Learn how Nathan transformed LA Sportsnet from a small trio of leagues into a flourishing sports community through grassroots marketing, innovative engagement strategies, and a relentless focus on creating an unforgettable game-day experience.
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Welcome to Episode #24 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 Nathan, the visionary behind LA Sport Net. Founded in 2013, LA Sports Net began with three modest leagues—kickball, soccer, and flag football—and has since blossomed into a thriving sports community with over 50 leagues. Nathan’s journey from handing out flyers at local parks to managing a large-scale recreational sports organization offers invaluable insights for league organizers looking to grow and sustain their communities.
Nathan’s story is a masterclass in grassroots marketing, relationship-building, and the importance of creating a fun, engaging atmosphere for participants. With over a decade of experience navigating the complexities of permits, player retention, and community engagement, Nathan provides a roadmap for scaling a sports league without losing the personal touch that keeps players coming back season after season.
Key Takeaways:
Nathan’s journey with LA Sports Net is a testament to the importance of persistence, innovation, and community engagement in building a successful sports league.
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 (00:01.193)
Alright, today we have Nathan from LA Sportsnet. Thanks for being here, Nathan. So let's get started with the basics, I guess, you located in LA, but what leagues are you running, how'd you get started, what's your role?
Nathan Polzin (00:13.754)
Yeah, so I'm out here in Los Angeles. We started LA Sportsnet back in 2013, so time flies. Yeah, we're going on our what 12th year now in existence and back in 2013, I basically was playing kickball and
Moved out here, couldn't find a lot of rec leagues. I lived in Chicago, I lived in New York, I lived in Charlotte, all these kind of big city hubs that kind of had companies like we're doing now and it was hard to find leagues. So I got together with a kickball friend of mine that was kind of a web developer and we said, hey, let's start up a social sports company. And we launched in 2013 with three leagues, a kickball league, a softball league, or sorry, kickball, soccer, and a flag football league. And we kind
of I mean it's a struggle as a lot of people that know that start a company like this up at the beginning but you know you're out there just grinding away going out to you know other leagues handing out flyers you know going to bars you know just just grinding trying to build those leagues up was able to kind of start all three of all three of those leagues up with four teams each and from there we continued to expand so you know after those kind of go off the ground we added you know a softball league in and then we had another football league another football league and
Lance McDonald (01:20.67)
Nice.
Nathan Polzin (01:31.288)
kind of eventually started to kind of build that out to where we began to grow over the years. And now we're sitting here, I guess, 12 years later, you we have over 50 leagues that we run, we do an adventure club, which we run trips every year. We have a golf tour, running league, you name it. So, yeah, it's, there's a whole process involved, but we started 12 years ago and we're rocking and rolling at this point and things are going well. So, yeah.
Lance McDonald (01:55.175)
Nice. What made you guys start with three leagues at the same time? Like, why not just start with one?
Nathan Polzin (01:59.066)
Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, you kind of see your vision and I mean, we kind of envisioned getting to the point we're at now where we have 10 different sports leagues running all over the place. So we wanted to go to offer at least a couple of options because not everybody plays soccer and everybody plays football, whatnot. yeah, I guess we just kind of, we kind of picked.
the three that, I mean, I'm a big football fan, so was like, okay, that one's good for me. My business partner, you know, obviously in the kickball world and I was playing, so we're like, we're definitely gonna do that. And then my girlfriend at the time was a big soccer person, so she kind of headed that one. So it kind of just made sense, we're like, let's start with these three and kind of build from there. And our football program took off. I mean, we were running, it's wild to think, you know, we were running with four teams and I was out there two hours beforehand, you know, lining up our lines to paint with like squares, you know, bringing all,
Lance McDonald (02:33.141)
Mm.
Nathan Polzin (02:51.658)
all of this stuff out there, big speakers and running it like it's a 50 team league. And I mean, it kind of worked out because within the next season, we were up to 13 teams and then we ballooned up to almost 20 teams in season three. So from there, then we added a second football league and a third. And I think we had almost five football leagues running before we even started adding more sports in. So it kind of allowed us to kind of just grow that one sport and then start to add in things as we went. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (02:53.961)
Yes.
Lance McDonald (03:00.735)
Wow.
Lance McDonald (03:18.557)
Nice. Yeah, I want to hear more about why you think that grew like that. But first, how did you get the initial teams? Starting from zero, you had these three leagues going. How did you?
