Mike shares his journey of growth and adaptability, illustrating the multifaceted strategies that have propelled Meet Play Chill into a successful multi-sport league in Denver over the past decade.
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Welcome to Episode #16 of the Sold Out podcast, where we interview league organizers across the country for tips on how to sell out and grow leagues.
In this episode, we sit down with Mike from Meet Play Chill, a Denver-based sports league organization that has grown exponentially over the past decade. Offering leagues for almost every sport except ice hockey, Mike shares how he turned Saturday night volleyball and soccer drop-ins into multi-sport leagues, now hosting thousands of players across Denver. With a focus on creating a welcoming community and ensuring competitive balance, Mike gives a behind-the-scenes look at how his leagues became some of the most popular in the city.
From scaling his business to introducing new sports like pickleball, Mike delves into the challenges he’s faced and the strategies that have sustained his success. This episode is packed with insights on building community, overcoming obstacles, and the importance of adapting to trends.
Listen to the full episode now!
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 (00:01.09)
All right, today we have Mike from Meet Play Chill. Thanks for being here, Mike. So let's start with some of the basics, yeah, of where you're located and what leagues are you running, what kind of scale, and we can go from there.
Mike (00:05.592)
My pleasure.
Mike (00:14.371)
Yeah, sure. We're based out of Denver, Colorado. We've been doing this for about 10 years now. We run almost every sport except for ice hockey. It's usually easier out of a process of exclusion than inclusion to list everything off. Our newest sport is pickleball. As I'm sure everybody knows about right now, that's the sport that really is just sweeping across the country. But we started off with volleyball and soccer. Those were our first two sports.
Lance McDonald (00:29.228)
Mm-hmm.
Lance McDonald (00:42.264)
Okay, why were those the first two? When did this start?
Mike (00:45.263)
So we started, geez, what'd it be about 2014, 2015? And volleyball was, you know, I never played volleyball traditionally. I never played in high school or college, but when I first came out to Denver, it's just one of those sports that I picked up in a heartbeat. I saw people playing grass volleyball at the park. I made my first network there. And then we just, we actually started off by running. We partnered up with a new facility that just opened up its doors.
and we decided to just split the door on Saturday night drop-ins and it was our process to get as many people into the seven core facilities possible and get it filled up.
Lance McDonald (01:25.176)
So you did, so you started with drop-in, so it sort of a pickup thing right off the bat, and you had a bit of a network with the volleyball, so you were able to get some people to come out.
Mike (01:32.395)
Yeah, I played a little bit like informally, not in leagues or anything like that. And then we kind of saw an opportunity with a new venue that was, you know, wasn't at full capacity. Usually when a new venue opens up the doors, there's 35 different leagues knocking on the door. They're beyond capacity. Unless you have a standing arrangement with them, you're not going to get in. But we were lucky enough to be one of the first ones in line. It wasn't really well marketed. And that was our way to get in and just get started.
I think for our very first drop-in we had like 19 people show up, paying $5. And then within a month or two we were up to 60 to 100 players. So yeah, we got it going pretty quick.
Lance McDonald (02:13.176)
Wow.
Why do you think it blew up like that? Was it just the cost was really, really good or were there other components?
Mike (02:20.835)
Yeah, so the cost was low. We actually literally just ended up deciding to split the door with the facility. So that took a lot of the onus off of like, you know, renting all seven courts formally on a per hour basis. You know, we had a trust agreement in place. We both felt comfortable with each other that, hey, we're just going to split the door. And that helped us. Like we just spent a lot of money to turn around and promote. It's also like when you start off the business, your phone isn't super busy yet.
your website is maybe getting like five or six clicks a month. You know, your full-time job is to drive everybody possible to the drop-in. So I'm going out to every volleyball pickup game. I'm going out, you know, texting everybody I can. I'm on every Facebook group trying to like, hey guys, we got you dropping in, come on out. you know, the word of mouth slowly spreads and then people, you know, we really strived on making sure it was a welcoming environment. We worked really hard.
Lance McDonald (02:51.19)
Yeah.
Mike (03:16.111)
on making sure that we had the appropriate skill level nets. So we're not having beginners show up to have fun and then they're getting pelted on by people who been playing college ball. And yeah, it just kind of built organically from there and it was really cool.
Lance McDonald (03:32.408)
That's great. Yeah, I have a lot of questions. Because I mean, of all the aspects of getting a business like this to be successful, that first moment of getting something out there is often hard and very confusing. And how do you do it? And so I have, I guess, two follow-up questions. You mentioned you were putting everything back into promotion. So when you were making this money, you were physically going out to other places. Were you doing any ads or anything else to support?
like anything on Facebook or anything like that.
Mike (04:03.395)
Yeah, so we didn't start doing official advertisement until much later. But with this, was literally just like all the money was being spent back on gas or, you know, for prizes or doing different themed things for, you know, Halloween or we made sure like Broncos football is obviously big out here. So during.
preseason like we made sure we had a big screen up at the facility that was hooked up to the football game so people could come over and check it out, you know between You know when they were rotating off the volleyball court and so just little things like that that really showed You know our players with us that we cared and they really fed off of that
Lance McDonald (04:46.688)
Awesome. Okay, so then the next question is about what you were kind of touching on is what were you doing exactly? So you were doing theme type things, but you got up to like 60 players. Did you just know all the players and be like, all right, you're gonna go to court A, you're gonna be on court B, because court A is where we got the higher level player. Like how did you, and then what was the format? it just, you know, winter stays on or how did you structure it?
