July 1, 2024 • 44 mins
Ever wondered what it takes to transform an old grocery store into a vibrant indoor pickleball mecca? Join us as we pull back the curtain on the creation of Dinker's Pickleball Club in Denton, Texas. You'll journey from the first spark of interest in pickleball to the grand opening, complete with exhibitions, professional players, and an incredibly engaged community. Special guests Ashlee Blakley and Suzanne Greever from Twisted Pickle share their expertise in ensuring pickleball facilities succeed right from the start, offering invaluable insights into the business side of this rapidly growing sport.
Our conversation with Suzanne and Ashley is a masterclass in crisis management and leadership within the pickleball business world. Discover their innovative approaches to alleviating clients' anxieties, how they foster a supportive community, and the success stories that highlight their impact. From engaging with local entities like the Chamber of Commerce to the transformative “Kitchen Cabinet” initiative, you'll learn about the behind-the-scenes efforts that make facilities like Dinkers Pickelball Club thrive. Their commitment to building a supportive business environment shines through, mirroring the camaraderie found on the pickleball courts.
Learn about their partnership with Doug and Blake, the excitement of the ribbon-cutting event, and the vibrant community vibe of Denton, Texas. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a pickleball enthusiast, or just love a good success story, this episode is packed with inspiration and practical advice for making your pickleball dreams a reality.
Looking for a fitness app specifically designed for Pickleheads? Download the Aim7 app today. Use our url to get a 25% discount and try the app for a free trial before committing. https://www.aim7.com/?via=blazing-paddles
Special thanks to Crown Pickleball for their support and sponsorship! Don't waste money on balls that break, Crown pickleballs rarely crack, are more visible and have a higher spin rate than the competitors.
Use our link to receive a discount on your next purchase! https://crownpickleball.store/blazingpaddles
Have a suggestion for a guest or topic you'd like to see us address?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
August, the 4th of last year, my wife came home
from work and said Honey, weneed to go play pickleball.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
And I was like what is pickleball?
August of last year, August of2023.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And now you own it.
And now I own one of thelargest indoor pickleball
facilities in the state of Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
If that doesn't define the addiction of
pickleball.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yes, it's addicting and I don't know what does.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
He came walking up and he took me to lunch.
Today we went to lunch.
He says we need to open apickleball facility and I'm like
you're smoking crap.
I was like there's no way,there's no way and I started
looking at it.
We started going to like theFinch Park, the parks around
town.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It was like you know, when you pick a pickleball
facility.
All right, John.
Hey, when are we today?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
We're at Dinker's Pickleball Club here in Denton.
I guess it used to be aBrookshire's is what we just
realized.
So this is, you know.
People are repurposingbuildings.
This is a great example of anempty building.
It's been empty for three years.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Three years.
Yeah, and now it's the home of15 beautiful pickleball courts
15 amazing looking pickleballcourts and two skinny courts,
and this place is justspectacular looking.
I want one.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
What's a skinny court ?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's a.
Why are you asking me this?
Are you trying to trip me up?
Speaker 4 (01:24):
No, it's a half of a court For people who don't know.
Some people don't know what askinny court is.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
It's a half of a court to practice.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, okay, I thought you were trying to trick me,
not funny.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
I don't try to trick you, you trick yourself most of
the time.
No, the skinny courts, yeah,they're warm up.
They're half the size, half thewidth, so it's a good warm-up
area and they've got a wholeagenda of exhibitions and
instruction.
And then I think they open upfor full open play about 3.30
(01:54):
today.
So for the first several hoursyou're going to have alternating
classes and their teaching prosare going to show off a little.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Some exhibitions and I think we're going to have some
pros come too.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I hear we are going to have a couple pros here, yeah
so this is exciting and we'rereally excited.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
They had Blazing Paddles out for their grand
opening.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Yeah, I mean, I imagine excitement is off the
charts for these guys right now.
They purchased the buildinglast August I think is what she
said and they're opening.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
They didn't purchase.
They're leasing Leasing.
We'll get the owners over hereand get the backstory on it.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Yeah, blake and Doug are the guys who were nice
enough to invite us, and then,of course, ashley and Suzanne
from the Twisted Pickle.
We're working with them too,out here today.
So it's a big old pickleballfamily out here.
It's going to be a fun time, itis.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
We're live All right.
Well, first off, thank you somuch to John and Karen for
having us on.
I'm Ashley Blakely and mybusiness partner, suzanne Greber
, and I own Twisted Pickle andwe are a business development,
operations, marketing and mediaagency of consultants that helps
not only Pickleball brands togo to market, but we also have a
(03:09):
niche in helping these largePickleball facilities come to
Texas and be able to have ago-to-market plan.
We like to get them tosuccessfully to day one and keep
them successful on day 100.
