Learn how Tim turned Average Joe Sports Club into a dynamic multi-sport hub across Ontario, overcoming challenges and driving growth through strategic innovation and unwavering dedication.
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Welcome to Episode #25 of the Sold Out podcast, where where we interview league organizers across the country for tips on how to sell out and grow leagues.
In this episode, we chat with Tim, founder of Average Joe Sports Club. From modest beginnings, Tim has transformed his passion for sports into a thriving community in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area. Since its inception in 2007, the club has grown from a few teams to managing up to 800 per season. Tim's journey is a testament to the power of dedication, creativity, and a deep understanding of community engagement. His initial strategies of leveraging personal networks, customized outreach, and grassroots marketing laid a strong foundation for the club's enduring success.
A critical element in the club's growth has been strategic acquisitions, which allowed Average Joe Sports Club to expand its reach and double its team count. Tim's adaptability, especially during the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, ensured the club's operations continued, securing its place as a staple for local sports enthusiasts. Emphasizing the importance of maintaining quality and fostering strong relationships with venue managers, Tim’s leadership has created a sustainable model for growth while preserving the fun and community spirit at the heart of recreational sports.
Key Takeaways:
Tim's journey with Average Joe Sports Club is a testament to the power of perseverance, innovation, and community engagement. His story offers invaluable lessons for league organizers aiming to grow and sustain their leagues while keeping the fun and community spirit at the heart of their operations. Listen to the full episode to gain more insights into Tim's approach to league management, community building, and navigating the challenges of running a successful sports club.
Below is the full transcript from this episode. The Sold Out Podcast is available on Spotify and Apple, or you can watch the entire interview on our YouTube Channel!
Tune in every other week to hear AREENA interview the country's best league organizers about their success in selling out leagues consistently.
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Lance McDonald (00:01.432)
Alright, today we have Tim from Average Joe Sports. Thanks for being here, Tim. So yeah, let's get started with the basics of what you're running, where you're located, all that kind of stuff.
Tim Ferris (00:06.292)
Thanks for
Tim Ferris (00:12.606)
Yeah, so yeah, Averastro Sports Club, we run mostly co-ed sports leagues and tournaments for adults in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area in Ontario, Canada.
Lance McDonald (00:25.774)
and how many teams or how many sports or yeah
Tim Ferris (00:30.301)
Yeah, so it really ranges by season. So we run all four seasons kind of indoor and outdoor. And so it really ranges, it might range from like 600 to 800 teams a season. Just kind of depending with like the spring being the most because we have both indoor and outdoor going at the same time.
Lance McDonald (00:40.686)
Mm-hmm.
Lance McDonald (00:47.768)
Yeah. What's the breakdown of all the sports? what's the most popular?
Tim Ferris (00:52.764)
So it has really ranged over the years, it's dependent on what you talk to me. So right now, our most popular sports are volleyball and softball. But they're over different periods. when we kind of first started, dodgeball was like the hottest thing. We're really into basketball. And then softball has been like our outdoor sport, like the biggest one for a long time. But the last few years, volleyball has really come up both indoor and beach outdoor has been.
popular sport.
Lance McDonald (01:23.726)
Yeah, you're looking at it on one of the Great Lakes, right? I'm horrible at geography.
Tim Ferris (01:27.754)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like Hamilton's right at the edge of Lake Ontario and Toronto is about an hour east of us.
Lance McDonald (01:35.106)
Okay, so is a beach volleyball like on the beach of the lake is that
Tim Ferris (01:38.826)
Well, yeah, so I the depends on the location. like the one location we have in Hamilton, it's at a restaurant that yeah, is like on the beach. It's not actually like the restaurants on the beach, their property where we have the the courts is just off the beach. But yeah, and then other locations in like some of the other cities there, it's really just in sports complexes that have built beach courts.
Lance McDonald (02:02.914)
Okay. All right, so I know obviously a lot about your story. You've been involved with arena for a little while now, but let's go back to like the beginning. How did this get, how did you build this business? Like how did it get started in the very, very original? It like 17 years ago or something like that or.
