Pickleball Pro Pickles Profits from Persistent Practice

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. Do you know what pickleball is? That's right, it's called pickleball. It is a sport.

And if you didn't know, you're not alone. To be totally honest, I did not know what pickleball was until researching this episode. But if you're in the same camp as me in about two minutes, you'll know all about it. Today's story features a call center supervisor who leans into his passion for pickleball, discovers a need for skilled tournament managers around the country and launches what is proving to be a $40,000 a year side hustle. So apparently it pays to pickle, or at least it does for this guy.

Now, by the way, for those listening in real time, it's also Pi Day. That's right, it's March 14th, also known as 3/14, also known as 3.14159265359. Okay, I'll stop right there. You get the idea. National Pi Day, I hope it's a good day for you and I'll bring you this whole story in just a moment.

Let's say thank you to today's sponsor. [Music]

It all started in a dimly lit room filled with highly influential local community members. Leaders were nominated, rules were set, and a new society was born, the Columbia River Pickleball Club. Pickleball, if you don't know, is a sport that takes place on a badminton court. A plastic wiffle ball is hit over the 34-inch net with paddles that are roughly twice the size of ping pong paddles.

The activity is accessible to newcomers, but it can also be a fast-paced thrill for experienced players. This isn't your grandmother's backyard pickleball. This sport is on the rise. There are apparently nine million casual players who play pickleball one to seven times a year in the US, and nearly one million of those players who compete eight times a year or more in sanctioned tournaments. NBC News has declared pickleball the fastest growing sport in America.

Now, as legend would have it, the actual name pickleball comes from one of the inventor's dogs, named Pickles, who loved to retrieve stray balls from the bushes. But enough about Pickles the Dog, let's get back to the Columbia River Pickleball Club. Mike Hoxie, the youngest member of the group, was nominated as the club's webmaster. Side note, apparently that's still a thing. I remember hearing about webmasters 20 years ago and haven't heard that word in a decade.

Mike built a basic website and started connecting local pickleball players to the club's tournaments. Over the next two years, he took on more and more responsibility when it came to managing the tournaments. And when the 2014 highly contested club elections came around, Mike became the club's president. It was not long after that that Mike, Mr. Pickleball President, got the idea for his own pickleball venture, and this one would be for profit.

While running a tournament, Mike got a call from the creator of the software he had been using. She explained that people were asking her to run too many tournaments, and that she and her brother just couldn't meet demand. She told Mike that the tournament management business was a fun and rewarding one, and that if he wanted to get started, she would refer clients to him since he had experience and a great reputation with players. Mike loved volunteering as a tournament manager, but he figured he'd also love getting paid for it. He agreed and spent the next few months slowly building his business plan, website, contracts, and invoice system.

Since he could use his club supplies to get started, the nets, the paddles, the stopwatches, the coolers, the pickle jars, well, actually there might not be pickle jars, I just added that in. His launch expenses were less than $500. In early 2016, he launched his website, pickleballisgreat.com. We're gonna crash that site today with all the side hustle school listeners going to check it out, pickleballisgreat.com. But to keep the story going, Mike began to receive a small flow of referral inquiries over the next few months.

That year he managed nine tournaments, and he offered three different pricing tiers for these tournaments. The most basic package was a simple well-run tournament. The next two tiers offered additional services like wifi, coolers with water, trophies, equipment, and other things that hosts may or may not want to worry about. Once a client picked a tier, he charged them on a per player basis, which in the beginning didn't bring in a lot of money. In 2016, the first year of the hustle, his average monthly profit was just $100 after expenses.

However, the trend had been clear for years, pickleball was growing. In 2017, Mike managed 13 tournaments, and this time his monthly profit was at least $500. The tournaments were getting bigger, which meant he was earning more money for each tournament since he charged on a per player basis. Still, he wanted to improve. That year, the illustrious United States American Pickleball Association allowed Mike to run two sanctioned tournaments.

Essentially, these tournaments were a step up. They were highly regulated, and the results go directly to each player's official score and national ranking. This was huge for establishing Mike as an authority, and he's now looking to host at least four of these tournaments over the course of 2018. Oh, and all those tournaments that Mike played into network or the ones he volunteered at before, nearly half of them have now hired his services for this year as well. These days, Mike is traveling all over the American West to manage tournaments.

He's building some travel costs into the overall price he charges, and with that rapid growth of pickleball, he's now averaging just under $2,000 in profit per tournament. His goal is to run two tournaments a month and bring in roughly $40,000 this year, but he doesn't want to stop there. Later this summer, Mike will go all the way to Alaska to run a tournament, and in January 2019, he's scheduled to run one in Costa Rica. His biggest tournament yet is coming in the next couple months, and will have over 400 competitors. Mike hopes to quit his job in a few years when his son graduates from high school to be able to run tournaments as his regular gig, but he's actually concerned that the growing demand will force him to quit earlier than expected.

Hmm, it does seem like he's in a bit of a pickle. But either way, Mike's not complaining. He's excited for more flexibility to visit his son in college, not having to sit in his regular office every day, and getting to be an ambassador for a sport he loves. All right, congratulations to Mike. I admire his ambition, not to mention his dedication to the world of pickleball.

And this episode kind of reminds me of episode 90, way back in the day, maybe more than 300 episodes ago. That was the story of an academic advisor who creates a profitable karaoke league. That's right, in some parts of the world, karaoke can be a competitive, I guess it's not a sport, but a competitive activity. Whenever there is a competitive activity, a league or anything that requires organization, well, maybe there's a chance to make some money there. I mean, that's what the guy did in episode 90.

That's what Mike has done here, projecting $40,000 this year on the side, I mean, for something he actually enjoys doing. So maybe a question for you today is what kind of sport or league or activity could become an income earning side hustle? Now it's not like you're gonna go out and do this yourself, at least not every listener. There's only room for so many pickleball tournament managers, but remember that one skill of learning the side hustle school way is just being able to spot opportunities. Just being able to say like, "Hey, you know, somebody could come in and do something here and make this process better, make it more efficient, like serve all these pickleball players all over the place." And in doing so, not just do it as a volunteer, but get paid for it, like a win-win.

So it's not so much about pursuing each opportunity, it's about being able to spot those opportunities. And then as time goes by, you'll be able to become more selective. As time goes by, you'll be able to understand, okay, these are the opportunities that are best for me to pursue, and these other ones are best for somebody else to take over. Like personally, I would not be good at managing any kind of league, whether pickleball or karaoke or otherwise. I would just get frustrated with all the different details and coordination and going back and forth with people, I wouldn't like that myself.

But obviously some people are inclined to do that. Some people do have that skill and enjoy putting the pieces together. So whatever your skill is, whatever your passion is, maybe it is pickleball, let me know. Be sure and visit pickleballisgreat.com so we can send Mike a lot of visitors. Don't forget inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

If you'd like to read today's show notes, including even more pickleball links, just go to sidehustleschool.com/438. Thank you so much for listening. Now go do something for yourself. Create your own unconventional league or sport or activity, or just keep on working on that idea you already have, whatever it is. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

I'm cheering you on. This is Side Hustle School.