Speaker 6 (03:25):
And I'm Suzanne Griever and, as Ashley said, you
know we have a pretty widescope of services that we offer,
but we both have backgrounds inbusiness operations and video
production, marketing, brandmanagement, and so we're able to
scale up or down based onwhatever the business owner
needs.
And so Dinkers had done a greatjob of getting their
construction substantiallycomplete.
(03:45):
And so Dinkers had done a greatjob of getting their
construction substantiallycomplete, and so when we came in
, we were able to really focuson getting them engaged in the
community, working on theirbrand identity, working with
their staff, doing customerservice training.
So they've been great to workwith.
So, yeah, so it's been a funproject and it's fun to see it
open today.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
They said you were lifesavers.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
What did you say?
They said you were lifesavers.
Good, good, that's what we need.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Karen, If I'm the Dinkers Club or if I'm another
club that's opening up.
What does it look like when Iknow you guys have been
successful for me?
What does success look likefrom their perspective?
They're a startup.
We have no idea what it's goingto look like, I mean this looks
like a success today.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
Yeah, no, it's a great question.
I think that success in ourform for our clients is really
about.
We bring them peace of mind andwe lessen anxiety and we're
problem solvers.
We are a crisis management team.
We're an automatic ad waterleadership team.
We bring in the ideas thatpeople haven't thought of.
Because Suzanne and I are both,with our strong backgrounds,
(04:52):
love to research all aboutPickleball, knowing all of the
business operations side of it,just the breakdown of PPA versus
MLP and UPA, and those arethings that I think people want
to get into the business ofPickleball, but they don't
naturally know the business ofpickleball.
And there's, there's a wholeworld that has to be understood
to be successful.
Speaker 6 (05:12):
So that that's kind of it from my my point of view
and I would only add to that isyou know, success is different
for each client that we have,and so when we do start an
engagement, we determine whatsuccess looks like for them, and
part of that was they wanted toreally have a community feel,
and so that's something we'veleaned into, and we love being
(05:34):
up in Denton Ashley and I haveboth been in North Texas for a
long time, you know and theirmotto is your courts, your
community, and so we've gottenthem super engaged in Chamber of
Commerce.
And so we've gotten them superengaged in Chamber of Commerce,
and then we have a full house.
We had a line waiting, as youall saw, when people were coming
in.
So that engagement is part ofhow we are judging our success
(05:54):
so far.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I mean, you had the Mean Green football team here.
Speaker 6 (05:59):
We did have a lot of players from.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
UNT Right, that was super cool to see.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Now another thing, and you guys, we met you guys.
It's kind of funny.
We met Ashley playing one night.
We were playing in a league.
I don't know if I would callthat playing John or if you were
more melting me on the court,you were on the sides of the net
, okay yeah.
We still became friends.
We did, we became friends.
Neither is Karen, and so fromthat we learned oh my gosh, well
, we've got some commoninterests.
(06:25):
Oh yeah, you're fine, that'sTaylor.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Who's Taylor Mason?
Speaker 4 (06:34):
And we started talking to Ashley and they have
it's really kind of a cool thinktank I don't know what you'd
call it, like kitchen cabinetand we were asked to attend.
I guess it was your second oneIs that the second one?
And it was a collaborationevent.
There was, I don't know, maybea dozen different pickleball
entrepreneurs or people who arein the in the industry, somehow
sharing ideas and sharingsolutions, and we got to present
a problem to the group ourfirst one there.
(06:55):
I thought that was so cool,thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
It's so cool because this is such an we're so early
in the sport.
Yeah and uh, on the lastpodcast I was.
This would be like being therewhen the NFL was started.
How cool is that Right.
And nobody.
It's the wild, wild west.
You've said that a hundredtimes.
And so we don't have, there'sno roadmap.
So how do you make itsuccessful?
And that seems what you're.
You're helping theseentrepreneurs figure that out
(07:18):
and I love that you're bringingthem together because, um, we
don't know the landscape and weall have a little piece and each
piece helps create that biggerpicture.
Right, absolutely.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
The kitchen cabinet is something I'm really
passionate about.
It was a thought process I hadlast November.
We had just come from nationals.
We attended the businesssymposium, which was amazing.
I was the first time doing thatand Suzanne and I went.
And I went to Suzanne literallya few weeks later and was like
I think we need to create kindof our own mini business
(07:52):
symposium and have it continueto grow from there.
So what we do is we reallysupport the Texas-based
pickleball owners.
We like a format where we meetevery other month.
It's an idea, as you weresaying, idea generation care and
think tank and we give feedbackand really the precipice of it
was how do you have an honorarystaff, cabinet or board members
(08:16):
to really be able to bring yourproblems to and say I need help?
This is what I'm doing.
There's space enough for all ofus and everybody needs support.
It's not just about support onthe court, it's support in
business.
So that was really the brainthought process of it.