Tim Ferris (02:20.894)
Yeah, so actually like this spring is going to be 18 years. So our club will be able to vote then. But yeah, so it was 07 when we started. But before that, like I went to business school and I never really fit in with like most of the streams in business school, finance or consulting or marketing. I also had an entrepreneurial streak. And so yeah, I just always kind of want to start my own thing and especially if could be involving sports because my life had always revolved around sports.
Lance McDonald (02:27.438)
You
Tim Ferris (02:50.794)
was on the football team and in university. I say I was on the football team, not that I played football, because I was always on the bench. But yeah, like I was just loved playing a lot of different sports, jack of all trades, master of none. After graduation, shortly after I ended up getting a job with one of the big sports and social clubs in our area. And I learned a bunch about the industry and about the skills and actually kind of making schedules and that kind of thing.
Lance McDonald (02:58.446)
you
Tim Ferris (03:20.714)
I learned that I really liked the industry. Didn't really enjoy working there. It may have been that particular office. It may have been just working for someone else, probably a combination of the two. And so that's when I decided to start Average Joe Sports Club. yeah, so that was 2007 and just kind of started from there. I started small like everything does and just kind of slowly built up and kind of here we are 18 years later.
Lance McDonald (03:49.23)
Yeah, I mean a lot had to have happened because 800 teams in the season is, I mean it's a lot. That's a lot more than most places. That's pretty big. So I mean in the beginning, I know that's forever ago, but what was the, how did you get it to actually get off the ground? mean what was the first sport? How did you find those? probably, I mean I don't know you can remember that long ago, but how did you get the first teams? And then how did you ensure that it could grow?
steadily over so many years.
Tim Ferris (04:19.722)
I remember the like, like I don't remember what I did last week, but I remember those first teams really well. So it was a combination of just, you know, your network. So I literally spent days upon days emailing everybody in my database for email and just letting them know what I was doing. And even if they weren't in the area, I just said, Hey, it's like, if you know anyone just get out. And I almost kind of
Lance McDonald (04:24.398)
Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferris (04:49.066)
Customized it instead of just sending out a mass email I sent it to each individual person with a little obviously I cut and paste but then a little customized like hey I haven't seen you since blank or whatever and hope the wife is doing well or whatever it was and so it was just a little bit of
did some Facebook ads and did some Google ads. And so was a combination of just people I knew and then people who stumbled upon us. had flyers and local bars, that kind of thing. But I remember several days after the registration deadline, we started with softball, ultimate frisbee and soccer. And I remember, yeah, at the same time. one day was softball, one day was ultimate frisbee, one day was soccer.
Lance McDonald (05:31.512)
at the same time.
Tim Ferris (05:39.69)
And for softball, we only had two teams signed up. This is several days out of there. I am just prolonging the inevitable of canceling this, this whole league. And then I got a phone call of like, Hey, is it still chance to sign up a team? Like, no problem. This is my third team. Of course, I need like a minimum of four teams to make this work. So I, I always said, I've said subsequently to all my employees in order to have a second season, you need to have a first season.
So I just did whatever you had to do to make sure that season goes. So I put in my own team and I made my girlfriend at the time, now wife, I'm like, guess what? You're playing softball. I don't like softball. You misunderstood me. I said, you're playing softball. Like I need you. All my friends, just, hey guys, and the team kind of was different from one week to the next, because whoever could come. My 65 year old mother played.
Lance McDonald (06:18.764)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (06:35.469)
Nice.
Tim Ferris (06:36.298)
who was significantly better than most of my friends. And we just kind of made it work and got it of gone and going. And then once you have that first season and kind of hopefully you can get maybe not all those teams back, but you get two or three of them back and then you can get some new teams in and kind of just slowly start building. And that's, we've really kept that attitude whenever we've offered a new league. So even when we're getting bigger, when we're...
offering a new league on a new night or new sport or whatever it is, including this past year, it's, okay, how can we just get this league going? We need that fourth team. you know, sometimes it was, okay, it's playing next to our basketball league that's really popular. And I was playing in, I knew a bunch of the guys and the gym over was a different sport. And after you play basketball, you got to go over and play in that league next to you just to get that fourth team in there.
