Uncover how Jenna, founder of Volleyball Paradise Club, built a thriving beach volleyball community in Tampa Bay through creative league formats, social outings, and plans for international expansion.
.svg){kind=icon}
Welcome to Episode #15 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 chat with Jenna, the founder of Volleyball Paradise Club, an adult beach volleyball community that has grown rapidly since its launch in May 2023. With four locations across St. Petersburg and northern Tampa, the club has attracted over 180 active members by offering group classes, leagues, private lessons, and social outings. Jenna attributes the club’s success to its strong sense of community, where players of all levels come together not only to play but to build lasting friendships. Flexible scheduling allows busy adults to participate in leagues and classes on different days, making it easy to get involved.
Jenna emphasizes that Volleyball Paradise stands out with its "King of the Beach" format, which allows solo sign-ups and removes the barrier of needing a team. This format encourages members to mingle, play with and against each other, and receive coaching during each session. The club also hosts social outings such as beach cleanups and volleyball watch parties, further strengthening the close-knit community. With a dedicated staff of 11 professional and semi-professional coaches, Volleyball Paradise has expanded quickly and is looking to grow even further, with plans to open new locations in other cities and organize international volleyball trips to destinations like Brazil—blending competition with travel for a unique and enriching experience.
Key Takeaways
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.
--
Lance (00:01.366)
Alright, today we have Jenna from Volleyball Paradise Club. Thank you for being here, Jenna. Yeah, so let's start with the basics of where you're located, where you're running, how many teams are participating, all the basics.
Jenna (00:06.122)
Thanks for having me.
Jenna (00:14.286)
For sure. So, Volleyball Paradise Club, we're located in the Tampa Bay area. So we have a location in St. Pete. So we have actually four different locations in St. Pete. And then we have a location in Temple Terrace, which is northern Tampa. So we kind of cover the whole Tampa Bay area. We're getting a little bit more south Sarasota -Bradenton area as we begin to grow. But we're an adult beginner, intermediate, advanced beach volleyball community. So we have...
Group classes, we have leagues, we have private lessons, social outings, just a whole big type of community. Beach volleyball is super, super popular down here in the Tampa Bay area, especially with like ton of professionals that play in this area. I would say it's like the second biggest beach volleyball hub for professionals to live and train other than California. So biggest in Florida, I would say. So it's a huge pro community and then it's kind of dispersing into, you know,
Beginners seeing that it's always on the beach, beach volleyball courts everywhere. So people get interested into it and so we started teaching.
Lance (01:18.668)
Awesome. So you say teaching, does that mean you played at a high level before this? you got involved in like, yeah, so how did you get involved in this?
Jenna (01:23.788)
Currently, yeah.
Jenna (01:28.144)
So currently I play professional beach volleyball. So this was my second professional season last year was like my rookie season. And it's been amazing. It's super fun. I mean, the community is super small. Not a not a ton. I don't know if you've ever heard of the AVP. Yeah, exactly. So like not a ton of money in it. So obviously you got to do other things besides just play professionally, but.
Lance (01:46.412)
Mm -mm.
Jenna (01:56.492)
It's like the NFL or the MLB of beach volleyball. Just nobody's heard of it.
Lance (02:00.886)
Yeah, yeah, okay. Right, well, I have two tiny kids, so I don't hear a lot of things at the moment. just work and take care of babies, but yeah, locked in. Cool, so I guess you played all grown up and then how does professional, I mean, are you like on a team and or is it just you're just in your turn? Like, how does that work?
Jenna (02:08.486)
Locked in.
Jenna (02:14.764)
Okay.
Jenna (02:21.396)
Yeah, it's super cool actually. basically, the professional baseball world, there's a tour. So the AVP has a tour usually starting in like late March, early April, and it finishes around October, November. So we're kind in the middle of season. It's winding down a little bit, but you choose. You don't have to have the same teammate every single tournament. A lot of people switch up teammates during the season.
depending on who can travel to what tournament. Maybe you're going to California one weekend. think there was an international tournament in Canada last weekend. It just kind of depends who's where and who can make what tournaments. But generally at the very highest level, you try to stick to the same partner. But again, depends on people's schedules and stuff like that. Yeah, there's a tour almost every single weekend. There's tournaments. There's a ton of tournaments.
that are local in Florida, California, almost every single weekend there's tournaments. And then at the professional level, maybe every weekend or every other weekend about, they'll have professional tour tournaments around the country.
Lance (03:26.484)
Wow, okay, cool. is it, I guess, a more like tennis in the sense that you're kind of your own professional, there's not like a Because I know with tennis and pickleball in that space that there's emerging professional leagues, I guess there's like a couple of them, but they seem to be in teams. Like there's a Dallas team and there's a Austin team, and so it's sort of a different kind of format than.
