Blazing Paddles - A Pickleball Podcast
Join us, John and Karen, for a married couple's take on Pickleball. Avoid "Pickleball Divorce," saddle up and have a cocktail, have a laugh, and enjoy guests and influencers in this unbelievable explosion of a sport the likes of which we've never seen.
Let's talk about the impact pickleball is having on our culture. From Boomers to Zoomers, every generation is discovering a new passion. A game that wasn't on the map three years ago now has millionaires playing, billionaires jousting, and people scrambling for some piece of the pickleball pie.
Put your ears on and have a listen, you'll be glad you did.
Blazing Paddles - A Pickleball Podcast
Activation! Dinkers Pickleball Club Comes Alive!
Ever wondered what it takes to transform an old grocery store into a vibrant indoor pickleball mecca? Join us as we pull back the curtain on the creation of Dinker's Pickleball Club in Denton, Texas. You'll journey from the first spark of interest in pickleball to the grand opening, complete with exhibitions, professional players, and an incredibly engaged community. Special guests Ashlee Blakley and Suzanne Greever from Twisted Pickle share their expertise in ensuring pickleball facilities succeed right from the start, offering invaluable insights into the business side of this rapidly growing sport.
Our conversation with Suzanne and Ashley is a masterclass in crisis management and leadership within the pickleball business world. Discover their innovative approaches to alleviating clients' anxieties, how they foster a supportive community, and the success stories that highlight their impact. From engaging with local entities like the Chamber of Commerce to the transformative “Kitchen Cabinet” initiative, you'll learn about the behind-the-scenes efforts that make facilities like Dinkers Pickelball Club thrive. Their commitment to building a supportive business environment shines through, mirroring the camaraderie found on the pickleball courts.
Learn about their partnership with Doug and Blake, the excitement of the ribbon-cutting event, and the vibrant community vibe of Denton, Texas. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a pickleball enthusiast, or just love a good success story, this episode is packed with inspiration and practical advice for making your pickleball dreams a reality.
Want to find out for yourself? Download the Aim7 app today. Use our url to get a 25% discount and try the app for a free trial before committing. https://www.aim7.com/?via=blazing-paddles
Special thanks to Crown Pickleball for their support and sponsorship! Don't waste money on balls that break, Crown pickleballs rarely crack, are more visible and have a higher spin rate than the competitors.
Use our link to receive a discount on your next purchase! https://crownpickleball.store/blazingpaddles
Have a suggestion for a guest or topic you'd like to see us address?
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August, the 4th of last year, my wife came home from work and said Honey, we need to go play pickleball.
Speaker 2:And I was like what is pickleball? August of last year, August of 2023.
Speaker 1:And now you own it. And now I own one of the largest indoor pickleball facilities in the state of Texas.
Speaker 2:If that doesn't define the addiction of pickleball.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's addicting and I don't know what does.
Speaker 3:He came walking up and he took me to lunch. Today we went to lunch. He says we need to open a pickleball facility and I'm like you're smoking crap. I was like there's no way, there's no way and I started looking at it. We started going to like the Finch Park, the parks around town.
Speaker 2:It was like you know, when you pick a pickleball facility. All right, John. Hey, when are we today?
Speaker 4:We're at Dinker's Pickleball Club here in Denton. I guess it used to be a Brookshire's is what we just realized. So this is, you know. People are repurposing buildings. This is a great example of an empty building. It's been empty for three years.
Speaker 2:Three years. Yeah, and now it's the home of 15 beautiful pickleball courts 15 amazing looking pickleball courts and two skinny courts, and this place is just spectacular looking. I want one.
Speaker 4:What's a skinny court?
Speaker 2:It's a. Why are you asking me this? Are you trying to trip me up?
Speaker 4:No, it's a half of a court For people who don't know. Some people don't know what a skinny court is.
Speaker 2:It's a half of a court to practice.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, I thought you were trying to trick me, not funny.
Speaker 4:I don't try to trick you, you trick yourself most of the time. No, the skinny courts, yeah, they're warm up. They're half the size, half the width, so it's a good warm-up area and they've got a whole agenda of exhibitions and instruction. And then I think they open up for full open play about 3.30 today. So for the first several hours you're going to have alternating classes and their teaching pros are going to show off a little.
Speaker 2:Some exhibitions and I think we're going to have some pros come too.
Speaker 4:I hear we are going to have a couple pros here, yeah so this is exciting and we're really excited.
Speaker 2:They had Blazing Paddles out for their grand opening.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, I imagine excitement is off the charts for these guys right now. They purchased the building last August I think is what she said and they're opening.
Speaker 2:They didn't purchase. They're leasing Leasing. We'll get the owners over here and get the backstory on it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, blake and Doug are the guys who were nice enough to invite us, and then, of course, ashley and Suzanne from the Twisted Pickle. We're working with them too, out here today. So it's a big old pickleball family out here. It's going to be a fun time, it is.
Speaker 5:We're live All right. Well, first off, thank you so much to John and Karen for having us on. I'm Ashley Blakely and my business partner, suzanne Greber, and I own Twisted Pickle and we are a business development, operations, marketing and media agency of consultants that helps not only Pickleball brands to go to market, but we also have a niche in helping these large Pickleball facilities come to Texas and be able to have a go-to-market plan. We like to get them to successfully to day one and keep them successful on day 100.