Nathan Polzin (03:30.042)
So I remember going out, we had a competitor league that was running leagues and I basically stopped by and I basically remember just putting flyers and all of their backpacks as they were on the sidelines, they were playing. So was a lot of kind of just like.
just very grassroots recruiting. know, we, I mean, we were doing a lot of Facebook ads and stuff like that just to kind of generate interest, but it was a lot just going out there, you know, finding people that might be interested and then just trying to kind of get them. So we, I think we got one team to come over from that league. We were, you know, kind of got another through, you know, Facebook and whatnot, but yeah, it was, it was definitely a struggle. This first, you know, those first couple of years when you're just, you're trying to find, you know, captains and then, you know, hitting them up to kind of recruit stuff like that.
Lance McDonald (04:16.127)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Polzin (04:17.148)
It's very grindish compared to now where throw up a league and we got 10 teams overnight just from people just visiting the website and stuff.
Lance McDonald (04:21.642)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (04:26.493)
Yeah, yeah, it's hard in the beginning. there one of those approaches that you felt like made, like, if you had to go back and just pick one marketing strategy to get teams, what would it be?
Nathan Polzin (04:38.906)
you
I mean, think throwing money into the Facebook ads definitely helped. I mean, it's hard early on. You don't have money. You're not generating revenue. I mean, think we probably started the company on like $15,000 in credit cards, right? So, I mean, people think that, I can start a business for 15 grand. I don't know if that's case now today, but you just, mean, I would say take a couple thousand dollars and invest in that marketing because that's probably the easiest way to do it. But you still, I mean, you still gotta put boots on the
and go out there and try to talk to people, hand out flyers, go to schools, stuff like that. But I mean, from a standpoint of working smarter, not harder, that's probably the way to go.
Lance McDonald (05:22.783)
Yeah. And then was it, you mentioned captains. mean, was that a big focus as well? imagine in the beginning.
Nathan Polzin (05:28.314)
Yeah, I mean, early on we would give free registrations to captains to get them to bring teams in. So we're like, hey, you get to play for free, come, you know, bring your team over. So we had a big focus on that as just training out who those decision makers are and saying, hey, you know.
Lance McDonald (05:33.119)
nice. OK.
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Polzin (05:41.858)
come play with LA Sports Net, you get to play for free, bring your team, you know, and just kind of focusing on that a little bit more. And then eventually get to a point where like, don't necessarily have to do this, you know, like obviously we appreciate those people still, but you don't, you don't, get to a certain point where you don't have to, you know, just grind to find your captains and whatnot.
Lance McDonald (05:59.061)
So when you say find captains, I these weren't people that were signing up like, hey, I want to be a captain. They were just signing up and you were calling them and being like, hey, do you want to be a captain? You get to play for free.
Nathan Polzin (06:06.49)
No, it more people that had established teams that were the captain of those teams. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (06:09.969)
Okay. Got it. Okay.
Nathan Polzin (06:12.942)
But yeah, the biggest thing is just, know, make it or fake it till you make it, right? So those first couple of leagues and we were out there just grinding away, treating them like these huge leagues and putting the time and effort into them. And with the expectations, you know, they're going to grow. But I mean, I remember setting up for football, we'd do this whole thing on the side where it was like a skills challenge. And I spent like hours going to Home Depot and setting up these like, you know, posts and hula hoops to throw balls through and like, and maybe like three people ran.
Lance McDonald (06:17.022)
Hmm.
Nathan Polzin (06:42.946)
And I probably put like four hours into this thing. And that was like the first season. It's like, you know, I'm putting the effort in pretending it's going to be bigger than it is. And then eventually it kind of grew to that. So we would set up like a fun zone. We had these signs made for LA Sportsnet fun zone. It would have cornhole and all kinds of games on the side and music blasting. And people would just come in, you know, from the park or other leagues and see that. And I think that's a reason why we grew. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (06:45.225)
Yeah
Lance McDonald (07:06.997)
Okay, well that definitely was where I was going to go next because you got those four teams. I did something very similar whenever I launched, know, IRL League was a long time ago and obviously like skill matchup is a big deal. You everybody wants like a nice competitive game and with we have four teams it's like that can be tough because you're going to have somebody.
Nathan Polzin (07:18.17)
you
Nathan Polzin (07:24.61)
Yeah, we had one team that would just destroy everybody too. that's.
Lance McDonald (07:27.955)
Yeah, so was gonna ask how you kind of overcame that, but it sounds like you just really poured into like all the kind of ancillary things that are around them, like the music and having cornhole and a skills challenge and you felt like that stuff really helped.
Nathan Polzin (07:39.65)
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, especially early on and we're, you know, we're playing in an open park. So like people are just coming by and seeing that stuff. So that's necessarily the people playing, but you start to grow from that way. And then word gets out and you know, teams from other leagues will come over, check that out. And they're like, well, this is so much cooler, you know.
Lance McDonald (07:57.812)
Mmm.