And we've always kind of kept that attitude of do whatever you have to do to get it going. And then you can hopefully just you get to a certain point and it kind of has momentum and it kind of continues on its own without that all that TLC, but especially with new leagues, just given that TLC and doing whatever it takes to to get those games played and to get those teams in.
Lance McDonald (07:54.734)
But why, so why were people, I always ask this, why were they choosing your league so there wasn't established sport and social there because you had worked at it or one of them.
Tim Ferris (08:03.23)
Yeah, so I said so the the status of Francisco was in Toronto. We started like say like a half hour west so it was far enough that like nobody was gonna come Nobody would go from what from one city to like essentially is like the suburbs to the big city so Yeah, so we weren't really competing with them there. There was a few small leagues
Lance McDonald (08:11.278)
Mmm.
Tim Ferris (08:30.954)
I call them kind of mom, polys or just somebody on their spare time runs of 18 softball league or something like that. There was like a few of those and a few, maybe it was one like smaller club. Um, but there was really like an untapped need in the market. So that's why we were able to, to, uh, to start up and to, and also that's also why people were a little bit more willing to like deal with like some of the learning hiccups.
Lance McDonald (08:45.484)
Okay.
Tim Ferris (08:58.666)
Whether it be venues that weren't as fantastic. Now we're lucky that we've over the years got better better venues. initially, people just wanted to play and we're kind of happy to put up, or maybe not happy, but we're willing to put up with some of the growing pains of starting up a sports club.
Lance McDonald (09:20.684)
Yeah. Was that intentional that you were further away? Like, did you live there or did you sort of do an analysis of the area of where there were leagues and where there weren't?
Tim Ferris (09:29.374)
Yeah, so like I am I was originally from Hamilton and I had my net my network was more and I started what's going on essentially it's like the suburbs in between Hamilton and Toronto and that's where kind of well I wasn't like from there but I just knew a lot of people there and it was it was a natural place to start and so yeah that's where I and then like I it wasn't competing with that bigger sports club
So yeah, and as where I was able to get some venues, because sometimes it just comes down to the venues you're able to get. And through a lot of just cold calling and,
Lance McDonald (10:01.144)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (10:06.688)
Yeah, I was gonna ask that that's almost what everybody talks about struggling with is getting getting venues and there's a lot to it but There's some always some amount of grinding in the beginning of you show up Maybe you bring music and other when we started our leagues I brought a bunch of you know free Gatorade and I just was like here, please take the Gatorade I'm so sorry that we only have two teams. It was like that for me But you know, it's gonna get better. We got a yada. But how
Tim Ferris (10:26.793)
Yeah.
Tim Ferris (10:30.6)
I brought freezies out one day, I brought water and yeah. And my solution was always like, I'll come play. So at one point I was playing like four days a week and like breaking my body, like diving on the ultimate. But like that, that was, and then when, mean, another time early on when we had like gym soccer going and I had like four females phone up and say like, hey, we have four females wanna play, but we don't have many guys. I'm like, I guess I'm playing gym soccer. Like I haven't played soccer since grade eight, but sure.
Lance McDonald (10:33.516)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (10:40.684)
Right. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (10:59.789)
Right.
Tim Ferris (10:59.976)
unplanned because my solution was I'll just yeah exactly and and yeah that team survived for you know I joined for several seasons for that and kept that league going for quite some time.
Lance McDonald (11:02.222)
out there make it work yeah
Lance McDonald (11:11.394)
Yeah, so what was the secret to getting the facilities?
Tim Ferris (11:16.682)
So, I mean, it's really just, I mean, half of success is like luck, right? You make your own luck, but you do have to get lucky. So, I mean, I did call, I just made a list of all the private schools and private venues in the area, and I would get a Montessori school, and they'd start chuckling when I asked, because it turns out it was just in some small strip mall. And I'm like, oh, do you have a gym or you have a field that you can rent us? And they're like, ah.