Speaker 6:And I'm Suzanne Griever and, as Ashley said, you know we have a pretty wide scope of services that we offer, but we both have backgrounds in business operations and video production, marketing, brand management, and so we're able to scale up or down based on whatever the business owner needs. And so Dinkers had done a great job of getting their construction substantially complete. And so Dinkers had done a great job of getting their construction substantially complete, and so when we came in, we were able to really focus on getting them engaged in the community, working on their brand identity, working with their staff, doing customer service training. So they've been great to work with. So, yeah, so it's been a fun project and it's fun to see it open today.
Speaker 2:They said you were lifesavers.
Speaker 5:What did you say? They said you were lifesavers. Good, good, that's what we need.
Speaker 4:Karen, If I'm the Dinkers Club or if I'm another club that's opening up. What does it look like when I know you guys have been successful for me? What does success look like from their perspective? They're a startup. We have no idea what it's going to look like, I mean this looks like a success today.
Speaker 5:Yeah, no, it's a great question. I think that success in our form for our clients is really about. We bring them peace of mind and we lessen anxiety and we're problem solvers. We are a crisis management team. We're an automatic ad water leadership team. We bring in the ideas that people haven't thought of. Because Suzanne and I are both, with our strong backgrounds, love to research all about Pickleball, knowing all of the business operations side of it, just the breakdown of PPA versus MLP and UPA, and those are things that I think people want to get into the business of Pickleball, but they don't naturally know the business of pickleball. And there's, there's a whole world that has to be understood to be successful.
Speaker 6:So that that's kind of it from my my point of view and I would only add to that is you know, success is different for each client that we have, and so when we do start an engagement, we determine what success looks like for them, and part of that was they wanted to really have a community feel, and so that's something we've leaned into, and we love being up in Denton Ashley and I have both been in North Texas for a long time, you know and their motto is your courts, your community, and so we've gotten them super engaged in Chamber of Commerce. And so we've gotten them super engaged in Chamber of Commerce, and then we have a full house. We had a line waiting, as you all saw, when people were coming in. So that engagement is part of how we are judging our success so far.
Speaker 2:I mean, you had the Mean Green football team here.
Speaker 6:We did have a lot of players from.
Speaker 2:UNT Right, that was super cool to see.
Speaker 4:Now another thing, and you guys, we met you guys. It's kind of funny. We met Ashley playing one night. We were playing in a league. I don't know if I would call that playing John or if you were more melting me on the court, you were on the sides of the net, okay yeah. We still became friends. We did, we became friends. Neither is Karen, and so from that we learned oh my gosh, well, we've got some common interests. Oh yeah, you're fine, that's Taylor.
Speaker 5:Who's Taylor Mason?
Speaker 4:And we started talking to Ashley and they have it's really kind of a cool think tank I don't know what you'd call it, like kitchen cabinet and we were asked to attend. I guess it was your second one Is that the second one? And it was a collaboration event. There was, I don't know, maybe a dozen different pickleball entrepreneurs or people who are in the in the industry, somehow sharing ideas and sharing solutions, and we got to present a problem to the group our first one there. I thought that was so cool, thank you.
Speaker 2:It's so cool because this is such an we're so early in the sport. Yeah and uh, on the last podcast I was. This would be like being there when the NFL was started. How cool is that Right.
Speaker 2:And nobody. It's the wild, wild west. You've said that a hundred times. And so we don't have, there's no roadmap. So how do you make it successful? And that seems what you're. You're helping these entrepreneurs figure that out and I love that you're bringing them together because, um, we don't know the landscape and we all have a little piece and each piece helps create that bigger picture. Right, absolutely.
Speaker 5:The kitchen cabinet is something I'm really passionate about. It was a thought process I had last November. We had just come from nationals. We attended the business symposium, which was amazing. I was the first time doing that and Suzanne and I went. And I went to Suzanne literally a few weeks later and was like I think we need to create kind of our own mini business symposium and have it continue to grow from there.
Speaker 5:So what we do is we really support the Texas-based pickleball owners. We like a format where we meet every other month. It's an idea, as you were saying, idea generation care and think tank and we give feedback and really the precipice of it was how do you have an honorary staff, cabinet or board members to really be able to bring your problems to and say I need help? This is what I'm doing. There's space enough for all of us and everybody needs support. It's not just about support on the court, it's support in business. So that was really the brain thought process of it. Now I have people that come up to me that are like I know I don't live in Texas, ashley, but I really want to be a part of this. We had another franchisee that flew in from the from the Northeast that wanted to attend and it was insane. I met him last November and we've been talking on LinkedIn and he flew in for it.
Speaker 2:That's so cool and you know. Since then, I just want you to know that several of the folks have reached out to us and and gave us such words of affirmation and love and support and it feels so good because we felt alone and now we have. You're doing in the business world what pickleball does in the for the players it creates community. You're creating a community of businesses that can support each other. It's been so beautiful I can't even I'll show you the email from Christie that came with that.
Speaker 2:It made our day the other day, you know when we're down in the dumps like that, and you get something random like that and you go, oh my goodness, that's what I needed it was so cool you never thought you knew that you needed.