Nathan Polzin (07:58.33)
And then I think in season two, we actually got the same park as another competitor league. And we were kind of in the corner with all our music blasts in the fun zone. And they're coming over and be like, what are we doing over here? So, mean, it's, kind of that stuff. mean, as a person who runs this company, I would hate to see that happen by another company. But, you know, early on, we had to do that to survive is just, you know, is to after the teams that exist out there, you know, we we don't do any of that stuff anymore. It's like, this is, this is our product. This is what we do. And if you want to come play awesome, but.
Lance McDonald (08:18.612)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (08:28.312)
Yeah, early on, that's kind of the tactics that we ended up using.
Lance McDonald (08:31.643)
Yeah, so mean you were blasting music while people were playing like on last night.
Nathan Polzin (08:35.17)
Yeah, we used to do, that used to be a big part. I mean, now it's amazing. You can get these little speakers for $20 on Tmoo. But back then, we bought these huge speakers. I had a generator in my car I'd bring out, hook it up to that, I'd gas all in the back of my car, hold this around just to have music playing. And now it's so much easier. yeah, back then that was kind of a big part of our setup. When people show up, I want there to be excitement. And then when they leave,
It's kind that feeling that you get going out there rather than just showing up playing and going home. So it's kind of building that whole atmosphere around the league.
Lance McDonald (09:12.777)
And was there a lot of like, so you were out there, was there a lot of relationship building, I imagine as well where you're meeting people.
Nathan Polzin (09:17.37)
Yeah, and I played in every league. knew almost every player for the first probably five, six years. And then you kind of get to that threshold where you're like, I need to work on the business, not in the business. so at this point, I wish I knew more people that play, but it's too much to keep up with. And it's actually funny because the very first league that I wasn't at, so I used to be at every event, every trip.
Lance McDonald (09:21.35)
yeah.
Lance McDonald (09:36.735)
Yeah, yes.
Nathan Polzin (09:44.578)
I was coming back from, I was still working my other job. was coming back from a work trip and I think it was in Texas and a girl actually died on the field. So I landed in Burbank, got a phone call and said, Hey, this just happened. This girl passed out. It wasn't breathing. We had three players that were at the field that day. It was a fireman, a doctor and a Marine. And they gave her CPR, her back to life. And she ended up surviving. Thank God. But I was like, this is about a month into starting the company. And I was like, well, this is over before it started.
Lance McDonald (10:11.819)
my... I'm gonna give up, geez. That's intense, yeah. Well so-
Nathan Polzin (10:14.444)
It's pretty wild. yeah. But yeah, early on it's like being out there, you know, creating those relationships, having, I mean, I was lucky to have a couple of people that just really wanted to be a part of LA Sports Net early on and just poured their souls into helping me kind of build it up. And so I was kind of lucky to have those people around me, but I was very involved in the day to day and then game days and stuff like that early on.
Lance McDonald (10:32.009)
Mmm.
Lance McDonald (10:40.405)
So those people that poured into it, those were, so you had a co-founder and you said your girlfriend, was it them or?
Nathan Polzin (10:46.298)
Yeah, my, in my co-founder, he, mean, he kind of did a lot of the web stuff, but that was kind of the, the, the gist of it. But I had one, one player in football, Jen floor that basically would just be, be out helping me set up, helping me, you know, kind of build stuff. Never wanted a paycheck for, you know, was all the way up until COVID. I was just trying to, you know, being like, Jen, like you're working way too much. know, so after COVID when we came back, I was like, all right, you're going to take a break from all of this. But it was just kind of players that just wanted to be a part of.
Lance McDonald (11:01.577)
Hmm.
Nathan Polzin (11:16.262)
things and help help grow the company.
Lance McDonald (11:19.11)
How did you inspire that kind of help, that kind of loyalty?
Nathan Polzin (11:21.626)
I don't know. think it was just, we just made it fun early on. was just, you know, and from a league rep standpoint, you know, all of our leagues have a rep and we would have monthly get togethers with everybody and where we kind of just all get together, eat and drink, talk about our leagues. And it was just a lot of camaraderie that we built around the company that I think just people wanted to be a part of.
Lance McDonald (11:24.98)
Mm.
Lance McDonald (11:41.097)
Those league reps though, you're saying that those are unpaid, like volunteer reps? god, I didn't...
Nathan Polzin (11:44.3)
No, no, our reps are all paid. But in terms of this with Jen, she just never wanted to take a paycheck. So it was pretty wild. Yeah. She's like the vice president of some huge, I don't even know what kind of company is. She was getting paid pretty well. So this was kind of, I think, a passion project for her. I was definitely lucky to have her. Yeah.
Lance McDonald (11:49.973)
Jen sounds awesome. Okay.
Lance McDonald (12:04.777)
Yeah, it's like a hobby. Yeah, OK. And then you mentioned the fields. That's always a question, a concern, a thing is like, how do you find a facility? And so you found one. How did you?