We only got 10 by 10 piece of Astro turf outside. So, so like, okay, no, no problem. Think about it and go to the next one. And yeah, I just kind of stumbled upon one that had had the field available. So I used them for a couple nights was able to get one softball diamond or it says two softball diamonds, one on Tuesday and one on a Thursday through the city. And so that's when I started.
Lance McDonald (11:50.606)
Yeah.
Tim Ferris (12:15.018)
I was like, well, we've always done the model of like you play on a certain night. So you play Tuesday volleyball or Monday, ultimate Frisbee, but I couldn't get that. So I got, I ended up saying, it's a Tuesday, Thursday league. You might play Tuesday. You might play Thursday. And to this day, we still have a Tuesday, Thursday league and a Monday, Wednesday league because of how we started. And so, you just kind of, you take, you take what you can get and you, you problem solve around it.
Lance McDonald (12:34.872)
Hmm. Yeah. And that works okay for people.
Lance McDonald (12:44.216)
Yeah, yeah. That all makes sense. So that's kind of getting off the ground and I've, you know, got that story a few times on this podcast, but what's more unique about you is getting to the scale that you're at. So let's talk about that. mean, were there inflection points? Because you're small, you've got a few leagues and you're providing a good service and it's well organized and you're making it work. And so you get a few of them up, they get some teams going, but like,
How did it actually get from that to 800 teams in a single season?
Tim Ferris (13:18.676)
So we have kind of grown organically but also through acquisition. So in I think it was 2010, neighborhood club, a neighboring club in a city that we weren't operating in, which is also another suburb of Toronto, it's called Mississauga, a guy had been running it on the side, but he had kind of outgrown running it and he no longer lived in the city and he had a...
full-time job that's getting really busy. so, yeah, he approached us about acquiring, we did. And so at that time, it essentially doubled the number of teams we had. And so that kind of also got us going on maybe running leagues in different areas, like not just the two like neighboring towns that we started in, but in different areas. And then we...
Lance McDonald (13:59.949)
Hmm.
Lance McDonald (14:12.323)
Yeah.
Tim Ferris (14:16.766)
we expanded into Hamilton, which was like to the west of the areas that we started. And that was just through like, because I had a contact at a school that had two gyms, like two double gyms and a single gym available there. And so we ended up just whatever night they could get us, they got us Monday night. And that was the start of our Hamilton Lakes. And that's how we started there and then acquired another club in Milton.
and then another one in Toronto. so it just, and then expanded organically both within those clubs and other areas as well, as well as within like the ones that we started ourselves. So, and it just kind of all, it just happened kind of slowly with like, and then there's certain, you say like inflection points of like, okay, there's a big jump, there's a big jump. But also like we've really, like COVID was one of the, I would say a huge challenge for us.
Lance McDonald (14:48.142)
and then expanded organically both in those bugs and other areas as well as within the ones we started ourselves.
Tim Ferris (15:15.41)
as it was for anyone in sports industry. And in Ontario, there was like the probably most strict lockdowns in North America, especially in terms of schools. So the schools weren't available to us, but we were able to use some private facilities to kind of keep leagues going. like, and one school board did kind of open up earlier than the other ones that we had a relationship with. So we were able to kind of keep going when there weren't as many sports leagues operating.
Lance McDonald (15:17.39)
Yep.
Lance McDonald (15:26.318)
Hmm.
Tim Ferris (15:45.354)
Um, so it was kind of like, know if you ever saw like forest gump when, um, forest gump and sand dander, like the only shrimp boat that go out in the storm and they're the only one to come back and they become successful because of that. kind of feel it's not as extreme as that, but I kind of feel it's a little bit like that where we were able to kind of keep not, we always had to shrink and, but we were to keep leaves going. So we were the kind of go-to spot in some areas for.
Lance McDonald (15:45.42)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (15:55.574)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (16:02.446)
Little bit of that. Yeah.
Tim Ferris (16:14.164)
people wanted to play sports and people needed to know that then. And so that's helped to keep us some momentum. we've continued to grow even though we haven't had any major acquisitions in quite some time, but we're still growing as a percentage in terms of number of teams, double digits, as much as 20 % a year the last couple of years.