Mike (05:08.589)
Yeah, so when you sacrifice every Saturday night for two years to run these drop ins, you get to know everybody personally. And that's something I kind of miss nowadays where we're so large. Like I come out to leagues, no one knows who I am anymore. But so when you go out there, you you watch the players like I at that point, I was a pretty good volleyball player. So it was pretty easy to see, hey, you know, this guy's got some skills. Let's move up over here.
So it was really easy to after a game or so of watching any new players that came on to kind of rate them and say hey these are the best course to kind of fit in on. And then for our format we did a two on and off. So you signed up your team we had sign up sheets on each court. So you had your team of six you would play a one side of the net. Win or lose you'd move over to the other side of the net. And then after your second game you clear off the court and everybody could resign in. So if you want to be on that same team you could sign up again or if you could.
You want to split it up and play with some new people you could you know divide it up into new teams However, you decided so that system worked out pretty well It also helped since we grew it from the very beginning. We were always my wife and I Erin Big shout out to her because I dragged her out for every Saturday night as well You know, we knew all the players we trained them from the very beginning so they were able to also be our teachers out there
So whenever they brought out new friends, they said, hey, this is the system, this works out really well, and that also maximizes playing time for everybody. It allowed people to get a natural break. If you do something like Winter Stays On, people are gonna sandbag and put together the best teams and just run the court all night. So it worked out really well.
Lance McDonald (06:30.264)
Hmm.
Lance McDonald (06:49.52)
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So you did that for two years and it was just the...
Mike (06:57.615)
Yeah, about two years. And then we actually got to a point where we big enough to this facility said, hey, we've got some open courts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. Would you like to rent them? And maybe a little foolishly, we said, yeah, we'll take all the courts, everything you have available. And thank the Lord, we had built up enough of a following by that point.
We weren't completely sold out, but we definitely were beyond the point of covering our nut and making sure that we're making a little bit of money. And then by the following season, we're almost at capacity. And so that was a really, really good way to start it off. It's hard. mean, you give up. so the other thing I forgot to mention, every Saturday night we had a really good sponsor bar nearby. So we would play from seven to 10 or eight to 11 p.m. The other thing the facility loved was
we were really good at communicating to our players. So if they had booked a tournament or another group came in, we could adjust our start times and all of our players would know. But we also had a sponsor bar that we set up with really good specials. didn't get any kickback from that, but we just told them, hey, just give our players the best deal as possible. We'll make sure you guys stay busy. So our Saturday nights were usually finishing up around 1 AM. So my wife was working full time at the time. She was a midwife at the hospital. So.
She made a lot of sacrifice to make sure that we were able to get this business started.
Lance McDonald (08:26.86)
Wow. So that's awesome. So the other nights that you rented, did you transition to a league format at that time?
Mike (08:34.263)
Yeah, sorry, I didn't make that clear. Yeah, so we transitioned to an actual league format that also, you know, it's very stressful during the sign up period, especially the first time you do it, because you have such a big commitment of money up front. But once you get that started and you get your first leagues off the ground, you know, really, you can kind of build off the momentum from there, especially if you do a good job of making sure those leagues are well run.
Lance McDonald (08:47.51)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (09:01.263)
I mean, for the first three years I was out there every single night. I couldn't afford referees for all the courts. So I was refereeing one of the courts. My wife was at the front door checking people in, telling them which courts to go to saying, Hey, welcome to me, play chill. So that was a very organic process to get it going. It blows my mind. Some of all these other businesses were able to start and just all.
you know immediately they're running five different sports and they're at nine different parks and all that stuff. It was a much slower process for us.
Lance McDonald (09:32.268)
Yeah, but I mean it sounds like powerful and almost foolproof the way you did it, like a really strong way to build relationships and all that. So did you keep the pickup thing going on Saturday nights and then shift and the other ones were leagues or you shifted everything over to leagues?
Mike (09:46.379)
Yeah, so we shifted all over to leagues essentially got to the point where we could afford not to give up our Saturday nights anymore. The facility at that point had already taken over Friday and Sunday night drop in until like, hey, do you guys want us to take this back? And we're like, yeah, that's totally fine. They had their own staff in place by that point. And by that point, there was enough players that our Saturday night players were now playing the Friday night hosted by the facility, the Sunday night hosted by the facility.
Lance McDonald (10:14.165)
and
Mike (10:15.791)
So it wasn't like, you it was our own exclusive thing anymore. So we were happy to give it back, have our weekends back a little bit was great too.
Lance McDonald (10:19.234)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lance McDonald (10:25.208)
Yeah. So what format did you go with with the leagues and why?
Mike (10:30.447)
Yeah, so we ended up doing one hour matches and then we did seven match season. We always play all three sets and we do time cap it to that one hour. So if necessary, we shorten the third set and then we do a single elimination playoff where every team makes it. So if we have a 12 team league, we'll have a 12 team playoff at the end of it.
You're getting anywhere between 8 to 11 matches per season and it's kind of ridiculous looking at our pricing now how cheap we were able to do it back then. So but.