Nathan Polzin (12:12.238)
Cool.
Nathan Polzin (12:15.978)
Ugh.
Permits, it's literally my full-time job now. I kind of have people running the leagues pretty much. And my job is essentially to work the permits. Early on is 95 % of your time is spent trying to figure out how do we get these permits, right? As you know, it's hard to get your foot in the door. Once you get your foot in the door, you're good to go. At some point along the line, it became, I need a field. I pick up the phone call. I know who to call. Boom. Or they'll start calling me. Hey, Nate, we got this field open. You want it? Yeah, awesome.
So it's gotten much easier. It still takes up a large portion of my time, but that's the biggest struggle for anybody that's in this industry is, you know, especially in Los Angeles, you got, you're fighting against AYSO, you're fighting against youth groups, you're fighting against you name it to get this field time. So it probably took me about 10 years to really build these relationships to the point where it kind of cruises. And then it's a matter of, okay, do we put six months down in terms of locking all these fields in? Do we break it up? know, throw it all in the credit
Lance McDonald (12:47.434)
Mm.
Lance McDonald (13:10.367)
Mm.
Nathan Polzin (13:16.556)
deal with it later and whatnot. We've spent over $350,000 this year on permits, which is crazy. So permit costs have gone just through the roof on us.
Lance McDonald (13:18.611)
Interesting, yeah, so you phrased it like.
Lance McDonald (13:25.439)
Yep.
Lance McDonald (13:29.715)
Yeah, well, so you phrased it like you're fighting against these other, so how do you win? Like how do you, what's the, you mentioned like 10 years you have relationships now and that's probably a big part of it, but like what's the secret sauce to like winning against these other?
Nathan Polzin (13:40.218)
Thank
Nathan Polzin (13:44.686)
I mean, it's building relationships with your permit people, right? Because a lot of these guys, I mean, I'm still working with the same people that have been in these positions for 10 years. eventually you get to know them. They're to you coming by every couple of months working with them. So it's a lot of relationship building and then just...
Lance McDonald (13:48.202)
Really.
Nathan Polzin (14:05.082)
just trying to find more, as soon as something opens up, grabbing it. It's just like staying on top of that. I even now, I have people that would normally call me if something opens, and if I call them and be like, hey, do you have any field space in the Valley during the week? And they're like, yeah, this is open. It's like, why didn't you tell me that? So it's just kind of the constantly trying to grab things when you can and then hold onto them as long as you can. there's that juggle where you can get the field space and then you can't get the teams, right? Or you get the teams and you don't have the field space. So it's a constant kind
Lance McDonald (14:09.609)
Mmm.
Nathan Polzin (14:34.988)
kind of guess juggling act that you have to do in that case of, know, can you find registrations or can you find the field time and then having them kind of meet in the middle. So it's a lot of wasted money sometimes if you just want to lock in a field and you end up paying for it and then you can't fill it and then you're like, well, I'm going to eat the money on this one and is what it is.
Lance McDonald (14:45.161)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (14:54.399)
That's what I was gonna ask is like how often you're having to do that. Just like take risks and buy and.
Nathan Polzin (14:58.554)
Well, you have to figure out how much you want to piss off the permit people, So it's like, that's, it's a matter of keeping them happy. But every once in a while when I have to like, okay, I'm shaving off two hours here a day here, you know, you get yelled at, but then you just kind of, you take your hit and you move on. So hope that, hope it doesn't ruin the relationship.
Lance McDonald (15:13.961)
Yeah, okay.
And you're physically, you said going by, so is that part of your recommendation? These relationships are critical. You need to go out and physically visit these.
Nathan Polzin (15:24.13)
If you can, yeah. you can, you know, there's one permit account that I'll bring in, you know, coffees for the whole office and work out our permits for the next six months and they love that. it's as simple as that. It's just like, it doesn't take a lot, but you know, if I can go in and sit in person and go through that stuff with them, great. But it is a lot easier just to do it over the computer. It's a lot more time efficient, but I think it goes a long way to meet your permit writers in person, you know.
Lance McDonald (15:38.804)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (15:52.649)
Yeah, yeah, now that makes sense. Okay, so then going back, your first season, four teams, 13 teams, then 20 teams, and you're expanding and all that. So you mentioned like in the beginning, the sort of why people came out was...
the amount you were investing in the experience and the music and all that other stuff. How did that sort why shift as you got bigger and maybe you weren't able to do? What made people continue coming out and joining your leagues even if you weren't out there?
Nathan Polzin (16:24.902)
I think that's a good question. And I think we do a really good job with retention. I mean, we have some football players have been playing literally since season one. They're still going strong, you know, 12 years later.