Jenna (03:31.496)
Yeah. Yep.
Jenna (03:38.687)
Yeah.
Jenna (03:46.311)
Yeah, so it's interesting because the AVP is trying to do that this year. Actually, they're doing like the AVP league. So they're trying to get more into that, which I think they're trying to find their way with like financially how to best run it. So we'll see how it goes. It's going to be interesting, though exciting. So we'll have a Miami team, California team, New York team. think there might be a Dallas team. I think there's maybe a Texas team. I'll have to look into that to know.
Yeah, all over. So we'll see how that goes.
Lance (04:17.195)
Okay. Well, so then let's talk about the business that you're running. So did you start Paradise or... Okay.
Jenna (04:24.105)
Yeah, yep. So I started Paradise last May, so May 2023. So we've been in business a year and couple months now, which has been the best. I love it. It's the best job in the world. I there's nothing I'd rather do. Nothing in the world. It's amazing.
Lance (04:40.854)
Okay cool, yeah that's great. Yeah so that's still a bit new. Awesome.
Jenna (04:45.636)
Yeah, absolutely. We're learning as we go. Every single new league that we open, new classes that we open, new locations we're trying to build.
Lance (04:54.978)
Okay, did you start with classes and just say, hey, I'm a pro, I can teach you, and then you got kind of the community going? Like how did it get off the ground like last May?
Jenna (05:03.259)
So basically what we started with was two classes a week for each level. And this is all adults. mean, we have a couple adults that bring their kids and then they do classes together, which is a fun dynamic. But it's mainly adults that maybe want to learn or have played. We have a lot of people who have played like in high school or played like intramurals in college that are like, that was really fun. I want to keep doing that. And I want to learn beach or they played indoor intramurals, stuff like that.
Lance (05:29.41)
Bye.
Jenna (05:32.967)
So we'll teach them the differences between beach and indoor, get them kind of set there. They'll take classes if they want to continue to progress. A lot of our advanced players, they'll train classes and then they'll play the local tournaments in the area, which is cool because we get to play the same tournaments. They're just playing at whatever level they're at. I get to play at my level. We can cheer each other on, coach each other while we're there. But yeah, so basically we started with classes of each level and then I started with just one league and then
Lance (05:53.132)
Right.
Jenna (06:02.746)
League is super popular. Everybody loves League. So then we opened more Leagues, more Leagues. We opened different kinds of Leagues. So we started with co -ed fours and then we just started popping off on co -ed twos. Everybody loves twos as they start to advance, know, kind of get addicted to two versus two. So that's been a big hit lately and maybe eventually do threes. I thought about doing a combo of like a beach and a grass League.
Lance (06:22.048)
Mmm.
Jenna (06:29.967)
So like half the league is grass, half the league is beach, but we're experimenting.
Lance (06:35.552)
Okay, and when you say we, who is we? it you and a partner or? Yeah, I who he is.
Jenna (06:39.749)
No, it's actually, it's me. But I have an amazing, amazing staff of 11 of actually other professional or semi professionals that are in the area that also happen to be some of my best friends. It's super small community. But so we have a ton of coaches that are in the area that also coach for me as well, which has been amazing.
Lance (06:53.388)
Sure.
Lance (07:01.218)
Sweet, okay, so you did the classes initially, so you're kind of a part of the community, so then you said, hey, I wanna start a league. You started with fours, and then it just became popular. Why do you think it became popular? Is it because of you and that this is legit? Why did people even come to this? I imagine there's other leagues in this area, because you're saying it's kind of a hub.
Jenna (07:19.456)
Yeah, yep, there's definitely other leagues in the area. The most successful leagues run at bars, so I think that's the key. But I don't have any like restaurant bar facility right now. We just rent courts throughout the city, different complexes that they have and stuff like that. But why is it so popular? The community, man, the community is like...
Lance (07:27.202)
I'm seeing that. Yep.
Lance (07:36.704)
Yep.
Jenna (07:46.024)
So amazing. There was already like a small community in the area. And then as people just go to the beach and they see each other playing or see other people playing, they'll come play pickup. They're like, man, that's really fun. I just wish there was more. I wish there was more. And so we just organized that, created an opportunity. If you build it, they will come. So I think the reason that people continue with it and stick with it is because of the community. It's just, it's...
Lance (08:06.102)
Yeah.
Jenna (08:11.659)
It's a social setting where you can get exercise. You're on the beach at least once a week, which everybody loves. And you're just going to meet other active, like -minded adults that are in the area.
Lance (08:24.044)
Yeah, I can imagine you being you and the passion and your friends and network and all that probably influences that. But when you say community, I'm curious, what are you doing exactly to sort of make it feel like that and like a community? is there a way that you can compare it to other leagues? to some degree, it sounds like, yeah, beach volleyball is fun and that's probably true of other leagues as well. But you've got this sort of special kind of community thing going on.