Lance McDonald (11:01.944)
Yeah, yeah. 12 teams, in my experience, can be pretty big differences in skill. that the case, or was there some way that you were able to control it? Because in our leagues, we do 16 divisions over about eight weeks, and can kind of control skill a little bit there with promotion and relegation. How was your
Mike (11:19.469)
Yeah, so it changes a little bit now. So nowadays, like our volleyball program is massive. I think we have somewhere around 120 to 150 indoor volleyball teams play with us per season. And that's only limited because there's just not more court space available in our market. We have several facilities that are already wait listed and the leagues don't start for another two weeks. But.
It's nowadays we have three main divisions. So we have recreational, intermediate and advanced. And after the first two weeks of play, we look at the standings, we get feedback from the refs. We also let our teams know that, hey, if you're out there and you feel like you're ever matched or you're undermatched, we can slide you up or slide you down. Obviously there's its own headaches after you've already done the season schedules and stuff to readjust it and do game times, rebalance everything out there. We also are
have a relationship with a new facility called Fieldhouse USA out here in Denver where
Lance McDonald (12:18.672)
yeah, we have them.
Mike (12:20.271)
Yeah, so it's the same one. And we have a really cool thing where they essentially gave us four courts four nights out of the week from 7-11 p.m. And we completely changed our volleyball model and said we are going to take the first 16 teams for six versus six on certain nights or four versus four for certain nights. And we're just going to do a ladder format. So you're going to be initially signed up into your pool of eight.
based on your initial, you know, however you rank yourself, recreational, intermediate, upper intermediate or advanced. And then after four weeks, we will re-rank you based on your performance and then either move you up or move you down. And we play two matches a night there. So in your pool, you'll play two matches against two different teams from seven to nine. The next week you'll play from nine to 11. And that's been a really big hit because, you know, it's really tough to convince, especially a lot of recreational teams to come out and play a one hour match.
at 10 or 1030 at night but if they're out there playing for two hours that's a different story where they feel like it's worth the drive out it's worth staying up a little bit later and get some good skilled competition for their volleyball level
Lance McDonald (13:28.92)
Interesting, yeah. So that ladder format, I haven't heard of it done quite like that. Are you doing any kind of elo rank or anything like that? Or is it just like win-loss within your division then you get moved up?
Mike (13:40.843)
Yeah, so we look at win loss. We look at point differential. That's a pretty big.
That's usually the first thing that you'll see right away if a team is over-competing. Because you'll see a team go 6-0, but if their point differential is only like, you know, plus 10 or plus 15 over four weeks, you know that they're really battling and they're just winning close games. Where if you see it's plus 80, that's a pretty clear sign that you need to move them up. We don't have an ELO system because part of the other issue is there's a lot of turnover, especially in Denver. It's a very transitory city where people are out here for two or three years.
Lance McDonald (14:11.768)
Hmm.
Mike (14:16.753)
and then they get moved to another city for jobs or they have families and it's tough to be out there playing when you have a newborn. And so there's a lot of turnover on teams. There's a lot of consistent players, but they'll take a couple seasons off and they'll fill in with someone else. So it's tough to keep a same elo per team where if you actually judge it off the actual results, it's much more accurate. More time consuming for sure, but it's definitely more accurate.
Lance McDonald (14:41.654)
Yeah. So you're adjusting after four weeks and then is it still an eight week season?
Mike (14:46.647)
Yeah, so it'll be seven weeks for this league for regular season and then we'll do that same tournament format afterwards.
Lance McDonald (14:55.042)
Okay, got it. So they play four weeks, then they move up or down based on performance for the final three weeks, and then they're going into the play-off.
Mike (15:01.847)
Yeah, and that tournament should be pretty darn close to other teams in their division as well. you know, they're really getting some good quality play. And with that being said, like if we see a team just getting absolutely smoked the first two weeks, we'll kind of intervene and make some changes there. But usually after four weeks, that gives you a pretty clear picture. It helps also a lot of teams like to take that middle ground and say they're intermediate and.
Lance McDonald (15:27.288)
It's just a...
Mike (15:28.623)
you know, intermediate is kind of like that 80 % of teams where they're like, well, we're not beginners and we're not, you know, spiking the ball at 95 miles per hour. So they always choose that, but you kind of figure out pretty quickly who needs to move up and who needs to move down.
Lance McDonald (15:32.194)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (15:43.864)
That's great. I feel like I've noticed that amongst all these podcasts is some of the leagues that do the best have almost a maniacal focus on competitive balance. if you don't have that, you won't move people around, but the people who do will, like a couple weeks in, redo their whole schedule to accommodate. Because that's some real work, right, when you have to make these changes for teams. And it benefits. Because yeah, if a team's getting blown out, that sucks. And they're not going to come back. But you really have to be committed to make that work.
Mike (16:12.431)
It's a lot of time, it's a lot of stress, it's a lot of, I mean, the best schedulers on earth.
You know you can throw in what other algorithm, you know, maybe someday we'll get there with AI but there's still not that perfect system yet rather than you know just experiencing some pen and paper and figuring out a way to make sure the game times are balanced and making sure that skills are balanced you really kind of have to have a hands-on focus and like I said with us we have 120 volleyball teams and so that takes a lot of effort a lot of time but you know it's worth it because our teams will keep signing back up with us because even if they drop
a couple of players or change over their roster, they know that they're gonna have a consistent performance and they get that state of flow like you mentioned earlier. Like that's the whole point of what we're trying to achieve with our sporting experiences. When you go out there, you start to forget about everything else besides what you're just involved in.