Speaker 2:Exactly, Exactly, and you know. And then they helped us with our problem. You know, we walked away from that meeting knowing what we had to do. Even though we knew it, we didn't want to cause our heart, you know, wasn't leading our decision, not our head, you know, was leading our decision, not our head. And they gave us the tough feedback. And it was, and it was appreciated, it was kindly delivered and and then like I said, the support, follow up just means everything.
Speaker 5:That's amazing. I'm so grateful to hear that. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Because sometimes, sometimes, the answer is not yes and we had a. You know, we had another opportunity to hold a huge event, but it was going to be a great detriment to our financial well-being for the work that we were going to put in. We felt like, well, I think we were just whistling past the graveyard. We were pretending like, okay, this is still something we can consider. But it was no, you can't be taken advantage of. And I think sometimes you need to bounce those ideas off like-minded people and have them say Absolutely taken advantage of. And I think sometimes you need to bounce those ideas off like-minded people and have them say absolutely. And then the looks we got from everybody we were pitching it out there, like I don't think we need to talk anymore, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, like I said, we were being led with uh.
Speaker 4:Taylor, Taylor, third head growing out of our body going. Wait a minute.
Speaker 5:That's what we count on Taylor for Bring us some information and feedback Honest blunt feedback. I loved it.
Speaker 2:And we'll get Taylor on here, because we've got to talk about her story too. So how did you find pickleball?
Speaker 5:I'll let you take that one.
Speaker 6:How did we find it? I know it is interesting, everybody's story. You know I had been a competitive athlete that had been retired by multiple knee injuries when I was younger and hadn't really been able to find another sport that I could compete at. And it was like this pickleball thing's taken off and I was like I'll try it and see and just really enjoyed it. And you know just so. It was basically after it was after COVID I just moved back to Dallas. I had just moved back to Dallas. So it was a way to build community again and try a new sport, to see you know how everything would work and just fell in love with it immediately. And that's how Ashley and I reconnected. We knew each other before but we both started playing about the same time and that's where we reconnected. And then Twisted Pickle was born shortly after that. And when was that? When was Twisted Pickle born? Shortly after that?
Speaker 2:And when was that? When was Twisted Pickle born? When, did you like? How long ago Did you guys get into pickleball?
Speaker 6:So Twisted Pickle's a little over a year old and I've been playing for like right at two years now.
Speaker 2:Okay, perfect, perfect.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, so similar. I mean I didn't grow up in league sports or racket sports or anything. I was on the dance side, but I had. Honestly, I had a health scare and needed to redefine who Ashley Erickson Blakely was. I lived in LA for a very long time and worked in TV and film and my best friend still lives out there and she's. Every time I'm out there to visit she's like let's just go, you can play pickleball. And finally I was like, uh, give me that thing and I'll go with you if you'll just stop talking. You know, right, um. And so I played. It got put on Instagram and one of my childhood friends, keith, who's actually here today playing who you guys know, um, we've been friends since junior high he saw it on Instagram and he called me and was like hey, I'm going to pick you up Saturday at 8am. And I was like for what? And he was like we're going to go play pickleball. And I was like no, we're not, I was just messing around.
Speaker 6:He goes, no, I'll pick you up at 8.
Speaker 5:And then it was just on and I had a partner for all the time and we've had a blast and, like Suzanne said, we kind of reconnected. We went to the same college and saw through some Aggie connection things but you know, weren't um, it's wasn't like we were running buddies all the time. Then we saw each other on the court and we're like, oh my gosh, you're playing, I'm playing. And then we just kept talking about it and, like she said earlier, I have marketing, social media, video production, um, education and training in my back pocket and then she has a whole different world in hers as she can talk about.
Speaker 5:But it was, it was just the marriage and I tell everybody I'm like we are the two that had a one-night stand, had a baby, and now we're trying to figure out how to work this company. So we have been hugely successful. It's been a lot of fun, successful and just like everything coming together and people coming. Oh my gosh, I never know, I never knew I needed this. And then the birth of kitchen cabinetin has just been so, so satisfying. I've loved it so much.
Speaker 4:You heard Aggie, right Aggies. Oh yeah, One of you Proud.
Speaker 2:Aggies.
Speaker 4:One of us.
Speaker 2:They're a clan. So what about your background? You touched on that.
Speaker 6:So I grew up in healthcare, you know. So I have been very fortunate in my career and have run several hospitals as CEO and then went into the corporate side of healthcare management. But when you're over a hospital, you do construction, you do personnel development, you do customer service, you do community engagement, and so I've been exposed to like all of those different areas and you also have to be really strong at your financial knowledge. So I've got all that background that's been able to translate over into the sport that I love and so I'm able to bring that to the table. And when we started looking at our skill sets, they complement each other really well. So we can, bob, and we've got some overlap, but you know it just worked together together well because we can typically meet the needs of our clients between both of us together.
Speaker 2:I love it. It's a good marriage. It looks like a really good marriage.
Speaker 5:It's a really good one-night stand.
Speaker 2:Very good one, all right, so pickleball, what about your favorite shot, the?
Speaker 5:one that makes it over.
Speaker 2:Ashley that makes sense.