Yeah, it's, I mean, we, the things that we do different and we would do stats for most of our leagues. So, you know, we track stats and I think that having that player card and watching your, your numbers throughout the years, I think is a pull for us that not a lot of other people are doing. you know, early on, it was like, we don't want to start the same company that everyone else is doing. What can we do different? And that was one thing we, added in. We're like, okay, let's, let's at least add this element that isn't out there in hindsight. Yeah. It's, it's a little bit of a headache when you're trying to, you know, we give credits to people to give
stats, you know, and trying to get people to fill those spots. It's a whole other element our league reps have to deal with, but I think it goes a long way to keeping people playing in our leagues. And then just...
Lance McDonald (17:16.468)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (17:18.282)
options, you know, you can go to our website if you want to play soccer, you know, can play seven days a week in Hollywood or the Valley or the West Side or Pasadena and so it's just giving people a lot of options to basically, you know, fit their schedule I think is going a long way as we've gotten bigger. yeah, it's in and we try to find league reps that people know and they trust and we try to keep them around for a long time. So, you know, if they're doing a good job, people are going to keep coming back.
Lance McDonald (17:47.315)
Okay, yes, I have a bunch more questions now. Yeah, you named a bunch of things. So what is your process for doing stats and how do get it to customer? How do you take them? How do you get them to customers, all that?
Nathan Polzin (17:48.762)
There's a lot thrown in there, but yeah.
Nathan Polzin (18:00.408)
So every one of our leagues that take stats, players can do that and they'll earn a credit.
Once you get 10 credits, you get a free season. So somebody can come out and say they want to do stats before their game and after their game, they can earn two credits a week, earn a free season after a couple of weeks of just going out there. So a lot of people have kind of gotten used to just helping out the leagues and never having to pay for a league again. So I think we have a good portion of people that do that. And that's kind of the system. Early on, we used to force people to do it. It didn't go over very well. And we're like, all right, well, let's give you something for doing this at least and earning it that way. So a lot of people.
do want to help some people see it as why are we having to do this but at least they're getting something out of it.
Lance McDonald (18:42.259)
Yeah, and then how are they, is it pen and paper or how do they submit the stuff?
Nathan Polzin (18:46.458)
Yeah, so all of our stuff, we tried going to like an app based system and it was kind of a nightmare. So we still just track it on paper and then the League Rep uploads it to the website after the games are done. So our website was kind of built from everything from the schedule, all the stats are put into it, their player cards all on there. So that's all uploaded by the League Rep.
Lance McDonald (18:58.303)
Mm, got it, okay.
Lance McDonald (19:09.085)
Uploaded, okay, like on their phone or just on their computer later or, yeah.
Nathan Polzin (19:11.938)
Yeah, or on the computer, yeah. So the goal is to have all the stats and the scores in a couple of days after Lelig starts so that players can jump in and see that go.
Lance McDonald (19:19.209)
Sure. Okay, and then another question is you mentioned the power of league reps and having them be, you know, really sort of dialed into the community, keeping them for a long time. So what's the secret sauce there of like, how do you find the right people and how do you keep them for long time?
Nathan Polzin (19:33.562)
you
That's a struggle. I mean, we have over 50 league reps at this point and some are really, really good and some, you you got to kind of stay on them. the biggest, mean, as I tell them that communication, communication, communication is everything, you know, no, no player wants to be sitting there, not knowing when their game is that week or what's going on. So it's like, it's just having somebody just continually update them, make sure every week that email is going out with the updated standings, everything's on time. That's what makes a good league rep.
And in terms of finding those, mean, a lot of times we're just finding them in our leagues. You can tell people that just want to help out or are very vocal if they're captains and they're, you know, I think, I wouldn't say it's easy to find good league reps, but once you have them, I think you have to do everything in your power to keep them around because, you know, we have one rep that's running three leagues and each one of those are over 20 teams at this point. We're like, okay, well, you can have whatever you want. Just keep doing what you're doing, you know?
Lance McDonald (20:31.743)
Yeah, yeah. Is it like?
Nathan Polzin (20:34.21)
Yeah, and if a rep is part of a league and you're seeing that go from 16 to 12 to eight, some things are going on there that there's a disconnect and they're failing. So it's easy to know when things are going well and they're not.
Lance McDonald (20:46.303)
Yeah. So how do you compensate them? Are you doing anything to motivate them to get bigger leagues?
Nathan Polzin (20:50.758)
All our, they get paid per player that registers. So, and then it's a kind of on a tiered system. So as they grow, they'll get more and more money. So they'll get a certain number up to 150 players and then even more up to 200 and whatnot. So we have our West LA Soccer League now has I think close to 40 teams in it. So, I mean, that rep's been around for while and he's getting paid really well to run that league, which is great.