Lance McDonald (17:05.942)
Yeah, I agree with what you're saying as well. mean, on our tech, our scheduler, we've gone with a very vanilla algorithm and tried to make much more like visual editing tools and like a team balance sheet that shows, you know, how many matches you have at each time and then drag and drop because like you're saying, it just gets really complicated if you're trying to get the algorithm to do the work because there's all these exceptions and all these crazy things. yeah, interested. So that's and not all your leagues are the latter. That's the field house set up. The other ones are more standard.
Mike (17:34.861)
Yes. Yep, that's correct.
Lance McDonald (17:35.746)
format. And then you went into soccer and then everything else, sounds like, except hockey. So how did that happen? And were you able to leverage a lot of your volleyball players to make it sort of natural to get into soccer? Or did it feel like starting from scratch in some sense and you did have to get into advertising? Or did you rerun the whole ladder thing again, or the pickup thing again? how did you do that?
Mike (17:59.669)
Yeah, so it was, I will say we were able to leverage our indoor out here in Denver. We are blessed with amazing weather for the largest part. And so we were able to leverage our indoor volleyball players like indoor season starts about now, late September, all the way through about April. And then outdoor season starts end of March all the way through until now. And so we were able to leverage our indoor players to come play outdoors and play grass volleyball where margins are much more favorable and
come out and play same volleyball where margins were much more favorable and we were able to get that program growing. But when we started new sports like soccer, that was building from scratch. Like you're just begging and pleading and there's a whole different realm of difference between getting your first like trying to put together another volleyball team to get your first four team league started where you can recruit six players versus trying to recruit 15 additional players to get a fourth team together for a soccer league.
that no one's ever heard of before. Yeah, so we started off with 11v11 and we kind of went from there. I will say our first few leagues weren't the best because we'd have teams sign up with us because we were cheaper because we were small operation and we're just trying to get started and then they would just absolutely destroy like any free agent teams that we assembled. And so they weren't exactly thrilled with that, you know, that level of competition. But over time we kept building, it kept...
Lance McDonald (19:00.258)
Georgia 11, 11.
Lance McDonald (19:05.144)
Mmm.
Mike (19:28.899)
We eventually got our core captains together where we're able to build some consistent leagues and then as we add new people, new teams into that, that really helped out. So it was a slow process. It was not fun. I would not, it's part of that grind where you really gotta love what you do because you gotta be on the phone every day. You gotta be messaging people every day. gotta be on all the Facebook groups, advertising, whatever you gotta do to try to get enough players in there. First of all, to make it a decent league.
Lance McDonald (19:51.415)
Mm.
Mike (19:58.713)
get more so you can make it the the same level of competition. It happened pretty quickly with us for volleyball. Soccer was a much much slower process.
Lance McDonald (20:07.552)
Interesting, yeah, so you were in the, I've done that as well, right? You're just in your registration system looking at people texting them being like, hey, you're gonna make it? Yeah, yeah, coming up, yeah. Did you do any ads with that stuff when you were there? Was anything effective?
Mike (20:14.253)
You're just bagging and pleading like, come on, get your team in, please. Register.
Mike (20:24.067)
You know, we've tried ads before through social media.
We didn't do much on search engines. We find that like the cost per click and it's just so especially when you're small, it's very prohibitively expensive. You're going to find that you're meeting your ad budget like you can set however you want, but it's going to be gone in a minute. A thousand dollars does not last very long with search engine ads. Whereas we started off with social media and social media did okay for us, especially before they made all the changes.
Lance McDonald (20:40.012)
Mm-hmm.
Lance McDonald (20:51.074)
Yeah.
Mike (20:58.897)
we kind of find, you know, we'll do a couple of Facebook ads every once in a while, but that's not really what grows our business. What grows our business is word of mouth and providing a solid product where people are referring other people in. The other thing that we've gotten over time is now our website is, you know, number one or number two for all the related search terms that you need. That's something that also just takes time, you know, driving traffic to your website. Say that again.
Lance McDonald (21:24.856)
Yeah, do you any advice on that? How did you pull that off? I'm curious, how did you pull off the SEO? Was that a lot of articles or best places to play soccer in Denver? Or was it just setting up your league pages with a lot of keywords? How did you pull that off?
Mike (21:41.487)
You know, this is one of the hidden secrets of running your own leagues is not only do you have to be really good at organizing leagues, organizing people, you're also a full-time meteorologist, you're a full-time website developer, you're a full-time IT guy, while also doing all the business stuff behind the, you know, behind the screen that no one sees, like doing your own taxes and making sure all the stuff gets filed on time during the busy season. It's really not glamorous. And so you get to a point where you can actually
Lance McDonald (21:51.896)
you
Mike (22:11.761)
You know get some outside help to assist with that stuff. It's not easy But for me like when you're first starting off you're begging for your first phone call And so you're always researching however you can do to to get the right keywords to focus on you know driving traffic Posting it up on your eagling your website up anywhere you can on any related Facebook page or meetup page or You know being shout out by the local then you know newspaper
or whatever online, e-letter, all that takes time. But since you don't have the business, your phone's not ringing off the hook yet, what's your excuse not to be doing that? If you want your business to grow, that's what you gotta do to make it happen. Because realistically, unless you have a really good friend and you're gonna let them play soccer for free with you.