Speaker 6:I mean, I really like my, I like the short game. You know, it's like because I'm almost 5'10" and so people think I'm going to be. You have a wingspan, yeah, and people think I'm going to be like a banger on it and I love to just drop shots super close to the net and, you know, aggravate people with that.
Speaker 2:Ashley.
Speaker 5:I don't know that I've mastered what's my favorite. I feel like I'm, you know, a little less playing than yeah. That's true, thank you. I'm a few couple months shy of Suzanne, but we're both there at two years and I'm so grateful to not be in panic mode anymore especially when you look across league at.
Speaker 5:John and Karen Whitaker and you're like holy hell, um, and so I'm just in survival mode all the time, just in life in general, you know. But, um, but I do. I love watching players do the Tomahawk and so in my mind I look amazing doing it. I don't know what it looks like to people across from me.
Speaker 6:I'm sure they want to go sit down, Ashley, you know.
Speaker 2:but that really is it. Thank you, josh. I'll tell you what what's humbling. I thought I looked really good too, and then I filmed myself and I was like I look like an idiot.
Speaker 5:What am I doing? How about that Elaine dance that you got?
Speaker 4:Oh, did you show her that night?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, dance. I have to show you. It's so good, it's so good.
Speaker 6:I've only comes out rarely now, but when it does I'm like, oh my gosh, please nobody be looking at me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, I don't anymore. I'm cut a lot of it out. I'm down to maybe five percent. Okay, that's good, that's better than 95 percent I love, that's what it was, and it was so embarrassing um but you've made up for it with the rest of your game, so you're're fine yeah and it brings so much joy to so many people to be, able to watch it, I agree.
Speaker 4:Yes, yes. Now let's ask a real important question, so it didn't get away. If somebody is interested in contracting with you and using your service to find out more, how do they do that?
Speaker 6:So I mean our social media, our Instagram is our most active, probably, channel that we have, and so that's Twisted underscore, pickle underscore. Okay, that's a great way to reach out to us and get started. We're on there every day and, yeah, we'd be happy to talk to people. You know, right now we do a lot of work in Texas, but we are open and able to do work outside of Texas as well.
Speaker 2:So the name Twisted Pickle. Who's the brainchild?
Speaker 6:I would love to say, like we did all this, strategic, you know, strategery that's pretty much what it was was strategery, because in my professional background we've hired, like these, multimillion-dollar advertising firms to do brand development and naming. We were at a restaurant that might have twisted in the name we might have been having a hamburger and a beer and we were like, you know, as we're going through all the names, we landed on twisted pickle. You know we, uh, we like it. You know it's different and it's got. You know our aesthetic is very clean, crisp, you know, yeah, so we landed on it and we were like that's it, and we had the logo and we're off to the races.
Speaker 2:I love it. So we just got Dink Pro the trademark for it. It took us two years, right, and that's a long time, and I think it's because they got inundated with a bunch of requests for pickleball companies, but we finally got it. Two years is a long time Now, like blazing paddles. We wish our company was blazing paddles. You know, I don't know how to undo or talk about that. Yeah we can talk about that at Capnick. We could.
Speaker 6:Because that is something as a pickleball business or any business that you really have to be thoughtful about and file early, you know for protection of your name and logo, et cetera, and so, no, it's, it's an important thing, and you're moving so fast. When you start a business, that's kind of the last thing on the list that you're like, oh, I need to start messing with the government on that, but yeah, it's super important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we had a whole long list and we just kept going back to Dink, going back to dink, going back to dink, and you know what dink stands for?
Speaker 2:This has not been proven, by the way, it's very. It makes sense. It means drop in kitchen. Drop in kitchen, yeah, karen, no, no. So drop in kitchen. So dink is not just what you do at the line, it's being able to drop the ball from anywhere on the court into the kitchen, which is one of the most important shots in pickleball. Like you said, your short game is super important. Well, the only way you can get to your short game is by dropping that ball in that kitchen. Right, if you bang all the way up, the ball is going to come back at that velocity. So interesting, yeah, but I love the twisted pickle. It's very creative. I think it's very cute, very catchy and, um, I just I think what you guys are doing is amazing.
Speaker 4:And I do want to say to Ashley gave us great bit of advice on day one, two about just really narrow down the focus. Who, who are you? What are you? Know, this is what we are, and after that it becomes kind of clear what you should be doing, because you you've got to put the energy towards what you really want to be. And that's when karen just said about blazing paddles. We've somehow slipped into this little niche just over the last month of events and uh activations and live broadcasts and things like that. It's fun and people seem to it seems to be catching a lot of traction. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Now, how did you guys meet, doug and Blake?
Speaker 5:How did we meet Doug and Blake? We do a lot of research on social media. Suzanne found them on Facebook, gosh, six months ago, when they really first just got started. They were putting up photos and they're just reaching out and staying consistent. And they were like yep, we are in the middle of building. In the middle of building, we'll get back to you. And we just kind of steadily stayed in the background, because that's really our job is to be the support team and stay in the background. And so finally they reached out and said you know what? We've got the facility, we're in the middle of construction, but other than that, we don't have a plan and we want to be smart and we need marketing, we need social media, we need brand identity and I mean down to logo slogan. Everything needed to be perfected. And so they were smart enough to realize they needed to solve a problem rather than trying to do it themselves.