Lance McDonald (16:35.278)
Yeah, wow. So the acquisition thing, I don't know how much you can talk about that, but that's such an interesting and fairly unique way of growing. Do you have any advice for somebody who's in a different city of how they would even think about acquiring, getting the money for that? that something like banks can, how does someone get capital for something like that? How do you think about the value of something like that? Is there any advice you can give on any of that stuff or is it all over the place?
Tim Ferris (17:04.426)
Yeah, it really is kind of a dog's breakfast on that. every situation is unique. Like, so first one is I was approached and somebody, you and I had never even thought of it. And we just kind of, you know, figured it out. And then you kind of use that as a guide to do the next one. So I've done it where I've approached people and I've done it where they've approached us. And I've also had it where,
Lance McDonald (17:24.75)
Mmm.
Tim Ferris (17:35.144)
you know, kind of approached them like years and years and years later, they got back to me and kind of because I had a beer with them four years earlier and just said, Hey, if you ever want to think about it, just you may have a call and they kind of get back to us then and it kind of worked out. And so it's just having those relationships over time that you never know planting seeds. never know when, you know, when a phone call or when, and also that's why I try and just have good relationships with as many people as possible. Cause you never know when.
and yeah and then just sometimes it works out sometimes it doesn't I'll have that but
Lance McDonald (18:11.074)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, and then my next question is, know, the, I was thinking about how do you maintain the kind of quality, because you want to grow word of mouth organically. That only happens if you're delivering a great product. That makes a ton of sense in the beginning when you've got somebody boots on the ground like yourself who really cares and every little detail, you're showing up, it's like, and bringing free whatever.
just to sort of make things work. get how that's different. There's a lot of love being put into it. But how do you maintain that kind of quality or whatever as you scale? And then if you've got 100 teams or 200 teams, you're not out there all the time. So is that the secret sauce around the kind of team you were able to hire? have you codified, this is what makes us different. This is what makes us what people want to come back and...
and buy this experience again and again as we do, you X, Y, Z, or like, how did you think about scaling quality and maintaining yourself as something that's sort of different that people want to buy versus competition?
Tim Ferris (19:19.476)
Yeah, that is the hardest thing is kind of growing from like just yourself to one employee or two employees. That's the hardest step and it's making sure that your staff and your team like care as much as you do is really hard. And I've been very fortunate in kind of my hiring and
We've had some that have stayed with us for a few years, but I have like two team members that been with me for a decade. So you get that continuity and you get like they've, you know, they've been trained by me and, and so have the same kind of outlook as, know, as I've always had. And, you know, and then we always have a lot of communication with the team and then they've been able to.
impart that down to the, newer employees that, you know, the, still like right now we have a fantastic team. Um, and it's really just comes down to that. Like that's at the end of day, cause, um, and once you kind of, um, you've been around, like once there's momentum, cause there's other things that end up, you know, so like, because you have enough teams now you can offer multiple skill levels in a, in a particular, like in volleyball, it's like, that was also a challenge in volleyball is very particular to it of like,
Lance McDonald (20:35.213)
Right.
Tim Ferris (20:41.0)
It's not fun if you're the wreck team and you have a competitive team. So if you have four teams, one's really good. One's one's really wrecked and two are somewhere in the middle. So there's very few games that are closely matched. But once you have 16 teams and you have two divisions of eight or once are growing, like we have some leagues that have 40 teams in a particular night and there's four different divisions. So naturally just because of the scale, you're going to, people are going to tend to have more fun because they're playing against teams that are.
more like their skill level. So that's, and then the venues as you kind of grow, you, you know, every year after year, you tend to get the ones that you had before. Yeah, you lose a few here along the way, but you keep the ones that work and you try and lose the ones that don't. you try and get, so you like the level of venues that we have is night and day compared to 2007. Like it would be, I would not even ask any of our teams to go to any of the venues that we went to in 2007.
Lance McDonald (21:33.261)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (21:38.158)
Right.
Tim Ferris (21:40.678)
in 2025, like they would just laugh us off and say, like, you're kidding, But yeah, so that's just with kind of being in the game long enough, you get those things that are advantages just by kind of being around and being, and then when problems arise, having your staff being able to deal with people on a human level and kind of...