Jenna (08:46.523)
Yeah. Yeah, I would say so with our community, obviously we started last year, so we're not as big as the biggest level leagues that are around here, but it's an intimate community and what we do for our leagues is actually a little bit different than what they do for their leagues. So their leagues, it's like one match per week for your league, whatever.
Lance (08:53.825)
Bye.
Jenna (09:13.824)
So what we started with for our co -ed fours league was a King of the Beach format. So it's solo sign up. You don't need a team. So that kind of takes away that like, I need a team. I don't know anybody. Like, how do I get involved? So it's solo show up and it's flexible schedule. So right now we have for our co -ed fours leagues, we have a Saturday league and a Sunday league. And if you can't make the Saturday one, you can just come to the Sunday one. So it's not.
Lance (09:24.438)
Yeah.
Jenna (09:41.803)
We're playing for a championship. It's an eight week season. It's, hey, here's the setting. You come, you show up, you play two and a half hours worth of volleyball. So usually six to seven games. They're getting a ton of reps in. They're with their squad for two and a half hours. Like they're really getting the intermingle. And the way we do it with the King of the Beach format is we number everybody that shows up. Say we have, you know, for lack of, you know, easiness, say we have eight people show up to a league.
Team one, or the first game would be team, or number one, two, three, and four, versus five, six, seven, eight. The next game would be one, three, five, seven, versus two, four, six, eight. So you're playing with and against every single league member during the entire, like, league duration.
Lance (10:29.122)
I see, okay. So it's almost like there's a pickup element to it where people can just show up.
Jenna (10:33.268)
Pick up element. Yeah, but organize and we also coach as well during the the league. they're getting yeah, so it's like beginner intermediate level where maybe they don't know everything. They're playing a little bit of jungle volleyball and so we provide that coaching so that they're understanding their learning while they're doing their leagues getting to intermingle with every single person that is in that league and then getting a ton of ton of reps. So it's two and a half hours. So they're they're you know tired by the end of it. They're worked out and then they got their social setting in.
Lance (10:38.88)
okay. Yeah.
Lance (11:03.34)
see okay that's that's that's super different than a situation where you've got to have three teammates you have a team you come you play for one hour you just play a match there's maybe a an official there or something so how
Jenna (11:13.567)
Yeah, and it's nice because you don't have to find, like, the whole sub ordeal, how everybody's like, I need a sub for my league, need a sub. You know how that goes. This one, you don't need any subs. We can run it with as little as six players. We can run it as many as 24 players when we have our two chords. The numbers don't really matter as much, so it's a lot easier to be able to run it.
Lance (11:37.77)
Okay, and when you say co -ed is that every team has to have like two guys and two girls in the fours format or what are the rules around the co -ed or it just means it's kind of open to anybody?
Jenna (11:46.953)
No, it's open to everybody. Anybody can sign up, show up. If we have eight girls show up that day, all right, that's our co -ed league, you know? Yeah.
Lance (11:53.876)
Yeah, okay, okay. And it starts at a single time. So you say, okay, we're gonna start at seven o 'clock, whoever shows up, we're just gonna make it work. Does that like, and how do people pay for this? Is this, pay per time you show? Monthly.
Jenna (12:06.01)
monthly reoccurring membership. they would just buy like a league membership and they can use, have five credits per month. And you know, we have multiple different leagues across our different locations. So for our co -ed fours league, have two different days per week that they can attend. So if they're there on a Saturday and they're not there the next Saturday, they can do Saturday and Sunday that week. Or if maybe they're not going to be there and they can't make it up.
They can come to a class that week so they can use that lead credit for a class. So it kind of intermingles with all.
Lance (12:38.178)
Mmm, got it, okay. That's pretty different. So they get five credits, there's classes, there's league, which is kind of pick up. Is there any like official league where you have to have a team and there's ranking and stuff as well?
Jenna (12:51.057)
Yeah, so we have our advanced, so it's AAA co -ed twos. That's like the normal league format. They'll play two matches per league day. It's eight week duration. It's championships, all of that. And then we just recently opened an intermediate co -ed twos league. So a little bit lower level, but still two versus two. that, those guys just surprised the heck out of me. It sold out within seven minutes. I was like, you guys.
Guys, this is amazing. So they were super super excited about that one. So I think just creating more opportunities of Because everybody wants to like build up to a higher level and everybody wants to you know, keep pushing for that You know next level league just creating that opportunity to kind of like Demonstrate what that next league league level is gonna look like in their own level setting
Lance (13:43.235)
It's an interesting approach to get it off the ground because it sounds like you sort of started with more of flexible community. I know why you use that word because it's just a group of people. It's a little bit less structured. Pay your credits. You can come to this. You can come to that. And probably a lot of relationships be informed because you're mixing things up between people. So then you've got that community part.