Speaker 2:Trust me, we know, yeah, after we've pivoted 500 times and spent money. But that's okay, the good thing is Karen.
Speaker 5:You pivoted and you realized there was a problem. So you pivoted and, like John and I talked about even before, kitchen Cabinet is from a marketing perspective. If you're confused on what you're doing, you can only imagine what your audience is confused on what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 5:And it also helps, again, relieve the anxiety. Now you can focus and niche it down, and I think that's the great thing about our socials and you know, my passion in marketing is it's. It's like Suzanne was saying it's clean, it's bold, you know exactly what you're dealing with, you know exactly who we are, you know there's a definite aesthetic, but people don't leave us confused and so shutting down that confusion and anxiety is huge.
Speaker 6:Yes, well, and we've had to like, as y'all's business has evolved, we've evolved as well. That's just the nature of having a business and not being so married to an idea that you go down with the ship on it.
Speaker 6:You know, it's a trusting your business partner, being able to stop, look at it critically, adjust where you need to, and that's what we've seen y'all do, which has been great. It's part of the purpose of the kitchen cabinet, I can tell you. You know, we were at the MLP event two weeks ago. It was awesome walking in and seeing y'all there doing a live broadcast. We were like so proud, I know so it's like all the cabinet members, you know, we're so excited when they are out in the wild, in the wild, yeah. And so we just congratulate y'all on the perseverance and also being able to see you out, you know, just becoming a staple in the community up here.
Speaker 2:Again why I love Pickleballball. It's a big world and it's a very small one and it's all the same people, right, and they all. I'm amazed at the connection. Someday I would love to like map it all out, um, because I mean, like even us, you know, meeting, and now we're at all these events together, right, and we're involved in the kitchen cabinet. It's just, that's it. It's amazing. A community, well, and how many people do we have here, do you think, today?
Speaker 6:We're several hundred, and it's I mean lying out the door this morning when it opened, and then it's been a steady stream of people and we're going to be going until 10 o'clock tonight.
Speaker 5:Well, and I think about just the ribbon-cutting yesterday. You can speak on that.
Speaker 6:I will say I want to give a huge shout out to the denton chamber chamber of commerce, even though I can't talk. So the denton chamber of commerce was so engaged throughout all this process. They're so supportive of the businesses in town and we had 60 plus people in the middle of the day on a friday here for that's huge yeah, because the mayor was here and he's here playing today. Yeah, he's playing today is he really?
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah so we need to find out if denton has an october fest.
Speaker 5:I'm sure they do. Yes, monday yeah.
Speaker 6:So if people have not been to denton in a while and I know north texas has gotten so spread out you need to come up here and check out what's going on, because between the colleges that are up here and the business development that they're doing, it's a fun. I mean, it's like we've met just great people and you can see just the turnout for this. They're a pickleball-friendly town for sure.
Speaker 2:I'm hoping this is a wild success and they open one next to me. Well, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for inviting us out here. It's been an incredible experience for us. We just learned how to take this show on the road and we're happy to bring it to these these and support these businesses.
Speaker 5:Well, like I said, we are both. We are grateful from a from Dinkers to Twisted Pickle, that a that I got to meet you guys and get smashed by you at TCD Lee. Um, it was probably the the best night of being pickled ever was I got to meet John.
Speaker 6:That's okay, girl, say it out loud, it's fine. I don't think she told me she got pickled by y'all.
Speaker 5:I'm pretty sure I got a tattoo about it now, but it's been a great relationship because now we've been able to like kind of partner and walk hand in hand, and that's what really this is all about. So we're grateful you guys are here.
Speaker 4:Awesome, awesome, awesome. And you had the best attitude of anybody I've ever seen who was pickled, so you know seriously, I have to do something good attitude goes a long way. It really does. Thank you, john I appreciate it no, you guys are great and let's enjoy some more of this day, all right?
Speaker 4:thank you guys, thank you guys, thank you hey, picklers, you may have noticed, summer hit and it hit with a vengeance. It's only going to get hotter from, and if you're out there playing pickleball, you know one of the toughest things to do is to keep the ball to where it's still lively. They get soft out there. Well, I'm here to tell you there's a solution, and that is offered to us by Crown Pickleball. If you don't know Kevin Perkins and Crown Pickleball, check him out on Instagram. Go to his shop. He's got balls, paddles, shirts, socks, wristbands, hats he's got the whole deal and he's a good human. We like to support good humans. So get your crown pickle balls. Save yourself a little money this summer when everybody else's balls are melting. That sounds bad, but you'll have the crown pickle balls. All right, let's get back to the show. All right, the men of the hour Dinkers Pickleball Club grand opening today. Blake and Doug. Hello guys.
Speaker 3:How's it going? Hey, how are y'all?
Speaker 4:How are you guys, y'all, going to be running hot right now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, I know about you, but I'm We've got a full house.
Speaker 4:You have a full house on opening day.
Speaker 1:Fabulous, we love this. Oh my goodness. Fabulous, we love this. Oh my goodness. We couldn't ask for a better turnout.