Lance McDonald (21:44.62)
Right.
Tim Ferris (22:07.572)
come up with solutions as best we can. And that's where having continuity and staff is huge. And that's not just in like our full time staff, which is definitely the case, but we have some of our part-time staff that have been with us for 10 plus years. Like I have a dodgeball referee that we, at one point, like he's refereed well over a thousand games with us and he's like an institution with that. And same with like one where basketball, scorekeepers. And it's like, yeah, so it's just like members get to know these ones and they're almost become.
Lance McDonald (22:19.694)
Mmm.
Lance McDonald (22:28.3)
Yeah.
Tim Ferris (22:37.13)
part of the league. yeah, it all kind of, no one thing, but it all kind of adds up.
Lance McDonald (22:39.148)
Yeah, yeah,
Lance McDonald (22:43.576)
Sure, that makes sense. The venues, the high quality venues just came because over time you were there, you were ready, you snatched them up whenever there was an opportunity and then you lock them down to say like, is our, do you do like any kind of contracting stuff with these really nice venues to lock it in and make sure that.
Tim Ferris (23:01.034)
So like some of the venues are, yes, there's like long-term contracts. A lot are permitted through like the school board, like through either the city, if it's outdoor leagues or something like that, and they tend to like, their policy is to offer to the same club as the previous year. And you know, like some cities, policy like they give it to youth. So if a youth wants it, so then you may lose that one, but then.
Lance McDonald (23:20.856)
Hmm.
Tim Ferris (23:28.328)
And one of things that we've, I've always stressed to my entire team is having good relationships with the people who organize the venues. So if that's a private school, like the rental coordinator, or if that's through the city, they have, whoever the person is, we want to make it sure it's easy for them to deal with our show sports club. And so we've had in the past where, you know, a venue comes up and they contact us just because that, you know, we have a good relationship with them. I mean, we pay on time, like we don't.
Lance McDonald (23:57.913)
Okay.
Tim Ferris (23:58.536)
I've gone to meetings at cities where it's a bunch of different people and different groups and some of are these small little leagues and inherently they're always complaining about the price of the permits or about the lines here or something really specific, really just giving the gears to the permit officer. Whereas we've always tried to be friendly and appreciate what you do.
Lance McDonald (24:25.656)
Sure.
Tim Ferris (24:26.762)
Can you help us out here? No, okay, no problem, I understand. And just by being that kind of friendly human and not being so transactional, it has paid off in the long run.
Lance McDonald (24:32.686)
Mmm.
Right.
Lance McDonald (24:41.496)
Yeah. Well then, so the other piece is, you know, great venues and then you've got continuity of great staff. So what's the secret for that? The continuity piece is that like part compensation strategy, part relationship with them, part like what's the secret to keeping somebody really, really good for 10 years?
Tim Ferris (25:01.002)
Yeah, it's a little bit of all that. It's being, you know, being hopefully a good boss. I used to like, I hire a lot of younger young people just out of school out of a sports admin program or whatever. Like I used to during a not busy Friday, like bring them all in and almost like give them a lesson on like financial management, like personal financial management, like what, you know, like that kind of thing of just added value of like.
you what are you doing as far as are you saving some money a little bit? That kind almost like being like a little bit of a dad. I can't help it like, but yeah, like just like little things and like being like trying to treat people fairly. We've had some like significant like HR challenges sometimes when we had someone like having to take a leave for like mental health and we've had like, and we've had
you know, non-performers at a time and it's how you deal with them. People see that like, and so we've, I've, you know, had to let people go, but like doing it in a really respectful way and maintaining a relationship with, with those people. Like I've had people that I'd let go on a full-time basis that still came back and worked on it with us on a part-time basis. cause we still had that relationship. It just didn't work out of the role they were in, but you know, we, we, we still like to, so like
Lance McDonald (26:02.062)
Mmm.