Jenna (13:49.936)
Mm -hmm.
Jenna (13:53.952)
-huh.
Jenna (13:58.788)
Yeah, that's fine.
Jenna (14:03.355)
Mm -hmm.
Lance (14:04.884)
And then, and then, yeah, once you've got that, you can start layering on more like structured competitive events and sounds like that's going really well. You said it sold out in seven minutes. How many people are participating in or how many, guess, yeah, the monthly membership thing, how many, how many members do you have at the moment?
Jenna (14:09.221)
Mm
Jenna (14:20.922)
So right now we have so active members. I want to say we're around 180, but in total so we have like WhatsApp chats for every single like cohort. So like our Saint Pete beginners level class will have our group chat for that Saint Pete intermediate level class Saint Pete. You know intermediate level League so we have chats for all of those and we have polls that go out each day that we have a class so it's hey.
Lance (14:27.617)
Nice.
Lance (14:32.866)
Hmm.
Jenna (14:50.842)
Monday, 6 to 7 30, class with Coach Jenna. Yes, I'm coming, no, I'm not coming. So you can click the poll if it works and they'll come. if they can't, something comes up five minutes before class happens, they'll just click no in the poll, no worries, go from there. So the flexibility option, I would say, is one of the biggest things that really provides the opportunity for our people because adult lives are so, you know.
You never know what's gonna come up. Your kid gets sick, your dog needs to get taken somewhere, wherever it is. The flexibility component is one of the best things for us because they can't make it on that day. All right, I'll just make it up next Monday or next Tuesday. We have enough events to that point where they have a lot of flexibility.
Lance (15:36.534)
Yeah, that all makes a ton of sense. It sounds like it's going well. I mean, the social component, so you've got like really good tiers for competitive, because that's another thing I hear all the time, is just how important it is for people to have good matches. Because if you come and you get blown out, super discouraging. And I think that's a hard problem for people to solve.
Jenna (15:50.815)
No fun. Yeah.
Lance (15:55.37)
in the early days because you don't, when you have like a lot of people, then you can do a lot of segmenting and whether you're using like a ELO ranking system or you're using traditional divisions or whatever, you can work it out. But sounds like the way you've done it, you can kind of circumvent that because it's paired with classes and you can mix people up and now you can kind of grow from there. But then the other piece, of course, is like the social component and you've got that kind of baked in. Are there other pieces that you think about? Cause you know, there's a whole category, right, of adult.
sort of leagues that are sport and socials and they're doing like parties at the end of leagues or other kinds of, you know, going to a bar. And you mentioned, and yeah, we have a league working with us that has a bar and that works super well because he brings people into these courts and then they filter right into the bar and it's a great business.
Jenna (16:29.632)
Yeah, that was a one.
Jenna (16:36.535)
the summers.
Mm -hmm. Yeah. So what we do with that is more social outings. So we'll have... And they kind of create it on their own as well, so the chats really help with that. with the chats, whenever I add somebody, you know, somebody joins League, I add them to the chat, I let them know, hey, you know, this is a chat for, you know, these pools so you can RSVP. It's a way for you to connect to any player of your level in the community. You can throw in there, hey, does anybody want to play pickup Thursday morning?
Lance (16:46.848)
Okay.
Jenna (17:08.715)
and then they'll go play pickup. They'll be able to easily get a group together of people they know that are in their level and they're able to connect with them without actually having to meet them first. But they know that it's gonna be a good competition just because they're in that level. But yeah, that's kinda how we do it. Or we'll do social outings where the whole club, so like both locations and everybody, we just did the Olympic beach volleyball. We did a watch party at a local.
like bar that has a beach volleyball court. And so we all got together, you play, you watch the volleyball. We've done other like beach cleanups, stuff like that. Just fun things that we can get together and do as an entire group. And that's nice because then our beginners get to like see our advanced players and then our advanced players get to hang out with our coaches. like, it's just really a mingling in, in essence.
Lance (17:59.08)
Yeah, have you thought about the the bar thing because it sounds like it fits it fits nicely for business
Jenna (18:03.465)
Boy, would I like that. I would love it. I've been working with Caddies and Bradenton, and we're hoping that'll be able to take off, and then Sky Beach, which also is like a resort with a bar. So hopefully we'll be able to have that moving forward. But so far we don't have anything with a bar. But once we do, hoping that'll take off. If it works. There's another bar that, Tampa Bay Club Sport, I don't know if you've ever heard of that.
Lance (18:26.626)
Yeah, yeah.