Lance McDonald (21:12.595)
Hmm. Yeah, okay. Cool.
Nathan Polzin (21:15.832)
And then they get to play for free in as many leagues as they want, which is kind of a lot of reps. That's another thing is if you see somebody playing five days a week, like, just be a league rep, help us run a league, and you get to play all this for free. So it's kind of an added benefit that they get.
Lance McDonald (21:30.847)
Yeah, okay, cool, that makes sense. And then I had, yeah, I was more questions off that, but I was curious, you mentioned sort of being all over the place, launching these different leagues. mean, obviously you want to grab facility space, like you said, when you can, but maybe not every location is going to be successful.
I know when we were launching leagues across like Texas, there were certain areas. And for us, I mean, I think we really kind of dialed into like population density and how important that is. And I think LA is pretty sprawled out as well. A lot more people, think, I guess. But, you know, when we would go to certain suburbs or whatever and population density was less than like 3000 people per square mile, it got a lot harder to get a league off the ground. Yeah. So I'm curious, like, have you, you know,
Nathan Polzin (22:00.857)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (22:05.401)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (22:14.466)
Yeah, makes sense.
Lance McDonald (22:19.871)
thought about or had your own sort of experiences of like which locations you really want to be in and you think are going to be successful and which aren't or is it?
Nathan Polzin (22:26.265)
Yeah.
And I mean, it's interesting because LA people don't like to travel. you know, it's like if I live on the, I live on the West side of the Marina and trying to get people from the Valley to come visit me is impossible. But early on, that's actually how we were able to grow football is that our West side league blew up. So we added a Valley league and half of those players want to play a second day. So they drove to the Valley and then we added Pasadena and a bunch of those players want to play a third night. So they actually began traveling. And I think we find the same thing for, you know, our other sports like soccer. We have some people that'll play.
West LA on Sunday and Monday, go to Hollywood on Wednesday, go to the Valley on Thursday, whatever. It's been different in sports. We noticed that people will travel.
Yeah, I mean, luckily, I don't think we've had that issue because LA is pretty, you know, we got a huge pocket of people in the Valley, the West Side, Pasadena. Pre-COVID, our West Side numbers, we barely had any leagues running. We couldn't get permits. Like was a struggle to even get a softball field, a football. So we only had, I think, two leagues, beach volleyball and a football league.
And then when COVID kind of came out, we jumped in and we're able to get any permit we wanted. So we, I think we almost tripled our West side numbers. And that's a lot, a lot of the young, younger population that play sports is on that side. So, so we knew we wanted to increase our West side leagues that we had for that reason. And you know, it's, kind of that Sunday league. I mean, I we went from four to like 30 teams in like three seasons, from nine AM until 10 PM now. So that was kind of one of those leagues where like we need to figure out.
Lance McDonald (23:57.705)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (24:02.796)
how to get this to happen and we're able to get work.
Lance McDonald (24:04.245)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (24:06.226)
the cool thing now is that we actually get calls now from cities wanting us to run their league. So let's say a Torrance reached out to us last year and said, Hey, we have four basketball leagues. want to offset. We don't want to run them anymore. Do you want to take them on? So overnight we picked up like 30 teams, four nights of leagues and that they're supporting us. they're like, here's the gym space here, everything. So there's three different cities that we run leagues through now. And that that's been a huge success is if you can get the city to, to, to.
Lance McDonald (24:11.636)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (24:24.148)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (24:36.012)
partner up with them. You don't have work permit time. It's just basically whatever you need, here you go, and then you pay for it.
Lance McDonald (24:37.397)
Mm-hmm.
Lance McDonald (24:42.313)
Yeah, cool. So I guess, you know, from here, what, well, I guess one question is what keeps you up at night? And you might say the facility stuff because you're doing a lot of that. And then, you know, how do you grow from here? How do you double in size? Like what's the secret for the next five, 10 years or, so two questions there.
Nathan Polzin (25:01.177)
Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, last night I think I was up for a couple hours worrying about our Torrance leagues because the numbers have dropped. I'm just like, what is going on with those? So I still stress out about that stuff. mean, yeah, we have 50 leagues, but I hate to see when a league goes from like 12 teams down to four. And it's like, you know, like that stuff does stress me out. and then, mean, dealing with LA USD permits, like all of that stuff. I get, you just got to kind of just.
Lance McDonald (25:08.852)
All
Nathan Polzin (25:28.61)
I don't know, this stuff can eat you alive, dealing with players that if you're having suspensions and we're getting, there's different elements I think everybody stresses about. But yeah, I think the biggest thing that does keep me up at night is just making sure we do have the field times.