Tim Ferris (26:26.452)
they wanted to work at just, you know, supervising a volleyball game or whatever. yeah, treating people well and, and, you know, as things come up and just like problem solving, not being like a credit card company of like, no, sorry, your contract says that, no, we're just doing that. If like people come up and then like, especially over 10 years, like I've had it where, especially two of those staff members that are 10, it's like they've gotten married while they've been with me. They've had kids while I've...
Lance McDonald (26:43.672)
Sure, sure.
Tim Ferris (26:55.582)
been with us. you know, things change. The kind of what was expected, you know, 10 years ago has, you know, we've flexible like in flexible hours and flexible like we don't we dress like sobs in the office. it's like there's there's value to that of like just and being a fun kind of thing of if sometimes we work hard and there's lots of work to do. like, you know, the rest of times to talk about what happened in the game last night.
in the football game on Sunday or who's doing well, how the Leafs are doing. And it's not, hey guys, get back to work. There's value to talk about that in the office. And then of course it gets too far. It's like, guys, let's get back to work.
Lance McDonald (27:42.304)
Yeah, yeah. So how did you think about organizing the team? you talked about your very first hire. How did you know you needed to hire? What did you have them do? And then there's more than one now. So how do you structure your operation and your business?
Tim Ferris (28:02.73)
Yeah, that's a great question. So my first full-time hire came about because holy crap, my wife was pregnant and I need some help. And so that's kind of when she was about six months pregnant, I thought, okay, better start looking for someone to help out this. And so initially it was just someone to kind of help out.
And it was tough to kind of where the dividing lines are. But it's very soon after we started having essentially you can either do it functionally or geographically. And for the most part, we divide workout geographically. So there's one person that operates all our Hamilton leagues. One person does our Burlington Oakville leagues. One person who does our Milton and Mississauga leagues. Like those are kind of two separate areas, but
one person who does our Toronto leagues. And so, and they handle most of the stuff in that, whether it be the customer service, the scheduling, the venue management. And then we also have someone that handles all the hiring and managing of part-time staff across all of those regions. So it's a little bit like a matrix, which is kind of weird to do a matrix organization when you're a small team, but it just, if someone were to do
Lance McDonald (29:18.286)
Mm.
Tim Ferris (29:29.392)
all of that and we did it initially where the geographically the person was also responsible for staff, the part-time staff and that just became too much. Like that's a full-time job in itself and it's a different skill and it's different mindset so it's hard to do it. It just makes sense to have somebody who's always you know always kind of putting out feelers for new part-time staff and doing interviews and doing scheduling and
Lance McDonald (29:42.926)
Mm.
Tim Ferris (29:58.635)
you know, calculating and doing the payroll and all that kind of stuff. So that's the one kind of functional role we have, but other than that, it's geographical. So it's almost like people will work with each other and kind of, you know, it's not like they're in a silo, like they only worry about Hamilton, but they work together as a team. it's like, oh, maybe a leak fills up in Hamilton, but the town next door has an opening and they'll kind of...
Lance McDonald (30:01.58)
Yeah, yeah.
Tim Ferris (30:27.794)
hand them off to say like, listen, try, you know, we're full, but would you think about, you know, 10 minutes over 10 minutes West, would you go there? Cause there's opening in our league there. And then they would just hand them off to that, that team.
Lance McDonald (30:29.134)
Hmm.
Lance McDonald (30:39.928)
Yeah. And then we don't have much more time here, so maybe kind of last question or two is around sort of the stuff that's.
that surrounds all that so You know shirts jerseys Sponsorship all that kind of stuff. So what's what's the? Have you approached because that that that stuff seems to be really really all over the place some people every single season you get a Jersey like brand-new Jersey baked in and they so it's more I guess more premium
And then some it's it's not and it's a bit more of a pickup type feel and then some you know You've got a bar sponsor that you go to afterwards every time and some not and so have you thought about kind of the the stuff that surrounds it in terms of like gear and You know if that ties into sort of sponsorships and all that stuff
Tim Ferris (31:32.33)
Yeah, so like we've really kind of tried to the old like kiss them, keep it simple stupid. because that's I've played in leagues that know supply a jersey and I just know how complicated that can get. You know, you're talking sizing and I want this number and that. So we leave it to the teams to decide. So we suggest that and we also like we're very recreational nature like it's with our brand like average Joe Sports Web. So we won.