You're not going be able to afford a true expert to be able to help you out. And even if you do have a true expert, if your website doesn't have the traffic, you could have all the best keywords and optimization. If your website's not driving the traffic and converting the traffic to sales, it doesn't matter. So, you know, I'm sure other people can share that story. You can have the coolest looking website in the world, but at the end of the day, it comes down to the playing experience and you got to do whatever it takes to get the people there to have that playing experience.
Lance McDonald (23:34.39)
Yeah, got it. yeah. So you finally got soccer off the ground, then you started getting into other sports, and I'm going have go one by one, sounds like you're doing a lot, but I guess I'm curious, as you started to approach a bigger level of scale, because in the beginning with the volleyball, you know, you're...
It seems clear how it's different. You've got these relationships, you're doing Broncos nights, you're doing all this kind of stuff. And in the field house thing, you've got kind of a cool format. But as you've started to get more and more leagues across more and more different sports, is there a formula that you think of to differentiate yourself amongst the competition of like, does meat play chill do that's better than, I don't know what competition looks like for you in Denver, but is there something to that that you've kind of become methodical about?
Mike (24:24.245)
Yeah, so the one thing...
One thing I think I selfishly I'll say, I think we have a pretty cool name. A lot of people say me play chill and it kind of drives that next question like, whoa, what is that? Let me look into it. You know, especially like our logos got the soccer ball and the volleyball and they're like, what's this all about? And so that was able to kind of get that first level of intrigue, I think, to get people to our website or read more than like just, you know, people land on the website and immediately click off. I think that helps. But as far as what we do different than our competitors,
Lance McDonald (24:44.94)
Mm.
Mike (24:58.485)
we really focus on the sporting experience first. For us the social aspect is more of a afterthought. Like for us that we care more about making sure that we have good reps out there, you're on better fields.
Lance McDonald (25:06.424)
Mmm.
Mike (25:14.445)
your game times, your schedules are all set up in advance. We're not dropping the ball on permits. We're not having fields that are double booked. That's our focus first. And that's really helped our loyalty. And I mean, every business has turnover, but our retention rate is pretty darn high because of that. And so the other thing we did with our website is we marketed like a lot of people as a sport and social club where we just started to slowly post up.
Lance McDonald (25:33.942)
Hmm.
Mike (25:44.449)
sports as we got additional permits through the city for kickball, for some of the other offerings, basketball, where we were able to slowly build up those programs as well just because so many people coming in to find us and they're accidentally finding us through four basketball leagues instead of
excuse me, soccer and volleyball first. And so you slowly just start to build up like one we're trying to get going pretty hard is ultimate frisbee out here. And so we've got a, you know, we've got an email list, we've got it posted up where, you know, we've had close to a league getting started yet, but not quite yet. But I know that once we do like that's a pretty small niche market, but it's a very loyal.
Lance McDonald (26:12.632)
Mm.
Mike (26:29.655)
Market like you get a good ultimate frisbee experience going if you start off with four teams those four teams will come back and they're gonna invite back everybody else they know that does ultimate frisbee so
Lance McDonald (26:37.984)
Yeah. Do you find that there's, cause there's a lot of businesses in this, there's two ways to do this. There's like businesses that just be like, okay, we're going to be a soccer club or a basketball club, and we're to go really deep in this and, and do a ton of stuff just with that and become known for that. And then there's the sport and socials and the guys like you who are really sort of going across the whole spectrum of sports. Do you find that as you've gotten bigger, like you didn't see much,
When you went from volleyball to soccer, it was like starting from scratch. But is there something that happens? I'm curious, like as you get, you know, three, four, five, six, seven sports going where you see a lot of like cross-pollination where, or maybe you're not tracking that or can't tell, but I'm curious if you start to see some sort of benefit where people kind of move across the spectrum.
Mike (27:26.287)
Absolutely, and you know one of the things like a great example is one of our social sports is we only run cup and hand kickball leagues and that has been great in terms of someone's played in a you know soccer league with us or sop a league with us
And then, you know, their company is looking for something fun to do after work. And then they're, hey, you know, I've played with me, play chill before they put on good leagues. Let's check this out for our company kickball league. And so that's been one of the things where we've had a lot of success in crossover in terms where a lot of our kickball teams are being driven by corporate teams or alumni groups or big groups of friends like that, where, you know, necessarily they're not the most athletic or, but they're just
Lance McDonald (27:56.226)
Mmm.
Mike (28:14.703)
out there have a good time. so because we offered a really good soccer experience to the one guy that plays three or four days a week in different leagues, they're like, hey, come check this out for our business league or our informal, let's get together and have fun league. And that's been a big, big benefit for us.
Lance McDonald (28:32.502)
Yeah, and corporate leagues are typically, I've never done them, I don't know much about, but they're usually a bit more profitable, right? And in some sense, maybe easier to, because you're kind of dealing with the business for.