We're rolling over right now from one L.A. U.S.D. semester to the next. We're mid-season on a bunch of stuff. So I'm like, if I don't get these fields locked in, you know, we're, who knows? It's week six and we are not going have a place to play. So again, that's why this takes up all my time because I wake up in the morning and I'm like, I permit stuff all day long to fix it.
How do we grow? So that's kind of the million dollar question. I mean, my mindset from day one was add, add, add, add, add. You know, it's just like, let's get more leagues, more cities, more area, just keep expanding, adding more coordinators, reps or whatnot. So that's still our focus. Like next year we're adding, I think, five new leagues in January. So we're continuing to do that. I would love to see us.
do a little bit better on the social aspect of our leagues. We used to have a social bar and social program kind of for every league that we have. I think down at this point, maybe we have 10, 10 or less out of the 50 that are actually running like good social programs with the bar sponsorships and stuff like that. I want that to be a focus of ours, I think for next year is just trying to get more of that social atmosphere for the teams to kind of hang out whatever after the games.
Lance McDonald (26:52.275)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Polzin (27:03.192)
But yeah, mean, that's kind of the gist of it. And then our adventure club has kind of dropped a little bit. We used to run close to eight trips a year and we're.
Lance McDonald (27:13.013)
Yeah, so what is that? Can you tell me more about the adventure club?
Nathan Polzin (27:15.342)
So we way back in the day, I used to be an outdoor educator for for youth and I used to take, you know, kids on these trips to like Yosemite and Whitewater Rafting and canoe trips. So when I started the business, I was like, I'm going to do this for adults. So we we started with, you know, ski trips and right, what a rafting and hiking trips and all that. And we've been doing that pretty successfully over the years. And then my adventure club rep had twins a year and a half ago and I kind of lost him and ended up just kind of doing this all on my own. And I have a two year old myself. So it's just like trying to find.
the time to do that stuff as we get older, know, dwindle. So last year we ended up just doing our three kind of main trips that we did, our rafting, we did our canoe trip that we do every October, and then we had one other trip in there, I forget. So I'd like to kind of expand that a little bit more, but yeah, it's kind of a fun kind of side thing that we do where we can just get out for, you know, a weekend, a long weekend, like Fourth of July Memorial Day weekend and do something fun.
Lance McDonald (27:47.286)
yeah.
Lance McDonald (28:12.885)
Cool, yeah, I like that. So how has your, you mentioned somebody who did the Adventure Club stuff, but they had twins, but what does your team, what does your team look like at the moment? You're full-time, so I know you got these reps and there's 15 leagues and all that stuff, what does the rest of the team?
Nathan Polzin (28:21.028)
you later.
Nathan Polzin (28:26.874)
Yeah.
Well, it's kind of, mean, so back in the day I would have an assistant. did most of the work and they would kind of just help me out. And then I shifted along somewhere along the way to having league coordinators. So it just kind of, it kind of separates me from the league reps in terms of having to kind of manage them, which is a lot to making sure they're doing, you know, everything they need to do that the shirts are ordered, the schedules on a timely basis. So I have four coordinators that essentially will run anywhere from 20 leagues down to five leagues.
And their job basically is to manage those league reps, make sure everything's running correctly in those leagues and if they need to hire referees, reps or whatnot. So basically my day to day is just communicating with those guys and then they communicate to the league reps, which is kind of an easier process for me to be able to manage everything.
Lance McDonald (29:18.483)
Yeah, are they full time?
Nathan Polzin (29:20.378)
One is full-time actually I would say two are full-time and two are part Yeah, and I kind of that built out where they'll start at five leagues and once they kind of get those under their their feet they can expand to 10 15 20 and whatnot so but I find I mean Anna's my my full-time kind of coordinator she has 24 leagues that she manages and it's a lot like I feel like I need to pull her back because it's just And she's the type of person that wants to run out to five leagues a night So she'll be driving to Torrance over to Pasadena back to the valley. You know, it's like
Lance McDonald (29:24.84)
Okay.
Nathan Polzin (29:50.332)
I'll try to give her a vacation and then I'll catch her working on her vacation. It's like, it's a good problem to have. I like, I worry about burnout a lot because you can do that easily in this business. Because it's fun.
Lance McDonald (29:57.086)
and
Lance McDonald (30:02.611)
Yeah, but I'm noticing a trend though. You seem to find people that will really go to bat for you and almost work too hard.
Nathan Polzin (30:09.592)
Yeah, I am definitely super lucky in that sense, but trying to keep them around in upper is kind of my full-time job.