Jenna (18:32.456)
but they do basically same thing, run a bunch of different leagues, they have kickball and all that stuff as well as volleyball. And they do really, really well and everybody loves being there because they got the bar and they got a bunch of volleyball courts. That's like a very social setting as well. So that's, I mean, always a good way to go if you have that opportunity.
Lance (18:51.852)
Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, I guess along the lines of that, like facilities, how did you find places to play? And what are your rental arrangements look like? Because one thing I thought about as you were talking about, you never know who's going to show up just from my own experiences. kind of want to have a, and your model is different, but like you want to have enough teams to cover what you've rented or the money starts to not make too much sense.
Jenna (19:00.602)
to play.
Jenna (19:19.239)
Right.
Lance (19:20.15)
How do your, do your rental arrangements, are they sort of flexible or how did you find places to rent or what's that look like?
Jenna (19:26.003)
So we rent through the city of St. Pete. So any like per month we say, well actually it's, I do six month like durations, but we rent monthly, we're paying monthly of you know how many we have. So say I rented two courts for you know a 16 person league, you know we're running two versus twos and stuff like that. If for some reason I don't fill it.
I can just say, all right, next month, I don't want this rental anymore. So that's kind of how we work. And so it doesn't lose too much money, but that's never the problem. The problem is finding court rentals. So we have too many events that we want to run and too many things that we want to be able to open. Then we have court rentals is our biggest issue by far.
Lance (20:14.54)
Yeah, so how are you trying to solve that now? Have you found a way that's, so city partnerships are always great, that's how we do it as well. But I hear that all the time, people will have something that's starting to pick up momentum, they're feeling good, and then crap, how do I get facilities? How do I get venues?
Jenna (20:32.795)
So that's my everyday fight. You've got to get super inventive. You've got to find ways to get around it. like what we were doing in the very beginning, we just opened with St. Pete and then we had so many people that wanted to come from Tampa, but they were like, that's such a long drive. You've got to cross the bridge. Not that hard, but. So we opened something in North Tampa. Basically what I do is like, you know,
at a certain point I'll drive around, know, where can I find courts? I'll go to different city parks. All right, do they have a court? If they do, let's, you know, see if we can rent it. Is it good enough that we can use it? So just find it, like, literally, I'll look on Google Maps, be like, all right, does that look like a sand court? Can I, check into that? So really just getting inventive with it, trying to communicate with different bars and stuff like that as well, trying to get partnerships like that.
Lance (21:05.77)
I knew it.
Lance (21:16.064)
Yeah.
Jenna (21:27.172)
But I did consider building a facility. I'm a year in, so I'm like, all right, maybe my next year. But that would be an ideal scenario is having my own facility.
Lance (21:27.244)
Hmm.
Lance (21:39.478)
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. I feel like that is the key though, is the hustle. It's like just show up sometimes and make people talk to you and then turns out, you're real person and you're nice and yeah, mean, we could work something out.
Jenna (21:45.968)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
And it's so amazing because we have our community so close and intimate that they know that because they'll be like, can you open this league? I'm like, court rentals, we're trying. We'll find them. And then they'll go out into their own communities. Hey, where can we find a court for Jenna to open up this league? So then we have 280 plus people with different connections. I have one of my
Lance (22:11.062)
Yeah.
Jenna (22:20.065)
amazing day one. name is Jen. She's my Florida mom and she's always, you know, I saw a court over here. Let me, let me talk to them or I know this connection or whoever it may be. they're, the community is just like always trying to help cause they, want those things open and I want to open them. It's just where can we find the space?
Lance (22:40.076)
Yeah, that's huge if you can tap into your community. I'm also wondering though, when you're talking about all this stuff that you're doing, it's like you have a professional career as well. So how do you balance those two? And do you think, you have people that help you sort of run it or? Yeah. What's the thing about
Jenna (22:57.807)
I have such an amazing staff. When I say it's like 11 of my very close friends, they are all so, so amazing. And there's so many professionals that are in the area. And a lot of times with the professional schedule, can't really, I mean, you can try to have a nine to five, but it's more so you got to have a little bit of a different time schedule to be able to train, go travel to the tournaments that you want to travel to, stuff like that.
Lance (23:11.65)
Mm -hmm.
Jenna (23:26.904)
So they're always looking for odd jobs and let me pick up these shifts, let me pick up as many as I can here, I'm not playing that tournament, I'll run this whole weekend. So just having a nice community of people that I really trust, I know they're great players, I know they're great coaches, because I play with them, I play against them. Some of them coach me, that coach on my staff. It's the first layer community of like, all right, I'm a professional, here's all the other professionals, I know what...
they need as far as an income and I provide this opportunity for them to be able to pick up shifts. It's super flexible. If they can't do a shift, hey, does anybody want my shift? Yeah, I'll take that shift. Great, let me grab one.