Mike (28:42.543)
It's honestly a lot easier because like we've run one group for corporate pickleball. They literally just call us up and say, hey, we want to do this for six weeks. We've got all the teams just booked a space and make sure like we just make sure someone's out there to run it, make sure the equipment's out there, be out there, collect scores. And that's it. It's super, super easy. I wish every league was that easy. I don't have to worry about level of skill. I don't have to worry about people showing up.
It's their own thing. I just book it. manage, you know, I do the backend work, but the front end works pretty much on them outside of making sure we just have a staff member out there with the right equipment.
Lance McDonald (29:22.616)
Cool, yeah that makes sense. What about like staffing? especially, you we kind of talked about the evolution on the player side, but I'm sure there was a massive evolution from you and your wife out there on Saturday nights to you probably have maybe some full-time staff, maybe some bunch of part-time staff all over. Like how has that evolved?
What have you found that helps you to be sort of successful as you've gotten bigger with having good people that retain? I'm sure money is a part of it and that's for all of us I think gotten more more expensive as time goes on but yeah, so what are some of your thoughts on that?
Mike (29:57.987)
Yeah, so actually as big as we've gotten as far as our full-time staff, just my wife and I, we do this full-time. We've got two kids, so it's, you know, it's...
It's a fun experience. I wake up at like 630 every day and my phone really doesn't stop ringing until like 11 or 1130 at night when you know our last league finishes because well players calls up and be like, hey, I my sunglasses out at the field. Can you call the staff? And so we'll help them out with that. But as far as our referees, our staff in terms of that, they're all contractors.
Lance McDonald (30:19.469)
Thanks.
Mike (30:33.519)
And that helps, you know, if they make over 600 bucks, they get a 1099 from us. But almost all of our staff in terms of contractors, people out there representing our leagues, they're all players. They all played with us at some point or they've been referred by a player at some point. We go out there usually when they first start off, we'll tag them up with one of our experienced refs. I kind of feel like this is the Belichick coaching tree where I went out there with the first referees, I got them trained up and now those referees are training up there.
Lance McDonald (30:49.464)
Mm.
Mike (31:03.553)
friends and their players we referred to them and so it's kind of made its own little tree if you will of you know I kind of started off and now they all know how we want to have things operate and run and obviously you know we take our customer feedback very seriously on our referee performance so if someone's not doing a good job or if they're showing up late we have that debrief with them and we let them like we let them know you know here the steps we can improve or maybe this isn't a good fit for you and we can
work on something else.
but we have a software in place now to manage all our referee shifts. We post them up every Friday, usually about noon for the following week. And then people can sign up for the shifts that they want. And it makes it really easy to see which shifts are still open on Monday morning. So I can message people say, Hey, I need, I need someone to fill in X shifts over at this location. And it's, it's, it's a lot easier than when I used to just have to manage 3000 text messages and phone
calls and running a Google calendar myself. Do not recommend that once you get past like four referees. Figure out another solution.
Lance McDonald (32:09.612)
that.
Lance McDonald (32:15.66)
Yeah, yeah, I can't believe that. mean, what you're saying that just you and your wife, like that sounds like a lot of, have you thought about hiring somebody to just some of the tediousness?
Mike (32:24.533)
Yeah, so I I got a tip
actually from my father a lot, a couple of years ago, he was, he's always been a serial entrepreneur. and the first thing he does, he always hires on a virtual assistant. And that has been an absolute game changer for me because, I'm a busy guy. I'm always running around to meetings or different locations or trying to meet up with new facilities or even just being like a dad or a husband and, you know, picking up my kids from school or whatever it might be. But I can literally just, you know, voice the text or call him and be like, Hey,
Lance McDonald (32:38.209)
Hmm.
Mike (32:57.893)
Can you send out this email? Can you draft this league welcome? Can you send out these team rosters? It's been a really affordable way to get the additional help I need for kind of not to diminish the work that he does but more the the menial kind of basic level stuff I mean when I when it comes down to doing you know, I the rare like 24 team double elimination whatever its schedule I'm still the one at the end of the day doing that because it would take him three weeks to get that
done but in terms of just the basic schedules he can do it I look over it and if I need to make changes it takes me five minutes versus the hour to post it up publish it email it out to everybody and so that is the biggest thing has been being able to create time for myself and so I haven't a virtual assistant I cannot speak highly enough I wish I would have found it a little bit earlier because that's really been able to buy me time and getting stuff done
Lance McDonald (33:56.152)
How do you find a virtual assistant? So you say virtual, this is not somebody located in Denver that is helping at all with operating.
Mike (34:01.827)
That's great.
My guy, I'll give him a shout out, Ace, he's based out of the Philippines. And so he works set hours and we have a great interface. There are several services online if you guys want to search them or if anybody wants to message me directly, I'm sure you can track down my information. I'm happy to give some suggestions for it. But it's also with our virtual assistant, it was one of those things where it was still recruiting. It's like hiring someone. We fired the first
within like two or three weeks because they weren't quick they weren't learning they didn't understand the sports business model whereas ace kind of got it right away because he plays sports himself and then we kind of were able to train him up in our systems and processes and now he's of he's almost as efficient as I am so it's really cool and it's been amazing
Lance McDonald (34:54.392)
Cool. Yeah. Alright, I guess another area that...
probably changed a lot or maybe it hasn't but as you've gotten bigger across multiple sports is sponsorships. So it sounds like you were doing some of that from the very beginning with the volleyball and the bar afterwards and I mean that's valuable for the ball right you're packing them out you're bringing a lot of money to them do you still have a focus on that kind of aspect of hey play this league go to this bar it sounds like you're more focused on the player experience the sporting experience and not as much on the social but can you talk a little bit to that and and how that's been financially for you as well because I understand
from some sport and socials, that's a pretty significant area of revenue for them.