Now I have people that come upto me that are like I know I
don't live in Texas, ashley, butI really want to be a part of
this.
We had another franchisee thatflew in from the from the
(08:40):
Northeast that wanted to attendand it was insane.
I met him last November andwe've been talking on LinkedIn
and he flew in for it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That's so cool and you know.
Since then, I just want you toknow that several of the folks
have reached out to us and andgave us such words of
affirmation and love and supportand it feels so good because we
felt alone and now we have.
You're doing in the businessworld what pickleball does in
the for the players it createscommunity.
(09:08):
You're creating a community ofbusinesses that can support each
other.
It's been so beautiful I can'teven I'll show you the email
from Christie that came withthat.
It made our day the other day,you know when we're down in the
dumps like that, and you getsomething random like that and
you go, oh my goodness, that'swhat I needed it was so cool you
never thought you knew that youneeded.
(09:29):
Exactly, Exactly, and you know.
And then they helped us withour problem.
You know, we walked away fromthat meeting knowing what we had
to do.
Even though we knew it, wedidn't want to cause our heart,
you know, wasn't leading ourdecision, not our head, you know
, was leading our decision, notour head.
And they gave us the toughfeedback.
And it was, and it wasappreciated, it was kindly
(09:53):
delivered and and then like Isaid, the support, follow up
just means everything.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
That's amazing.
I'm so grateful to hear that.
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Because sometimes, sometimes, the answer is not yes
and we had a.
You know, we had anotheropportunity to hold a huge event
, but it was going to be a greatdetriment to our financial
well-being for the work that wewere going to put in.
We felt like, well, I think wewere just whistling past the
graveyard.
We were pretending like, okay,this is still something we can
(10:16):
consider.
But it was no, you can't betaken advantage of.
And I think sometimes you needto bounce those ideas off
like-minded people and have themsay Absolutely taken advantage
of.
And I think sometimes you needto bounce those ideas off
like-minded people and have themsay absolutely.
And then the looks we got fromeverybody we were pitching it
out there, like I don't think weneed to talk anymore, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I mean, like I said, we were being led with uh.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Taylor, Taylor, third head growing out of our body
going.
Wait a minute.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
That's what we count on Taylor for Bring us some
information and feedback Honestblunt feedback.
I loved it.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And we'll get Taylor on here, because we've got to
talk about her story too.
So how did you find pickleball?
Speaker 5 (10:53):
I'll let you take that one.
Speaker 6 (10:56):
How did we find it?
I know it is interesting,everybody's story.
You know I had been acompetitive athlete that had
been retired by multiple kneeinjuries when I was younger and
hadn't really been able to findanother sport that I could
compete at.
And it was like this pickleballthing's taken off and I was
like I'll try it and see andjust really enjoyed it.
And you know just so.
(11:17):
It was basically after it wasafter COVID I just moved back to
Dallas.
I had just moved back to Dallas.
So it was a way to buildcommunity again and try a new
sport, to see you know howeverything would work and just
fell in love with it immediately.
And that's how Ashley and Ireconnected.
We knew each other before butwe both started playing about
the same time and that's wherewe reconnected.
(11:39):
And then Twisted Pickle wasborn shortly after that.
And when was that?
When was Twisted Pickle born?
Shortly after that?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And when was that?
When was Twisted Pickle born?
When, did you like?
How long ago Did you guys getinto pickleball?
Speaker 6 (11:48):
So Twisted Pickle's a little over a year old and I've
been playing for like right attwo years now.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Okay, perfect, perfect.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Yeah, yeah, so similar.
I mean I didn't grow up inleague sports or racket sports
or anything.
I was on the dance side, but Ihad.
Honestly, I had a health scareand needed to redefine who
Ashley Erickson Blakely was.
I lived in LA for a very longtime and worked in TV and film
and my best friend still livesout there and she's.
(12:17):
Every time I'm out there tovisit she's like let's just go,
you can play pickleball.
And finally I was like, uh,give me that thing and I'll go
with you if you'll just stoptalking.
You know, right, um.
And so I played.
It got put on Instagram and oneof my childhood friends, keith,
who's actually here todayplaying who you guys know, um,
we've been friends since juniorhigh he saw it on Instagram and
(12:38):
he called me and was like hey,I'm going to pick you up
Saturday at 8am.
And I was like for what?
And he was like we're going togo play pickleball.
And I was like no, we're not, Iwas just messing around.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
He goes, no, I'll pick you up at 8.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
And then it was just on and I had a partner for all
the time and we've had a blastand, like Suzanne said, we kind
of reconnected.
We went to the same college andsaw through some Aggie
connection things but you know,weren't um, it's wasn't like we
were running buddies all thetime.
Then we saw each other on thecourt and we're like, oh my gosh
, you're playing, I'm playing.