Lance (24:10.432)
Okay, so you have like somebody on site always who's part of this team and then you've got you know the some sort of rate for however you're gonna set that up for them to be there and run and all that kind of stuff even if you're off doing something
Jenna (24:21.994)
Yep. Yeah, so I send like with our group classes, so say we have a coach that maybe hasn't coached for us before and they, you know, whatever, don't know the format. We always have lesson plans that we'll send our coach every single time, you know, it's full explanation. Sometimes we get videos, stuff like that. So they have an entire lesson plan of what to do and they just execute it.
Lance (24:41.099)
Hmm.
Lance (24:45.612)
Mmm.
Jenna (24:47.083)
with our leagues, same thing, just send them the formatting of the day. Hey, you'll start with 10 minutes of Queens to warm them up. Then we're get into the first match once they finish with that, know, carry on second match. So we just had, it's, I mean, it's fairly simple. It's, you know, beach volleyball coaching. It's not rocket science, I guess you could say, not to take away anything, cause you know, coaching obviously is, you know, skill, but it's, there's so many experienced players that have gotten coached for so long that they're like, yeah, I'm pretty good at this at this point.
Lance (24:57.344)
Yeah.
Lance (25:16.928)
Yeah, that makes sense. then how did you think about pricing with what you're doing? Because it's also not super comparable. Sometimes I know, you know, I have like a pricing model that I share with people and depending on how expensive an area is, you can kind of dial in like what it should be sort of per match. But your service includes, excuse me, coaching and it's a monthly membership. what is the pricing? Yeah, so well, the
Jenna (25:33.995)
Thank you.
Jenna (25:42.225)
with our leagues. You mean?
Lance (25:46.228)
The five credits, that covers leagues in classes and stuff.
Jenna (25:49.63)
Well, technically, so if you get a league membership, you're like first tier, like you're not just going to come to classes when you have a league membership. That's kind of our like flexibility component that we get to utilize because we're small and intimate right now. So say somebody can't come to a league, they'll message me, hey, I can't come to a league, can't find any time to make this credit up before it resets the next month. Can I either roll over that credit into the next month or can I come to a class?
Lance (25:57.749)
Okay.
Lance (26:04.098)
Okay.
Jenna (26:19.196)
And I always want people, like, I always want people coming to classes, one, because it teaches them good fundamentals, it teaches them good basics, something maybe they haven't gotten to break down during the league coaching. And two, classes are so fun and they're higher priced. So our leagues are a little bit cheaper than our classes, obviously, because classes go through a lot of different skills and stuff like that. So come to a class, try it out. You'll love it. And, you know, they usually do.
Lance (26:38.858)
Yeah. Right.
Lance (26:47.7)
Right, okay. I gotcha, I gotcha. But even the leagues, you mentioned someone's there sort of providing some coaching while organizing things as well. even that's like a little bit more like value maybe than just a court rental show up in that you play. So what is the pricing for the league membership model and how did you determine that?
Jenna (26:58.856)
Yeah.
Jenna (27:05.705)
So for our league, we do $80 per month for the five credits per month. So that's two and a half hours. It's a little bit pricier than a regular league, but again, they're getting six to seven matches within one setting. Yeah, it's a ton. And then they get the coaching and the flexibility. So with that, we're able to pay our coaches $30 an hour is what we pay right now, which I thought was pretty good. So we pay them that.
Lance (27:21.174)
Yeah, tune -in hours is a lot, yeah.
Jenna (27:35.41)
so they're able to coach. I mean, it's adults coaching adults. So it's like, it's not like you're coaching kids. You get to have your genuine personality. You get to play your music. If you wanna be like, you guys, we gotta get our shit together. You can't say that. It's adults talking to adults. You get to be your genuine self. They get to be their genuine self. They can talk to you about their weekend. Jenna, I am so hungover today.
Lance (27:53.219)
Yeah, it's different.
Jenna (28:05.031)
please take it easy on me and we're like, all right, you got first game off, no worries, we got you. It's just being real with each other at that point.
Lance (28:05.078)
Right.
Lance (28:15.49)
Got it, okay, that makes sense. And then I guess, you mentioned credits rolling over and all that, so how does the tech work? What tools are you using to sort of make this? Because it is unique, what you're doing, and you've got the classes, and so subscription, so yeah, what tools have you kind of put together to make this work?
Jenna (28:27.473)
was.
Jenna (28:32.945)
So right now I use HubSpot. We've used MindBody in the past, which I love MindBody, just because there was always glitches with it. But right now we use HubSpot, which is just our CRM. It just has our memberships on there. And then we have all of our chats so that we know where the attendance is. When I started it a year ago, was honesty, like integrity. So it's like...
Lance (28:44.278)
Mm.