Speaker 4:Now I've got a film clip to share with you guys later because I was videoing. When you all opened the doors and saw all the people streaming in, you had the people waiting. That had to be a big like. Okay, people came.
Speaker 1:Yes, people actually showed up. Yes, we're good to go.
Speaker 3:Yes, but all this time you put it all together and you recognize it. You put it all together and you recognize it and you put it all together and you see the courts. They look really great and you open that door, like you said, and it was like where do all these people?
Speaker 4:come from. This is amazing. That was great. You saw the UNT football team was here. That was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:The building owner actually sent those guys out to have pictures and stuff with us.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's so cool. Oh, that's fantastic. Ashley and Suzanne earlier, I know you guys have been working with them as well and I know they were real happy to see the turnout From your success. Is this what you envisioned? Yeah?
Speaker 3:absolutely.
Speaker 1:This was the hope from day one, and we've outdone ourselves.
Speaker 3:You think we're hoping it stays like this? We're hoping it stays like this.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I think we've outdone ourselves and we're very happy with the outcome.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's going to slow down at all. This is amazing, and we have people here from our neck of the woods who traveled all the way up here.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean we've got a handful of our club traveling up here.
Speaker 3:I've got the guys that I play on my tennis team with. They don't ever play pickleball, they're like we've got to try that, yeah, so they're out playing pickleball as we speak.
Speaker 2:All right, so let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1:Go back to the beginning.
Speaker 2:I am assuming you started playing pickleball.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, well, I was a tennis player, okay, and I was dating a girl that was like you've got to try it. I'm like no way, I'm not that old. And so I tried it. And when I tried it, I thought this is the most. This is amazing. It's an incredible game. I like that. I don't remember the last time.
Speaker 3:I picked up a tennis racket now. So that's the way I started is just playing with her, and then I would talk to Doug a little bit and he and Jessica decided that they were going to play it was like August the 4th of last year.
Speaker 1:My wife came home from work and said, honey, we need to go play pickleball and I was like, what is pickleball, august?
Speaker 2:of last year, august of 2023. And now you own it.
Speaker 1:And now I own one of the largest indoor pickleball facilities in the state of Texas.
Speaker 2:If that doesn't define the addiction of pickleball, yes it's addicting. Then I don't know what does.
Speaker 3:He came walking up and he took me to lunch. Today we went to lunch. He says we need to open a pickleball facility and I'm like you're smoking crap. I was like there's no way, there's no way and I started looking at it. We started going to like the Finch Park, the parks around town.
Speaker 1:It was like, wow, these people were need to open more. So I'm, I'm, I'm behind you guys. This is gonna be a wild success, and then I'm gonna see one of you near near me and we are.
Speaker 3:That that's the. That that's the goal. That was the vision and and still is to. To multiply this many times over. We can multiply it many times over. You will have the same podcast from a different latitude absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, I love that. Yeah, the next one will be on a boat.
Speaker 4:Okay, I like that Now everybody knows there's a lot of facilities opening up. I mean, there's people popping up all over the Metroplex. There's enough players for everybody. What makes this have its own unique personality? What?
Speaker 1:gives Dinkers Pickleball Club its feel. We're not a corporation. This is not big corporate money that did this. This is me and Blake Bearden that had an idea and jumped off the deep end to do it, and we're centering this around our community. It's your courts, your community is our mantra, and we just want everybody to be involved. We want everybody to be inviting, because pickleball is an inviting sport. We don't want you to be intimidated when you walk in our building. Never step foot on a pickleball court before we want to teach you the game. We want you to enjoy it. We want you to come in here and that's really our whole philosophy.
Speaker 2:I love that You're just advocates for the game Absolutely, and that's our heart and our passion I think we share that, so I love to hear that. I love to hear that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we want it to look like this all the time. We would really like. I mean, if you look around, you see the people watching other people. You see, you know they don't mind. And pickleball is one of the few sports where were selling our memberships and I told them there was a wonderful hack which you can do is you can buy a membership and meet three other people and you can pretty much play for free all week Everybody who's not just those memberships. And people have said well, we just think about it. You get four times a week and you reserve a court for free. If you've got three other friends, you're pretty much playing every day of the month. Go for it Every day of the week. Love to have it.
Speaker 3:The idea is that we get more people playing. We're not going to get rich tomorrow. We need to keep the lights on. We've had people before that have come to us going why don't you just give away everything? Well, we have to turn these lights on. Hopefully that's listening to people. That's not too bad to play air conditioning, you don't have to worry about the rain, you don't have to worry about the heat. So we're hoping to kind of take care of our people at the same time.
Speaker 2:There's nothing worse than me getting up early in the morning to go play pickleball and I get out there and I get halfway through a game and I have to go home because we're rained out. Game's over, it's not fun.
Speaker 1:You're not going to get rained out at Dinkers Pickleball Club I know, that's why it's so brilliant.
Speaker 2:All right, so how'd you find this place?
Speaker 1:Trial and error again. We had a building rep that we kind of started with that's Blake's one of his best friends and his doubles partners in tennis as well and we just started looking Other places that we were looking at. It just was way too expensive. We couldn't start that with a startup like we did. So we ventured out to smaller communities, Denton, some other places. We couldn't find buildings that were big enough for kind of our vision of what we wanted. And then we came across this.