And then we just kept talkingabout it and, like she said
(13:11):
earlier, I have marketing,social media, video production,
um, education and training in myback pocket and then she has a
whole different world in hers asshe can talk about.
But it was, it was just themarriage and I tell everybody
I'm like we are the two that hada one-night stand, had a baby,
and now we're trying to figureout how to work this company.
(13:32):
So we have been hugelysuccessful.
It's been a lot of fun,successful and just like
everything coming together andpeople coming.
Oh my gosh, I never know, Inever knew I needed this.
And then the birth of kitchencabinetin has just been so, so
satisfying.
I've loved it so much.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
You heard Aggie, right Aggies.
Oh yeah, One of you Proud.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Aggies.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
One of us.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
They're a clan.
So what about your background?
You touched on that.
Speaker 6 (14:00):
So I grew up in healthcare, you know.
So I have been very fortunatein my career and have run
several hospitals as CEO andthen went into the corporate
side of healthcare management.
But when you're over a hospital, you do construction, you do
personnel development, you docustomer service, you do
community engagement, and soI've been exposed to like all of
(14:23):
those different areas and youalso have to be really strong at
your financial knowledge.
So I've got all that backgroundthat's been able to translate
over into the sport that I loveand so I'm able to bring that to
the table.
And when we started looking atour skill sets, they complement
each other really well.
So we can, bob, and we've gotsome overlap, but you know it
just worked together togetherwell because we can typically
(14:45):
meet the needs of our clientsbetween both of us together.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I love it.
It's a good marriage.
It looks like a really goodmarriage.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
It's a really good one-night stand.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Very good one, all right, so pickleball, what about
your favorite shot, the?
Speaker 5 (14:59):
one that makes it over.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Ashley that makes sense.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
I mean, I really like my, I like the short game.
You know, it's like because I'malmost 5'10" and so people
think I'm going to be.
You have a wingspan, yeah, andpeople think I'm going to be
like a banger on it and I loveto just drop shots super close
to the net and, you know,aggravate people with that.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Ashley.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
I don't know that I've mastered what's my favorite
.
I feel like I'm, you know, alittle less playing than yeah.
That's true, thank you.
I'm a few couple months shy ofSuzanne, but we're both there at
two years and I'm so gratefulto not be in panic mode anymore
especially when you look acrossleague at.
John and Karen Whitaker andyou're like holy hell, um, and
(15:47):
so I'm just in survival mode allthe time, just in life in
general, you know.
But, um, but I do.
I love watching players do theTomahawk and so in my mind I
look amazing doing it.
I don't know what it looks liketo people across from me.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
I'm sure they want to go sit down, Ashley, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
but that really is it .
Thank you, josh.
I'll tell you what what'shumbling.
I thought I looked really goodtoo, and then I filmed myself
and I was like I look like anidiot.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
What am I doing?
How about that Elaine dancethat you got?
Speaker 4 (16:16):
Oh, did you show her that night?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Oh yeah, dance.
I have to show you.
It's so good, it's so good.
Speaker 6 (16:28):
I've only comes out rarely now, but when it does I'm
like, oh my gosh, please nobodybe looking at me.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, no, no, I don't anymore.
I'm cut a lot of it out.
I'm down to maybe five percent.
Okay, that's good, that'sbetter than 95 percent I love,
that's what it was, and it wasso embarrassing um but you've
made up for it with the rest ofyour game, so you're're fine
yeah and it brings so much joyto so many people to be, able to
watch it, I agree.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
Yes, yes.
Now let's ask a real importantquestion, so it didn't get away.
If somebody is interested incontracting with you and using
your service to find out more,how do they do that?
Speaker 6 (16:58):
So I mean our social media, our Instagram is our most
active, probably, channel thatwe have, and so that's Twisted
underscore, pickle underscore.
Okay, that's a great way toreach out to us and get started.
We're on there every day and,yeah, we'd be happy to talk to
people.
You know, right now we do a lotof work in Texas, but we are
(17:19):
open and able to do work outsideof Texas as well.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So the name Twisted Pickle.
Who's the brainchild?
Speaker 6 (17:29):
I would love to say, like we did all this, strategic,
you know, strategery that'spretty much what it was was
strategery, because in myprofessional background we've
hired, like these,multimillion-dollar advertising
firms to do brand developmentand naming.
We were at a restaurant thatmight have twisted in the name
we might have been having ahamburger and a beer and we were
(17:51):
like, you know, as we're goingthrough all the names, we landed
on twisted pickle.
You know we, uh, we like it.
You know it's different andit's got.
You know our aesthetic is veryclean, crisp, you know, yeah, so
we landed on it and we werelike that's it, and we had the
logo and we're off to the races.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I love it.
So we just got Dink Pro thetrademark for it.