Jenna (29:01.68)
say you have five credits in one month and you come to six, I'm not gonna be, I want you to play as much volleyball as you can. So if you mess up, accidentally go to one more or you you didn't get all five in or whatever, I want you playing as much volleyball as you can get. So I mean, obviously if it comes to a problem and you're coming to every single class and you're not paying, like I'm gonna see from the polls and I always communicate with my coaches as well. We always try to take pictures so we have attendance.
Lance (29:30.455)
Mmm.
Jenna (29:31.073)
And that helps with like marketing and stuff like that, obviously, double whammy. But, or I'll see, you know, I'll have my coaches say, all right, we had this many people, here's the list. Like, so I always know who's attending, how the class went, stuff like that. So I'm able to gauge that really easily. And then we just go off of honesty. So like, I'm not monitoring every single class, like, but I may, I may switch to something that does, it would be smart as we continue to grow. And if I want to expand to different cities, it'd probably be necessary.
But right now at this point, I have had conversations with every single person that's in our club. I know them, they know me. Like, we have rapport, we have a relationship. I'm always gonna try to give you more than you're giving me, so why would you ever screw me over, you know? So I guess a little honesty.
Lance (30:06.0)
Yeah.
Lance (30:16.342)
Yeah. Okay. So HubSpot handles like the payments and the credits or, and the, there's no, there's no check -in process that's your monitor. Got it. Okay. And then you're just, yeah, kind of which, yeah, with a small community makes sense. You can kind of trust people not to go to do different credits and you've got pictures and stuff like that. okay. Cool. Well then I guess,
Jenna (30:21.145)
Mm
Jenna (30:25.218)
Nope, just the WhatsApp chats, yep.
Jenna (30:35.447)
Yeah.
Lance (30:44.756)
Another question, maybe my last one, I don't know, but how do you see this evolving for you? So you mentioned other cities, and then what's it gonna take for you to get there, do you think?
Jenna (30:57.559)
I love thinking about this is my favorite question. I Love I love growing. love expanding it just means more people are getting involved in their plane and Honestly, the biggest thing is that people are building friendships in? Settings that like maybe they wouldn't have been able to build friendships when I first moved down to Florida three years ago I had no idea how I was gonna make any friends. I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna find a community I don't know what I'm gonna do at my whole life. I'd played on teams. So it was like
Lance (31:00.212)
Okay.
Jenna (31:27.298)
I had a built -in group of best friends. Now I'm moving somewhere across the entire country. Don't know a single person. And as soon as I started playing volleyball, I had my entire community. It's my second family. They're the most amazing people. So I get to create that for everybody else now. So as I get to pull in everybody from different communities and be able to have that. So just being able to expand and create that opportunity in other areas and have the sport of beach volleyball grow, which also hopefully will help with
people getting more interested into it, maybe more money going into the AVP, which would be our professional level week. So hopefully more people get interested, more people want to learn about it, more interest for the professionals, stuff like that. That's always a great benefit of it all. But with expanding, would say my original goal was to have different paradises all over the nation.
So I wanted to have like a Tampa Bay and then I wanted to go over to South Florida and do like a Fort Lauderdale area paradise, California ideally, maybe Atlanta, New Orleans, North Carolina, South Carolina. And then I know in a couple different like Ohio and stuff like that, they have indoor beach facilities. So there's different options there as well. The only issue I'm running into is to places to put people, know, like facilities.
Lance (32:52.637)
Mm
Jenna (32:53.749)
So that's been my biggest issue, which I have considered trying to build my own facility, but again, building towards that. Also, another idea with the expanding was taking it internationally, so doing trips where there's already a thing called volleyball vacations. And it's a really cool concept where basically you can have a group of people and you go to, say, Brazil, which is a really common place for professionals to go train during preseason and stuff like that.
really good coaching down in Brazil. So maybe take a group going to Brazil or I'm talking to a couple club directors in Spain and Italy and France and Germany. And so I was like, it'd be cool to do like an international tour where, you know, I can offer this opportunity to travel, hang out with like, you know, your community, travel with them, be able to do different things outside of beach volleyball. But we're still like, the premise is, all right, we're going to go.
play over in these international places and we're gonna get this awesome travel experience with each other. So those would be my expansion ideas right now. But I don't know, the longer I, this is my first business, obviously. So the longer I'm in business, the more I understand it, the more I'm able to come up with ideas that'll suit a lot better and I understand the way things work a little bit better now. So I don't know, it could pivot in six months, I think.
Lance (33:57.698)
Totally.
Lance (34:06.924)
Yeah.
Lance (34:17.888)
Okay.
Jenna (34:22.355)
That's kind of where I'm at right now is I have my thinking cap on right now and I'm trying to get inventive of different things that I can create that the volleyball community needs right now. So who knows, maybe it'll be online, maybe it'll be, you know, vertical training or whatever, you know, like I'll figure that out as we go, but just trying to figure it out.