Lance McDonald (30:20.521)
Yeah, I mean, there, that's like, I kinda wanna double click just on that a little bit more, cause that is, that's a big deal. Is that just a natural thing you think that you've got where you can inspire that kind of loyalty? Or I hear you say things like you wanna protect them against burnout, you wanna like, in terms of your leadership and inspiring that, mean, is there more you can say about, let's say there's somebody who's out in Florida and they wanna do what you're doing and they wanna be able to have people that are really inspired and.
and will really go the extra mile and drive out to five leagues in the night and all that. What would you say to them of how to cultivate that style of leadership?
Nathan Polzin (30:55.48)
Yeah, I mean, I think that my leadership or my kind of management style is I hate micromanaging. I mean, they might say different, like if I go to a tournament, I don't think they like it because they say I micromanage. for the most part, you know, it's just giving them the freedom to say, hey, these are giving them the, I guess the...
I don't think like almost like an ownership. Okay, so like, okay, this is your these are the leagues you're gonna run, you know, do what you need to do. Let's grow this together and just kind of making them feel like they're they're a part of of this company rather than just you're working for me. I need you to do A, B and C, right? So I think you know in if I were to sit back and look at why they're inspired. I mean, I think it's also fun just to be a part of this, you know, it's if you're if you're in a sports and you love I mean, I love even sitting down and hashing out a schedule.
Lance McDonald (31:32.938)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan Polzin (31:46.458)
It's almost like a puzzle, right? Is this like, okay, how do we fit all these pieces into this thing? Like that part is fun to me. And I think there's certain aspects of this, you know, like Anna is a, she's the type of person that actually loves to deal with, I guess, like the, the suspension and stuff like that. To me, it gives me anxiety. Like I don't want to touch it. So it's like, there's certain things I think to say, okay, you're going to deal with this. You take care of it, do what you need to do. I don't, I don't, you know, stay on top of them in terms of are you working so many hours a week? I say, okay, you
Lance McDonald (32:04.873)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (32:16.3)
you can do whatever you want, just make sure your leagues are going successful and whatnot. I'm very hands off in that sense and kind of give them the freedom to kind of to do their thing. you know, I think especially her, I think she loves that she says, I'm getting paid less, but I get to take my kids to school in the morning and pick them up. I can do whatever I want, you know, and that freedom to her is important. So yeah, I think just for the most part, it's just a fun atmosphere we've built.
And we're doing this weekend, we have our holiday party. We're doing a murder mystery party. So everyone's got their characters, they get to come in. And so just trying to do more stuff like that. We did paintball a couple of months early last year. We did different games and we'll play with the reps. So just trying to keep it fun and relaxed and yeah.
Lance McDonald (32:46.025)
Thank you.
Lance McDonald (33:00.509)
Yeah, cool. No, I like that. seems, I mean, like I said, seems like a trend with you and I hear your story that you've done that and that seems pretty vital because there's a lot going on, especially, you know, 50 leagues is a lot for just you to...
Nathan Polzin (33:06.5)
Yeah.
Nathan Polzin (33:13.176)
Yeah. And people like, they don't see me as much. And so people feel like I'm just like, you know.
not connected into their, like in terms of players that used to see me around a lot, they're like, well, Nate's not a part of this anymore. And it's like, I'm very well, I'm very, you know, in these leagues and have my, you know, my nose in it. But I think from the outside, it might look like I'm not sometimes, but it's just, it's a lot. we're, you know, I'm working on making sure our coordinators have the tools they need to manage their reps. And then it kind of works its way down. So, yeah.
Lance McDonald (33:45.237)
Okay, I think we're coming up on time a little bit. don't think I have any more questions. there anything else you wanna share or talk about keys to success that's on your mind?
Nathan Polzin (33:53.068)
Yeah, I'd say, I mean, for people that are trying to build this and they're in the early stages, it's just, you know, stick to it. I mean, early on those first couple of years, I just, mean...
You hear this a lot in sports, Just keep that even keel. Don't get too high, don't get too low because it will kill you early on. You'll get a permit and you'll be super ecstatic in Cloud 9 and then the next day they call you back and be like, we can't get that to you. Or you'll get five teams and then suddenly three will drop out. And so early on, I think you're in this roller coaster of just like, I'm super ecstatic, my, I'm bummed. I'm ecstatic, I'm bummed. And then at some point it all just
levels out in your cruising. you know that'd be my advice as somebody that's just getting into this industry and trying to get things started is just you know keep your nose to the ground, stay positive and it'll work itself out as long as you you stick around long enough and put in the work.
Lance McDonald (34:52.221)
Yeah, no, I love that. It sounds like that could apply to a lot of businesses, to be honest. Yeah, I relate quite a bit myself. Okay, sweet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome, I think that's it. Well, thanks for jumping on here and yeah, appreciate your time.
Nathan Polzin (34:55.714)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Let's use startups for sure.
Nathan Polzin (35:07.67)
Absolutely Lance. Cool. was a pleasure.
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