It took us two years, right,and that's a long time, and I
think it's because they gotinundated with a bunch of
requests for pickleballcompanies, but we finally got it
.
Two years is a long time Now,like blazing paddles.
We wish our company was blazingpaddles.
You know, I don't know how toundo or talk about that.
(18:32):
Yeah we can talk about that atCapnick.
We could.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
Because that is something as a pickleball
business or any business thatyou really have to be thoughtful
about and file early, you knowfor protection of your name and
logo, et cetera, and so, no,it's, it's an important thing,
and you're moving so fast.
When you start a business,that's kind of the last thing on
the list that you're like, oh,I need to start messing with the
government on that, but yeah,it's super important.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, and we had a whole long list and we just kept
going back to Dink, going backto dink, going back to dink, and
you know what dink stands for?
This has not been proven, by theway, it's very.
It makes sense.
It means drop in kitchen.
Drop in kitchen, yeah, karen,no, no.
(19:18):
So drop in kitchen.
So dink is not just what you doat the line, it's being able to
drop the ball from anywhere onthe court into the kitchen,
which is one of the mostimportant shots in pickleball.
Like you said, your short gameis super important.
Well, the only way you can getto your short game is by
dropping that ball in thatkitchen.
Right, if you bang all the wayup, the ball is going to come
(19:40):
back at that velocity.
So interesting, yeah, but Ilove the twisted pickle.
It's very creative.
I think it's very cute, verycatchy and, um, I just I think
what you guys are doing isamazing.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
And I do want to say to Ashley gave us great bit of
advice on day one, two aboutjust really narrow down the
focus.
Who, who are you?
What are you?
Know, this is what we are, andafter that it becomes kind of
clear what you should be doing,because you you've got to put
the energy towards what youreally want to be.
And that's when karen just saidabout blazing paddles.
(20:12):
We've somehow slipped into thislittle niche just over the last
month of events and uhactivations and live broadcasts
and things like that.
It's fun and people seem to itseems to be catching a lot of
traction.
So thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Now, how did you guys meet, doug and Blake?
Speaker 5 (20:28):
How did we meet Doug and Blake?
We do a lot of research onsocial media.
Suzanne found them on Facebook,gosh, six months ago, when they
really first just got started.
They were putting up photos andthey're just reaching out and
staying consistent.
And they were like yep, we arein the middle of building.
(20:48):
In the middle of building,we'll get back to you.
And we just kind of steadilystayed in the background,
because that's really our job isto be the support team and stay
in the background.
And so finally they reached outand said you know what?
We've got the facility, we'rein the middle of construction,
but other than that, we don'thave a plan and we want to be
smart and we need marketing, weneed social media, we need brand
(21:12):
identity and I mean down tologo slogan.
Everything needed to beperfected.
And so they were smart enoughto realize they needed to solve
a problem rather than trying todo it themselves.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Trust me, we know, yeah, after we've pivoted 500
times and spent money.
But that's okay, the good thingis Karen.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
You pivoted and you realized there was a problem.
So you pivoted and, like Johnand I talked about even before,
kitchen Cabinet is from amarketing perspective.
If you're confused on whatyou're doing, you can only
imagine what your audience isconfused on what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Right.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
And it also helps, again, relieve the anxiety.
Now you can focus and niche itdown, and I think that's the
great thing about our socialsand you know, my passion in
marketing is it's.
It's like Suzanne was sayingit's clean, it's bold, you know
exactly what you're dealing with, you know exactly who we are,
you know there's a definiteaesthetic, but people don't
(22:08):
leave us confused and soshutting down that confusion and
anxiety is huge.
Speaker 6 (22:13):
Yes, well, and we've had to like, as y'all's business
has evolved, we've evolved aswell.
That's just the nature ofhaving a business and not being
so married to an idea that yougo down with the ship on it.
You know, it's a trusting yourbusiness partner, being able to
stop, look at it critically,adjust where you need to, and
that's what we've seen y'all do,which has been great.
(22:33):
It's part of the purpose of thekitchen cabinet, I can tell you
.
You know, we were at the MLPevent two weeks ago.
It was awesome walking in andseeing y'all there doing a live
broadcast.
We were like so proud, I knowso it's like all the cabinet
members, you know, we're soexcited when they are out in the
wild, in the wild, yeah.
And so we just congratulatey'all on the perseverance and
(22:54):
also being able to see you out,you know, just becoming a staple
in the community up here.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Again why I love Pickleballball.
It's a big world and it's avery small one and it's all the
same people, right, and they all.
I'm amazed at the connection.
Someday I would love to likemap it all out, um, because I
mean, like even us, you know,meeting, and now we're at all
these events together, right,and we're involved in the
kitchen cabinet.
It's just, that's it.
It's amazing.
(23:21):
A community, well, and how manypeople do we have here, do you
think, today?