Mike (35:33.933)
Yeah, so that's actually our biggest downfall so far. Our focus has been growing the core business, growing the leagues, growing the solid products, making sure we have good graphs, working on getting new facilities. We're now probably at that point now where I can start focusing on.
the sponsorship piece. But what we always offer to our sponsors, we'd find the local small business bar. We don't really deal with the big.
chain of bars. Because I mean, we're a small business too. I'd rather help out the local Denver business. And you know, we all got through COVID somehow. And they had to do it while like, thankfully, we don't own a facility during that. And we still not yet. So if anybody's looking to sell warehouse in Denver, feel free to hit me up.
but they somehow got through it while still trying to pay for, you know, mortgage or rent. And so that's our way to kind of help them out. And they help us out by always speaking highly of us. We don't charge them a sponsorship fee. We do ask for them every once in while. tosses, you know, a couple of gift cards for our league champions or something like that. But as far as the sponsorship piece, that's really the next level to grow in this business. Now we're we've got.
I probably have to bring our website to see all sports like six or seven sports that are multiple nights per week And they're all solid pretty solid leagues where now we really need to pivot to that That's kind of where our next focus with this business is because like you said that is the most lucrative side of this business A lot of people don't understand until you reach a certain size unless you have the right conditions
Mike (37:16.719)
running leagues is not a super profitable business. You kind of have to be a little psychotic to do this industry to start it off because until you get to a certain size, it does not make financial sense while you're killing yourself over a $70 registration. That is a eight or nine week commitment.
There's way easier sales to be made out there. Go become a realtor, go sell one house. You're to make more money in a month. But until you get to a certain size, that's where the sponsorship piece does fit in. And that is definitely the lucrative part. With that being said, I think the key and part of reason why we didn't do the sponsorships or had as much of a focus on the sponsorship is I know how important it is. someone hands you that check, they are relying on you to help out their business.
It's no longer, this, take the money. We love you guys. We'll see you guys in six months for the next sponsorship check. They're really depending on you to fill their bar or represent their product or make sure that you are demoing their product properly out at the fields, whatever it is. And so that's part of the reason why until we didn't have our base built up so strongly that I felt like it would be insincere to really focus on the sponsorship part. Probably much to my detriment of my own wallet.
that I haven't focused on that, but that's kind of my philosophy behind it.
Lance McDonald (38:40.844)
Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes sense. I think there's different perspectives on that but some I've heard are that with bars I mean you can I think it was talking to One of the podcasts is Chicago sport and social if you haven't heard that one we talked a lot about sponsorship but you're saying that you're giving really good value to these bars and They'll be willing to pay pretty good money so that they get somewhat significant. I think amounts from that I'm not totally sure but also they'll do higher level which is where you're at now like
beverage sponsorships, like Corona or Bud Light or whatever, and then you're like pairing that together with the bar ones and it's like, go get 30 % off a bucket of Corona at this bar, and then you're kind of getting it from both sides. So yeah, it could be some interesting stuff to explore there. So how many teams do you have now coming out or how many players like per week? So you said six or seven sports, multiple nights per week.
Mike (39:33.301)
Yeah, I think the easier way to like I'm going off last year's numbers. I know we've grown another 15 or 20 percent this year. We're probably somewhere around 11 to 12000 players per year. So I'm not exactly sure how that breaks down. I know during the indoor season, our numbers are smaller just because we're limited by the number of facilities we have. But I mean, during the outdoor season, we're probably looking at five to six hundred teams.
Lance McDonald (39:53.836)
Yeah.
Mike (40:00.781)
you know, for seven or eight weeks. So it's it's it's a lot of work. It's a lot of fun.
Lance McDonald (40:05.142)
Yeah, man, I'm impressed that you're still, I mean, that you have the virtual assistant, but that's a lot. That seems like you're doing more than is normal, I think, across, think the amount that you are managing with your wife is a lot, for sure.
Mike (40:20.075)
Yeah, we're probably a little bit foolish. We're probably at that point where we do need to start hiring on help, whether it's part time or trying to find my next prodigy to our protege to take over for me. But it's it's one of those things like I've got so much invested into this. I mean, it's been 10 years of labor and love and covid. I mean, we could have a whole nother podcast about covid. You guys, you know, I don't know where you were at, but if you're down in
Lance McDonald (40:38.551)
Yep.
Mike (40:49.969)
Texas it was a little bit easier on you guys than up here in Colorado. But it was, you know, the toughest thing was just not knowing. I just turned on the TV and I get a news conference and everything shut down. And if I may speak real quickly to that, I think that's one of the things that actually we handled really well that led to our rapid growth after COVID. We...
Lance McDonald (40:53.452)
Yeah.
Lance McDonald (41:10.871)
Mmm.