Lance (34:34.754)
Got it.
Lance (34:41.012)
Nice. mean, you mentioned that those are all awesome ideas. I love that. And it makes a lot of sense. It's kind of like, you want to spread out geographically or almost like go deeper with where you are with more services and more cool things to do? And I feel like a lot of people have to juggle those two things. There's pros and cons. But you mentioned building a facility or having trouble. Have you gone to these other places to try to expand?
Jenna (34:44.575)
Thank you.
Jenna (35:03.546)
Yeah, was just, I, gosh, I was working so hard towards this. In Fort Lauderdale, my father actually lives over there. He's a little bit older, so I'm like, it'd be great for me to be able to live over there for a little while and build up a club there and have that and get to spend time with him. And I was working over with Deerfield in, it's above Fort Lauderdale. And the beach rentals there are just, they want,
Lance (35:18.657)
Mm -hmm.
Lance (35:27.319)
Mm.
Jenna (35:30.973)
They want cut this one out. They want 20 % of your monthly sales for court rentals, which is Too much for what we're trying to make feasible so I think my my next move if I'm going to expand and go that route would be to build a facility over there because I was you know, they were working with me the city was and they kind of screwed me over a little bit I was working with them and I was
Lance (35:38.604)
Yep.
Lance (35:56.898)
Mmm.
Jenna (35:58.556)
going to host a clinic and we had so much engagement and so many people signed up for it and I didn't do like, I did the bare minimum for marketing. I was like, I just want like eight to 10 people, like do a clinic, know, start to build clientele over the next six months and then open in January. And they just like blew up. was like, we had like 25 people signed up for like one thing that I barely did any marketing for because I know the market is there. I just need to
create a facility or find courts. I'm still getting inventive, trying to find courts, trying to find places to put people basically.
Lance (36:34.37)
Got it, yeah. So you're actively pushing for Fort Lauderdale and in the hustle and the creativity and all that, and then may dabble into the volleyball vacations type thing, which to me sounds like a really great idea. That sounds fun, right? Because if you're leading those trips as well, you could probably pop over there and have it of be paid for because it's endless.
Jenna (36:40.955)
100%.
Jenna (36:48.153)
I know, it would be so fun. It'd be awesome.
Jenna (36:53.951)
yeah, it's gonna be a blast. And yeah, that's the cool thing too, is that like, cool, like I get to take all these people that I know I love and are amazing people and all that, and then we get to go travel together for like two weeks and we'll just go play and I'll get to coach you guys. like, the community is awesome. I just can't even tell you enough.
Lance (37:02.721)
Yeah.
Lance (37:07.254)
Yeah.
Lance (37:13.954)
Sounds cool. Yeah, obviously, I mean, I can see why you're successful right now. Your enthusiasm is infectious. I'm sure that shows up when you're out there as well. And I have a lot of confidence that you'll do well. Okay, I think that's all my questions. Do have anything else you want to share or anything? Okay.
Jenna (37:20.649)
Yeah.
Jenna (37:32.423)
No, not really. I really, here's one thing I wanted to share. I don't know if other people know this. So, and what you're doing in Texas as well, and with your different places that are using your software, they don't have this in Wisconsin. I came from Wisconsin and I came down to Florida, and I was like, my God, they have adult kickball leagues, have adult softball leagues, volleyball leagues. We don't have that.
That is like maybe the biggest cities like in Milwaukee and Madison, but like it's not in like, it's not expansive. So I was like, I moved down here and I was like, this is incredible. Like we need to create adult sport, like communities everywhere. Like it's the greatest thing.
Lance (37:58.166)
Right?
Lance (38:17.318)
Yeah, yeah, so Milwaukee you're saying that it doesn't exist there and somebody needs to
Jenna (38:21.291)
No, it does exist. There's like some leagues in Milwaukee, but there's not many and like beyond Milwaukee, not even, I didn't even know that was a thing. I'm from like a smaller town in Wisconsin. I was like, I never saw any of my, like any of my parents or my parents' friends or anything like that going to play on like a kickball league on a Thursday night. That would have just been, what? What are you guys doing?
Lance (38:31.241)
Yeah.
Lance (38:35.606)
Bye.
Lance (38:48.511)
Yeah, yeah. OK, cool. Well, that's a good one. I think that's all I got. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it.
Jenna (38:55.211)
Awesome, I appreciate you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.
Lance (38:58.146)
Yep. Yep. All right. See ya.
Jenna (39:00.417)
Awesome, bye.
The AREENA app and leagues offer an immersive rec sports experience for adults, with stat tracking, skill matching, leaderboards and team messaging. Subscribe and play soccer or basketball year round, or pay by game or match with zero commitments.