Speaker 6 (23:27):
We're several hundred , and it's I mean lying out the
door this morning when it opened, and then it's been a steady
stream of people and we're goingto be going until 10 o'clock
tonight.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Well, and I think about just the ribbon-cutting
yesterday.
You can speak on that.
Speaker 6 (23:41):
I will say I want to give a huge shout out to the
denton chamber chamber ofcommerce, even though I can't
talk.
So the denton chamber ofcommerce was so engaged
throughout all this process.
They're so supportive of thebusinesses in town and we had 60
plus people in the middle ofthe day on a friday here for
that's huge yeah, because themayor was here and he's here
playing today.
Yeah, he's playing today is hereally?
Speaker 4 (24:02):
yeah, yeah so we need to find out if denton has an
october fest.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
I'm sure they do.
Yes, monday yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:09):
So if people have not been to denton in a while and I
know north texas has gotten sospread out you need to come up
here and check out what's goingon, because between the colleges
that are up here and thebusiness development that
they're doing, it's a fun.
I mean, it's like we've metjust great people and you can
see just the turnout for this.
They're a pickleball-friendlytown for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I'm hoping this is a wild success and they open one
next to me.
Well, thank you for joining ustoday.
Thank you for inviting us outhere.
It's been an incredibleexperience for us.
We just learned how to takethis show on the road and we're
happy to bring it to these theseand support these businesses.
Speaker 5 (24:47):
Well, like I said, we are both.
We are grateful from a fromDinkers to Twisted Pickle, that
a that I got to meet you guysand get smashed by you at TCD
Lee.
Um, it was probably the thebest night of being pickled ever
was I got to meet John.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
That's okay, girl, say it out loud, it's fine.
I don't think she told me shegot pickled by y'all.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
I'm pretty sure I got a tattoo about it now, but it's
been a great relationshipbecause now we've been able to
like kind of partner and walkhand in hand, and that's what
really this is all about.
So we're grateful you guys arehere.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
And you had the best attitudeof anybody I've ever seen who
was pickled, so you knowseriously, I have to do
something good attitude goes along way.
It really does.
Thank you, john I appreciate itno, you guys are great and
let's enjoy some more of thisday, all right?
thank you guys, thank you guys,thank you hey, picklers, you may
have noticed, summer hit and ithit with a vengeance.
(25:42):
It's only going to get hotterfrom, and if you're out there
playing pickleball, you know oneof the toughest things to do is
to keep the ball to where it'sstill lively.
They get soft out there.
Well, I'm here to tell youthere's a solution, and that is
offered to us by CrownPickleball.
If you don't know Kevin Perkinsand Crown Pickleball, check him
out on Instagram.
Go to his shop.
He's got balls, paddles, shirts, socks, wristbands, hats he's
(26:07):
got the whole deal and he's agood human.
We like to support good humans.
So get your crown pickle balls.
Save yourself a little moneythis summer when everybody
else's balls are melting.
That sounds bad, but you'llhave the crown pickle balls.
All right, let's get back tothe show.
All right, the men of the hourDinkers Pickleball Club grand
opening today.
Blake and Doug.
Hello guys.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
How's it going?
Hey, how are y'all?
Speaker 4 (26:28):
How are you guys, y'all, going to be running hot
right now?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, it's, I know about you, but I'm We've got a
full house.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
You have a full house on opening day.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Fabulous, we love this.
Oh my goodness.
Fabulous, we love this.
Oh my goodness.
We couldn't ask for a betterturnout.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Now I've got a film clip to share with you guys
later because I was videoing.
When you all opened the doorsand saw all the people streaming
in, you had the people waiting.
That had to be a big like.
Okay, people came.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yes, people actually showed up.
Yes, we're good to go.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Yes, but all this time you put it all together and
you recognize it.
You put it all together and yourecognize it and you put it all
together and you see the courts.
They look really great and youopen that door, like you said,
and it was like where do allthese people?
Speaker 4 (27:05):
come from.
This is amazing.
That was great.
You saw the UNT football teamwas here.
That was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
The building owner actually sent those guys out to
have pictures and stuff with us.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
Oh, that's so cool.
Oh, that's fantastic.
Ashley and Suzanne earlier, Iknow you guys have been working
with them as well and I knowthey were real happy to see the
turnout From your success.
Is this what you envisioned?
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:29):
absolutely.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
This was the hope from day one, and we've outdone
ourselves.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
You think we're hoping it stays like this?
We're hoping it stays like this.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Absolutely, I think we've outdone ourselves and
we're very happy with theoutcome.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I don't think it's going to slow down at all.
This is amazing, and we havepeople here from our neck of the
woods who traveled all the wayup here.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
That's awesome.
Speaker 6 (27:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
I mean we've got a handful of our club traveling up
here.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
I've got the guys that I play on my tennis team
with.