Mike (41:13.839)
I won't name our competitor, but let's just say they are the Amazon or the sport and social club industry. For those of you that are in this industry, you probably know who they are. But I felt like they kind of mishandled the whole COVID shutdown in Colorado. And what my wife and I did, we made the very painful decision, said, listen, we can't offer these leagues. We don't know when we're going to offer them again. And we gave everybody full refunds. And I think it was something like a $23,000 hit. called it.
bloody Monday where we just swallowed it and just refunded everybody for that upcoming season. and we were so sad cause we were at that point where we were finally turning the corner. We're starting to grow. got more than one sport going, you know, a couple, three sports going and, we refunded everybody immediately and said, Hey guys, we'd to have you come back when things open back up. We don't know when that is, but we'll keep you on our list with your permission.
Lance McDonald (41:45.186)
Mmm.
Mike (42:08.759)
Whereas some of our other competitors, it was more of a drawn out process. You can look at the reviews and checks were lost or they had to wait months until refunds or they only got credits. Where we felt like we always tried to do the right thing for our customers. Listen to it.
Most of our customers don't know at this point. It's just my wife and I it is everything You're be absolutely perfect when you come up and play with our leagues now I mean things I can't control the weather. I can't control when the referee gets in the car accident I can't control the lights not coming on You know these they're all elements that you can't control you can mitigate as much as possible And so we do our best for a customer always and that has served us very well, you know, not every customer is gonna feel that way
You know, well, we hope they earn that chance to earn their business back again. But I think that's the one thing that's really kept our business going and kept our retention up. We've made mistakes, we own up to it. It's tough to have those phone calls. It's tough. You know, sometimes teams just say, forget you guys, give me my money back. And, know, we do that. So, you know, you got to do what's best, I think. And that's kind of what's grown us.
Lance McDonald (43:21.814)
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, it sounds like you handled it the right way. So what, I guess what's next for you guys? So sponsorships, you wanna get into that. Maybe hire somebody at some point who you can sort of train up to take over some of the stuff that you're doing. What else is like your ambition for the next few years, I guess?
Mike (43:42.671)
Yeah, so we are working with other municipalities to start spreading to around in the metro area. One of the difficulties in Denver market is it's really just a city of Denver.
that rents out their fields to adult groups. A lot of the other cities only do it if you have youth programs. I think that also kind of speaks to the fact why youth leagues are so much bigger than adult leagues. And so we're working on some long-term relationships with new municipalities where they haven't had the same success or someone to drive their adult recreational leagues yet, where they have these great facilities, but they just sit.
Lance McDonald (44:04.898)
Mm-hmm.
Mike (44:25.615)
open most of the year and you know for me living in Denver where almost every playing field is you know playing into the last minute of darkness or every field with lights is booked until 11 p.m. it kind of breaks my heart to see just fields sitting wide open and so we've started those engagements with some of those communities to see
Lance McDonald (44:40.876)
Yeah.
Mike (44:45.867)
How we can step in whether it's a revenue split or you know, we pay them rent whatever it might be to start growing their Engagement and getting like you said getting adults out there off the couches and being engaged in your community Making new friends having a good time out at leagues You know Numerous players, you know first time playing with us. They're like dude Monday night softball is the highlight of my week
Lance McDonald (45:09.559)
Yeah.
Mike (45:10.503)
You know, it's great that you guys are doing this. You know, what do you guys got next? And so we want to be able to spread that to other communities. But yeah, and then the next piece would be definitely the partnerships with the sponsorships. That's that's where we can finally get to the point. You know, whatever money I would make off of that, I think would be used entirely to grow the staff and grow our operation and maybe actually be able to buy myself some free time. So.
Lance McDonald (45:38.23)
Yeah, I love it. Cool. Okay, I think that's all I got in terms of questions. Is there anything else you'd like to share?
Mike (45:46.883)
Yeah, this is a very crazy business. If I can make any recommendations, definitely reach out for help from other people first. They always say if you want to own a coffee shop, go work for Starbucks first. Understand truly what you're getting into. You could love soccer, but if you don't have the right...
extrovertness, being able to answer phone calls and being out there dealing with problems. This is, you're going to end up hating soccer. You're going to hate everything about this business. This is something where you kind of have to have a big heart, big shoulder, and you kind of really have to be able to communicate your message very well about what you're doing. There is, the other side is this business is very cutthroat. If your business starts to fail, there is.
12 other competitors waiting on the sidelines. And that's one thing I think I've seen the most over the last decade is kind of the consolidation of sport leagues where it's now one sport league is in multiple cities versus just one where it used to be like almost kind of every city had their own thing or had two or three things. You're seeing a lot of consolidation which is just going to make competition that much harder. That's one of those things where you really are going to have to find something to make yourself stick out, be unique.
and really give yourself to it because if you're ignoring the phone calls, you're ignoring the text messages, you're ignoring the problems, you're just ignoring your customers and you gotta hold on to your customers. You're gonna make them happy whatever it takes when you first start off because you're just gonna be a small fish in a big sea and someone else would be very happy to take that customer and make them happy. So that's my final piece of advice.
Lance McDonald (47:30.658)
That's great. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, it's definitely, it's changing quick for sure. Awesome. Well, thanks for your time and sharing all the insights. I think there's a lot of good stuff here. So I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you.
Mike (47:41.327)
All right, well thanks for the invite. It's been fun.
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