Speaker 1:This is a Scott Brown commercial property. Scott Brown is a real estate developer here in the Denton area that's very well known through city council, the Denton Chamber of Commerce and everything else. So we came and actually looked at this building one day and it about two weeks later Scott Brown actually called me personally and wanted to talk to us about putting a pickleball, a pickleball facility, in here. He said we he knew that we were interested in in opening a pickleball facility. And he called us personally and said my wife plays pickleball. Now I want you all to put this in our building. What's it going to take? What's it going to take to get you guys open by January? Wow.
Speaker 3:And it was part of the community too. We looked at some of the other places that we looked. You know, like when you're looking at McKinney, you're looking at Plano and we didn't I towns, which really kind of brought us this place. At first, like you said, it was a little big and then it turned out that Scott was like what's it going to take? Let's do this.
Speaker 4:This is huge. Now, are you guys? It's part of your vision to have professional tournaments or anything like that, here? We would love to.
Speaker 3:We definitely can have tournaments. We have some of the people I guess you were saying that were playing on the tour now that were out here today playing. They love the courts, love to talk to PPA, one of the reasons that we have the net setups that we have, and Doug designed all these nets that we have. They're not permanent, so you can remove them and we'd love to be able to put in stadiums in here put in risers and stuff.
Speaker 2:That's good. I'm glad you touched on that because I was mentioning that to John. I wonder what drove the decision for this kind of netting.
Speaker 1:I mean our floor can be movable. We can rearrange the floor any way we want to. I mean as far as the netting and stuff like that, if we've got other events where we need to remove a couple of cords for it and set something as far as an event, we've got the space in the in the layout to do so I think that's great.
Speaker 2:I mean just the vision you guys had in such a short time came on really quick, like I said it was.
Speaker 1:It was august. I didn't. I didn't even know what pickleball was and the first time I played it we went out finch park is. I live in mckinney and, uh, me and my wife went out after she had told me we need to go play pickleball. So we did. We went and found a secluded court and actually taught ourselves how to play before we got on public courts and made an embarrassment of ourselves. So we actually taught ourselves how to play. So we went to Finch Park in McKinney, which is a public park. They have repurposed three tennis courts into 12 pickleball courts outdoor. We went out on a Tuesday night at like 9 o'clock and there were 200 people out there waiting to play pickleball. Wow, and we're like what? Ding ding, ding, ding, ding. The light bulb went off and I was hooked from that moment. I mean, I was like we can't beat this and I'm sweating like crazy. It's 90-something degrees out here. We got to build an indoor facility.
Speaker 2:I am so glad to have visionaries like you guys. The last two summers have been really bad.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's been brutal around here. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I'm a redhead.
Speaker 1:You don't do good in the sun.
Speaker 2:I was meant for the seas and for the cold weather, and so I die out there. For me to even be playing a sport that it only had outdoor facilities is like can't even believe I'm doing it.
Speaker 1:And then, but this is the future yes, this is, this is the future and this is kind of the kind of the vision that we saw as well and, like I said, we knew they were coming, we knew we weren't going to be the only ones, but we wanted to be one of the first.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, you know what You've got to be on the front part of this, it's still early. It's still very new. It really is. We keep telling ourselves that because it seems like, wow, it's been four years, but it's only been four years.
Speaker 1:It's only been four years.
Speaker 4:It's really only been four years since it blew up, and people are still trying to figure out whatever, but I think the strange thing about it, though, is there doesn't seem to be a lot of animosity or bad competition between people wanting no turf grabs or anything.
Speaker 1:No, not really.
Speaker 4:It's like this pickleball community is all supportive of one another.
Speaker 1:And that's it. And here was the deal when we first started talking about this. It's not the apparel, it's not the paddle lines. It's not the apparel, it's not the paddle lines, it's not any of that. It's court space. That was the problem. There was not enough court space for as many people that this game has grown into in the last four years. When we first started looking I think the stat that Blake came up with for every 435 people, there was only one pickleball court. Oh, wow, wow. And that was in the dfw area. Or was that nationwide? That was dfw, so dfw area, yeah, yeah it was on the internet.
Speaker 1:So you know it's true it's got to be. And the the average age of a pickleball player in three, three years ago was, I think, 67 years old something, and now it's 38 or 35 or something like that is the average age of a pickleball player. So it's the. The younger demographic is getting there. This is fixing to be a scholarship sport 100%. This is going to be a scholarship sport, so this is an opportunity for us to improve lives as well.
Speaker 4:I could not agree with you more. And you're five minutes from a D1 college, from a D1 school.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely, we're right down the street from University of North Texas. That whole football team came out today. We took pictures. That was all great that they showed up and supported us today with that as well.
Speaker 3:Hopefully. We talked about getting involved with what we have been talking about. Denton Independent School District was talking about. They wanted to do something with their kids. They wanted some kind of an activity. We were like we have the space, bring your kids here, let's teach them pickleball Love. To get kids started at that young age. It would really be big. It's totally going to be part of PE programs and stuff like that. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad to hear you say that, because to me, like pickleball is something that's getting these kids off their phones.