They don't ever play pickleball, they're like we've got to try
that, yeah, so they're outplaying pickleball as we speak.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
All right, so let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Go back to the beginning.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I am assuming you started playing pickleball.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yes, yeah, well, I was a tennis player, okay, and I
was dating a girl that was likeyou've got to try it.
I'm like no way, I'm not thatold.
And so I tried it.
And when I tried it, I thoughtthis is the most.
This is amazing.
It's an incredible game.
I like that.
I don't remember the last time.
I picked up a tennis racket now.
So that's the way I started isjust playing with her, and then
I would talk to Doug a littlebit and he and Jessica decided
(28:33):
that they were going to play itwas like August the 4th of last
year.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
My wife came home from work and said, honey, we
need to go play pickleball and Iwas like, what is pickleball,
august?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
of last year, august of 2023.
And now you own it.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
And now I own one of the largest indoor pickleball
facilities in the state of Texas.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
If that doesn't define the addiction of
pickleball, yes it's addicting.
Then I don't know what does.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
He came walking up and he took me to lunch.
Today we went to lunch.
He says we need to open apickleball facility and I'm like
you're smoking crap.
I was like there's no way,there's no way and I started
looking at it.
We started going to like theFinch Park, the parks around
town.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
It was like, wow, these people were need to open
more.
So I'm, I'm, I'm behind youguys.
This is gonna be a wild success, and then I'm gonna see one of
you near near me and we are.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
That that's the.
That that's the goal.
That was the vision and andstill is to.
To multiply this many timesover.
We can multiply it many timesover.
You will have the same podcastfrom a different latitude
absolutely.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, I love that, I love that.
Yeah, the next one will be on aboat.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Okay, I like that Now everybody knows there's a lot
of facilities opening up.
I mean, there's people poppingup all over the Metroplex.
There's enough players foreverybody.
What makes this have its ownunique personality?
What?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
gives Dinkers Pickleball Club its feel.
We're not a corporation.
This is not big corporate moneythat did this.
This is me and Blake Beardenthat had an idea and jumped off
the deep end to do it, and we'recentering this around our
community.
It's your courts, yourcommunity is our mantra, and we
(30:19):
just want everybody to beinvolved.
We want everybody to beinviting, because pickleball is
an inviting sport.
We don't want you to beintimidated when you walk in our
building.
Never step foot on a pickleballcourt before we want to teach
you the game.
We want you to enjoy it.
We want you to come in here andthat's really our whole
philosophy.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I love that You're just advocates for the game
Absolutely, and that's our heartand our passion I think we
share that, so I love to hearthat.
I love to hear that.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, we want it to look like this all the time.
We would really like.
I mean, if you look around, yousee the people watching other
people.
You see, you know they don'tmind.
And pickleball is one of thefew sports where were selling
our memberships and I told themthere was a wonderful hack which
(31:06):
you can do is you can buy amembership and meet three other
people and you can pretty muchplay for free all week Everybody
who's not just thosememberships.
And people have said well, wejust think about it.
You get four times a week andyou reserve a court for free.
If you've got three otherfriends, you're pretty much
playing every day of the month.
Go for it Every day of the week.
Love to have it.
The idea is that we get morepeople playing.
We're not going to get richtomorrow.
(31:27):
We need to keep the lights on.
We've had people before thathave come to us going why don't
you just give away everything?
Well, we have to turn theselights on.
Hopefully that's listening topeople.
That's not too bad to play airconditioning, you don't have to
worry about the rain, you don'thave to worry about the heat.
So we're hoping to kind of takecare of our people at the same
time.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
There's nothing worse than me getting up early in the
morning to go play pickleballand I get out there and I get
halfway through a game and Ihave to go home because we're
rained out.
Game's over, it's not fun.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
You're not going to get rained out at Dinkers
Pickleball Club I know, that'swhy it's so brilliant.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
All right, so how'd you find this place?
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Trial and error again .
We had a building rep that wekind of started with that's
Blake's one of his best friendsand his doubles partners in
tennis as well and we juststarted looking Other places
that we were looking at.
It just was way too expensive.
We couldn't start that with astartup like we did.
So we ventured out to smallercommunities, Denton, some other
(32:26):
places.
We couldn't find buildings thatwere big enough for kind of our
vision of what we wanted.
And then we came across this.
This is a Scott Brown commercialproperty.
Scott Brown is a real estatedeveloper here in the Denton
area that's very well knownthrough city council, the Denton
Chamber of Commerce andeverything else.
So we came and actually lookedat this building one day and it
(32:48):
about two weeks later ScottBrown actually called me
personally and wanted to talk tous about putting a pickleball,
a pickleball facility, in here.
He said we he knew that we wereinterested in in opening a
pickleball facility.
And he called us personally andsaid my wife plays pickleball.
Now I want you all to put thisin our building.
