate of occupancy. And so that was probably the piece of the whole thing that I thought we could do it in about half that time. The build-out, you know, yes, it was a big financial, you know, lift to get it to look like this, but that was actually a lot easier than doing the permit. So there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work that I think a lot of people don't understand. It's not like you said, you just turn on the lights and let's play pickleball. It takes a lot of upfront heavy lifting. [00:04:22.350] - Tony Roig Yeah, and if you've been around the game as long as I have, you know, I started in 2015. I mean, I remember playing, and we played wherever. We played like— I played in like Gyms are fine, but then there's like whatever you find. I played inside of, uh, stages, inside small community centers. They would just tape it off and we'd play in there. It was, it was, yeah, you play everywhere. And then temp nets. And then you have these facilities, right, that come in that require significant commitment. This is, you know, family-owned business, just like the one that I, that I've talked to you about that I work out of, Largo, family-owned. So what I, what I would suggest to you if you're out there listening to this is keep that in mind, right, when you're making decisions about where to play, whether, you know, obviously there's cost, right? I mean, it does cost money to either become a member at a facility like this, whether it's here in Carlsbad or somewhere else. You know, the court fees, I mean, these places cost money to operate, lights, air conditioning, you know, all that kind of stuff. [00:05:06.060] - Tony Roig So just keep that in mind, right, when you're making your decisions. You know, do what's right for you, but weigh that on the scale because if we don't have facilities, we ain't playing pickleball. So, another— [00:05:15.860] - Nick Dawson can I just— [00:05:16.200] - Tony Roig yeah, of course. [00:05:16.910] - Nick Dawson One more thing that was heavy on our mind is we wanted the space to feel very elevated and special. We didn't cut any corners. Um, I don't know if you know this, we have court cameras on all 11 courts. So when you guys— [00:05:27.760] - Tony Roig how you have the, you have the little iPads or whatever, there's some sort of a display, the tablet, yeah, tablet system. [00:05:32.550] - Nick Dawson So that's for instant replay. And you can also just go on, type in your email at the beginning of a 1-hour, 2-hour session. And what we do is we record the full, full session. We use AI and we strip out all the dead time. So at 2 hours of playing pickleball, might be about a 40-minute video. It also will watch and pick out your 5 best points or rallies, and it looks at facial recognition. Are you excited? Were you guys cheering? And it'll send you at the end of that 2 hours, it'll email you your 5 best rallies or points, um, the full session. And then with one click, you can put it right on your social media and brag to all your pickleball friends. Hey, I was playing pickleball. [00:06:04.920] - Tony Roig I like it. [00:06:05.340] - Nick Dawson It's a lot of fun. [00:06:05.750] - Tony Roig Does it have like, uh, like a smiley face, like if you're, if you're good that day, or like a big frowny face if you're like, you look like you were having a bad day? That would be pretty funny. Um, and listen, if you're, if you— I meant to say this earlier— if you're in this area, right, if you're visiting San Diego, visiting San Clemente, Carlsbad, all the way, I guess, you know, Southern LA probably even makes sense. Come down here to this beautiful city in Carlsbad and check it out. So Nick, I know you had some questions about what we're doing here. Happy to field those and give you more information. [00:06:32.670] - Nick Dawson So the pickleball system, so that's that you guys travel around with facilities like this, you put on clinics, and you're here for 5 days. This is day number 4. [00:06:39.760] - Tony Roig Yep. [00:06:40.020] - Nick Dawson Let's talk about that. [00:06:40.810] - Tony Roig Technically, I, I think of it, I agree with you, we're day number 4 here, but to me it's day number 1 of our new camp. You're good. Because we had 2 camps here. We had a 3-day grad camp and then a 2-day, you know, our camp. So our camp and then a grad camp. And so, yeah, it's all based on the pickleball system. And as I mentioned earlier, you know, facilities, equipment, and then if you want guidance, that's where we come in. And so our, you know, my love and our love on our team is can we convey knowledge to players to help them have a stronger relationship with the sport of pickleball? And that's what we've been doing here at this facility. You know, it's what I like about it for our purposes is, you know, we have 3 courts next to each other, 5, 6, 7 for the first 3 days. And the reason we were able to add a 4th court, because initially we only had 3 courts reserved, was because of the 4 courts continuous. That's important to the coaching. And so yeah, we're going to work through the 3 pillars of pickleball today. [00:07:32.470] - Tony Roig Last couple days we worked through the 3 stressors or 3 acts. So we like to have a nice curriculum, great to have a facility where we can deliver the product. [00:07:39.850] - Nick Dawson That's awesome. Let's talk about those 3 pillars that you're talking about for either the first 3 days or today starting day 1. What's the difference between those 2? [00:07:47.950] - Tony Roig You got it. And really, so the way that I view everything that we teach, whether it's the stressors, the acts, or the pillars or anything else, or framework approach, all of those apply all the time. The question is, how do we package the information in a certain way, in a different way based on the camper? So we like to start with the 3 pillars of pickleball, which are mechanical, how to hit the ball, strategy or technique, Strategic pillar, strategy, knowing what shot to hit when. And then the one that's, I think, overlooked a lot is the athletic pillar, which is our body and our mind. If you're not— if you don't— if your body's breaking down after a game or two games, or, you know, you can't do certain things with your body, not going to play well. [00:08:25.190] - Nick Dawson Sure. [00:08:25.490] - Tony Roig Um, same thing with your mind, obviously. You know, if your mind is cloudy, like we talked about, the smiley face or the frowny face— if you're getting a frowny face out there when you're playing pickleball, you're doing something wrong. Because this is pickleball, folks. It's a fun activity. You should be having a great time. And so we work on all the three pillars. And in fact, the campers coming today don't know this, but we start all of our camps with actually athletic pillar because we start with the visualization technique. We have this thing called the three-year-old dink. It's very like, it's our thing. And so we teach them this dink. It's, it looks very basic when you see it. You're like, and you know, campers, natural, natural pushback, right? They're like, why am I hitting this silly little shot? Absolute key to the sport of pickleball if you learn how to hit that little shot there, because from there you grow into this emeth of a player. So, but we use a visualization technique which is Athletic Pillar, just using the mind. [00:09:07.720] - Nick Dawson So, okay, that's cool. [00:09:08.590] - Tony Roig Very cool. [00:09:08.990] - Nick Dawson Well, we're stoked to have you here for the, for the week. It looks like it's been a great, great clinic each and every day. [00:09:13.990] - Tony Roig Been fantastic. I mean, love the facility. And, you know, as Nick mentioned earlier, they haven't cut any corners here. This place is fantastic. It's a beautiful upstairs where we have our nice little lunches there. Uh, you know, the lounges. Yeah, courtside lounges on all the corners here. Uh, just a great, great facility here. The lobby is super cool. Uh, they have mahjong set up. I guess you can jump on a mahjong. I don't know how it works here, but I know they have the tiles there. You just jump in and play some mahjong. So yeah, so, uh, beautiful facility, Nick. It's been a pleasure chatting with you. [00:09:38.350] - Nick Dawson Absolutely. [00:09:38.740] - Tony Roig Uh, absolute pleasure being here. Looking forward to our last two days here, and this is definitely not our last camp here at Rally House. Uh, so we'll be back and we'll be recording in this beautiful podcast facility that Nick has set up here at, uh, Rally House. So if you're in Carlsbad or anywhere near Carlsbad, California, check out the Rally House, and we'll see you next time on Pickleball Talk. Be well.