Lance McDonald (32:01.635)
Mmm.
Tim Ferris (32:01.818)
Somebody who just wants to like come play and on Tuesday and and put a team together like and not give it a lot of thought We want them to come play with us. So I don't want them to have to worry about like weeks before Ordering, you know jerseys with numbers on them and you know that kind of stuff and and and then so and we don't want to like manage that so We just like we say like hey wear the same color shirt. Okay, just so yeah, and I mean you still get some
or dog for reference and that's fine too. cause like a lot of the sports it doesn't, jerseys don't really matter. Like in softball, you don't have to worry about whether that left fielder is on your team or not. Like it's pretty obvious in volleyball, same thing. there are some leagues like in our basketball leagues that are refed where the referees like need, jerseys with numbers on them. So we put in our rules. have to, and the team supply that for the individuals teams, we do supply those, those jerseys, a reversible jersey with numbers on it.
Lance McDonald (32:41.091)
Right.
Tim Ferris (33:00.904)
But that's the extent of how we handle that. So it really just keeps us the Because quite frankly, we get a lot of last minute teams. If we put our deadline on the two Wednesdays before we start, we get a lot of people registering in the month leading up to that. But a lot of people register right out of the deadline and even a few days later. If we were trying to organize jerseys on top of that, it would be really difficult.
Lance McDonald (33:13.006)
Mm.
Lance McDonald (33:30.008)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Okay. And then the sponsorship thing.
Tim Ferris (33:33.854)
Sponsorships like so we've really We've had several sponsors over the years and we really like basically we answer the phone or the email when somebody comes to us and so we've had whether it be bars or I had one like you know one of the gambling sites a couple years ago or like in Canada we have like beer retailers or the beer store they they advertised with us
Lance McDonald (33:47.982)
Hmm.
Tim Ferris (34:02.152)
So, but it's really been, okay, when they come to us, we haven't really spent a lot of effort going and attracting sponsorships. quite honestly, like that's an area that we can improve on, but it's always like, we have a small team and it's like, I feel like we can do more good of like concentrating on running good leagues than trying to cold call somebody in a business and trying to them to spend a few thousand dollars and whatnot.
So that, that's maybe partially my thing of like, I just hate doing it, that part. And so, and I hire people not for that skill. You know what I mean? I don't hire them for their customer service and for their organization skills and people skills and communication. I'm not hiring them for their sales skills.
Lance McDonald (34:37.506)
Hmm. Yep.
Lance McDonald (34:51.522)
Right, right, okay. Sweet, I think that's the last one for me. Is there anything else you want to share or like, I don't know, kind of parting advice for somebody who wants to create a league or who's at four or five leagues and wants to scale up or anything like that?
Tim Ferris (35:08.254)
Yeah, I mean the only thing that I'd really say is like I mentioned before is like I said, it's so simple, it's like so it drives it is like you gotta have, if you wanna have a second season, gotta have a first season. So you do whatever you can do to get that that league going. So that just means like the first season overall, but also it means if you're expanding from one night, one league to like a new sport or a new night or whatever.
same thing applies. gotta get that in. So you do whatever you can do to get that going and just make sure that, do whatever, like every market's a little different, thing like that, just do what you can do to make sure people are having fun. Because at the end of the day, that's really what this is about, is we're selling fun. Like that's what people are signing up for and fun can mean different things. there's, you've talked to a lot of different sports clubs. Fun is different for
different, you get some that like I want stats and I want they're serious and I want like scouting reports in it. You get others where it's just like we're just out there just, you know, the skill level is really low and we're just out there to have fun or out there to like recover from something. And so like fun means whatever it means to your members and just do what you can do to deliver that.
Lance McDonald (36:27.448)
Yep. Sweet. OK. That's great. I think that's all I got. Yeah. Thanks for your time and your thoughts. Appreciate it. Yep. Awesome. Thanks, Tim. See you.
Tim Ferris (36:36.394)
Awesome man, thanks for the opportunity, it was fun.
Thanks Lance. Cheers.
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