Speaker 2:We call them the look down, you know looking at their phone, and I mean we all get on our phones, we're all addicted, but more so this generation than ever, and so seeing them gravitate towards the sport. As much as it's frustrating because where we live there's a huge competition for courts, like you were saying, you know, there's just not enough, and so it's frustrating because we can't get a court, but I'm also happy, my heart's happy, because I'm seeing the kids get involved and if you have a facility like this where you can schedule something with the schools and not worry about the rain or not worrying about it getting snowed, the elements here in Texas. So it's pretty incredible and I had heard that stat, I thought I had heard it from that guy who was at the kitchen cabinet in Maryland. He's having to build one 10 minutes from one of his locations just to meet the demand and there's no slowing down, there's not.
Speaker 1:We don't see this slowing down any time soon. Like we said, I mean the last three years. Pickleball has been around for a long time. It's been around since the 60s. I mean we all know it. It is just now becoming mainstream and we wanted to jump on it because we know this is an incredible opportunity, not just for us, but what we can bring to the community and involve the community in what we're doing.
Speaker 2:And that's obvious. I mean so you're taking the community element of pickleball and doing it for this community of Denton and you're wherever else you next put your pin on the map. That's correct. Oh, I don't know what you guys are doing. What is your tagline? Your courts, your community?
Speaker 1:Alright. What does that mean? It means you're always invited to come in this building. There's never going to be a time where you won't walk in here and be invited to come and play on a court play with somebody you don't know. You're a first timer. Come in here anytime. We're going to make it inviting.
Speaker 3:We're going to make this enjoyable for you and the personality we want the courts have, the personality of the community we're in. One of the reasons we picked denton's we kind of like the vibe, um, and that's what I was saying about looking at, you know, playing in those other places. We just enjoy the, the vibe of the community. We're really active in the chamber of commerce. Um, it's just a fantastic area to play in and we want this not just to be somewhere where you go, play, play, leave. It's actually going to have the personality of the people that are in it.
Speaker 1:We want people to come and hang out. Whether they're playing pickleball or not, they're just going to come and hang out and watch. I mean, it's a fun sport to watch as well.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, I'm learning watching, especially since you have the pros here today too, wow, and I've seen them play. I've seen Cole. I've seen Cole. He's come out to our courts public courts.
Speaker 1:They're very good players.
Speaker 2:I mean he didn't stop for four hours. Oh yeah, favorite shot in pickleball. Favorite shot in pickleball. What's your favorite?
Speaker 1:shot. I love dinking Do you. That's where Dinker's Pickleball Club came from. I'd love to sit there and dink that's just me. I can't do Ernie's because I can't jump that far.
Speaker 3:Or that high, or that high I might land if I did that. I'm an old tennis guy, I like to drive. Give me a ball, let me move halfway into the court and drive that ball, and that's my favorite.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Jump it right over the top of the net. I keep hitting it in tennis slice Put it.
Speaker 3:You just drop it right over the net at their feet.
Speaker 2:That's my favorite. And so how many pros do you have here? By the way? Three, right now. Three pros. And where did you get them?
Speaker 3:Aiden Suarez is a. Aiden goes to UNT. He's a local guy. He's taught at a lot of different places. He's touching Stonebriar.
Speaker 1:He actually reached out to us yeah.
Speaker 3:And we saw the facility, heard about the facility and said dude, you're hiring pros, why don don't need to be part of that? And again, part of his income is that rain. If it gets rain he doesn't get paid. Then Valentin was the head of pickleball at the local McKinney I'm McKinney, sorry the local Denton Pickleball and Tennis Club. And then Mav teaches as well, maverick teaches up there as well.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. So he proactively reached out to you.
Speaker 3:You knew you were building? Yes, yeah, all three of them reached out to us. We interviewed a few others. We looked at a few other people, and we might pick up another one or two as well, because there's quite a few people obviously that want it. But as we speak, that's kind of our stable and they're doing a great job.
Speaker 1:This right here. I mean they won for open play and they're teaching people how to play the game right right ball 101 right right.
Speaker 2:I know and we've, you know, we've. We did some live feeds earlier and people were popping on um and then you know to see these people, all, all of them, showing up and and standing around and waiting and but not minding. It's just you. I'm so proud of it, what you guys have accomplished here today and thank you for having blazing paddles out yeah, this is a.
Speaker 4:This is a great opportunity for us too. Thank you, guys for letting us share the moment. Thank you, thank y'all for being here.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah this I mean out over the airwaves like this. Please come and see us. Dinkers pickleball club. We're in denton, texas, 719 south i-35e. Website is wwwdinkerspbccom. Our Instagram is Dinkers Pickleball Club. Our Facebook is Dinkers Pickleball Club. Our phone number is 940-312-6221.
Speaker 2:I love it. That's great, that covered it. That covered it. That's it. We usually ask how do people find you? Now they know, now they know, now they know. Well, I encourage everyone to come out here and give this place a go. It is, it's amazing. I am so excited that this is a part of this community. It's not that far from us either, right exactly, and we do.
Speaker 1:We want to be a destination facility. We've got the course to be All right. Well, thanks guys. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:I know you're really busy. Oh, thank you so much for having us on. Thanks for coming out, all right, thanks, guys.