What's it going to take?
What's it going to take to getyou guys open by January?
(33:09):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And it was part of the community too.
We looked at some of the otherplaces that we looked.
You know, like when you'relooking at McKinney, you're
looking at Plano and we didn't Itowns, which really kind of
brought us this place.
At first, like you said, it wasa little big and then it turned
out that Scott was like what'sit going to take?
(33:31):
Let's do this.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
This is huge.
Now, are you guys?
It's part of your vision tohave professional tournaments or
anything like that, here?
We would love to.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
We definitely can have tournaments.
We have some of the people Iguess you were saying that were
playing on the tour now thatwere out here today playing.
They love the courts, love totalk to PPA, one of the reasons
that we have the net setups thatwe have, and Doug designed all
these nets that we have.
They're not permanent, so youcan remove them and we'd love to
be able to put in stadiums inhere put in risers and stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
That's good.
I'm glad you touched on thatbecause I was mentioning that to
John.
I wonder what drove thedecision for this kind of
netting.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
I mean our floor can be movable.
We can rearrange the floor anyway we want to.
I mean as far as the nettingand stuff like that, if we've
got other events where we needto remove a couple of cords for
it and set something as far asan event, we've got the space in
the in the layout to do so Ithink that's great.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I mean just the vision you guys had in such a
short time came on really quick,like I said it was.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
It was august.
I didn't.
I didn't even know whatpickleball was and the first
time I played it we went outfinch park is.
I live in mckinney and, uh, meand my wife went out after she
had told me we need to go playpickleball.
So we did.
We went and found a secludedcourt and actually taught
ourselves how to play before wegot on public courts and made an
embarrassment of ourselves.
So we actually taught ourselveshow to play.
(34:53):
So we went to Finch Park inMcKinney, which is a public park
.
They have repurposed threetennis courts into 12 pickleball
courts outdoor.
We went out on a Tuesday nightat like 9 o'clock and there were
200 people out there waiting toplay pickleball.
Wow, and we're like what?
Ding ding, ding, ding, ding.
The light bulb went off and Iwas hooked from that moment.
(35:16):
I mean, I was like we can'tbeat this and I'm sweating like
crazy.
It's 90-something degrees outhere.
We got to build an indoorfacility.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I am so glad to have visionaries like you guys.
The last two summers have beenreally bad.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Oh yeah, it's been brutal around here.
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
And I'm a redhead.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
You don't do good in the sun.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
I was meant for the seas and for the cold weather,
and so I die out there.
For me to even be playing asport that it only had outdoor
facilities is like can't evenbelieve I'm doing it.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
And then, but this is the future yes, this is, this
is the future and this is kindof the kind of the vision that
we saw as well and, like I said,we knew they were coming, we
knew we weren't going to be theonly ones, but we wanted to be
one of the first.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yeah Well, you know what You've got to be on the
front part of this, it's stillearly.
It's still very new.
It really is.
We keep telling ourselves thatbecause it seems like, wow, it's
been four years, but it's onlybeen four years.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
It's only been four years.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
It's really only been four years since it blew up,
and people are still trying tofigure out whatever, but I think
the strange thing about it,though, is there doesn't seem to
be a lot of animosity or badcompetition between people
wanting no turf grabs oranything.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
No, not really.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
It's like this pickleball community is all
supportive of one another.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
And that's it.
And here was the deal when wefirst started talking about this
.
It's not the apparel, it's notthe paddle lines.
It's not the apparel, it's notthe paddle lines, it's not any
of that.
It's court space.
That was the problem.
There was not enough courtspace for as many people that
this game has grown into in thelast four years.
When we first started looking Ithink the stat that Blake came
up with for every 435 people,there was only one pickleball
(37:00):
court.
Oh, wow, wow.
And that was in the dfw area.
Or was that nationwide?
That was dfw, so dfw area, yeah, yeah it was on the internet.
So you know it's true it's gotto be.
And the the average age of apickleball player in three,
three years ago was, I think, 67years old something, and now
it's 38 or 35 or something likethat is the average age of a
(37:21):
pickleball player.
So it's the.
The younger demographic isgetting there.
This is fixing to be ascholarship sport 100%.
This is going to be ascholarship sport, so this is an
opportunity for us to improvelives as well.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
I could not agree with you more.
And you're five minutes from aD1 college, from a D1 school.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yes, absolutely, we're right down the street from
University of North Texas.
That whole football team cameout today.
We took pictures.
That was all great that theyshowed up and supported us today
with that as well.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Hopefully.
We talked about gettinginvolved with what we have been
talking about.
Denton Independent SchoolDistrict was talking about.
They wanted to do somethingwith their kids.
They wanted some kind of anactivity.
We were like we have the space,bring your kids here, let's
teach them pickleball Love.
To get kids started at thatyoung age.
It would really be big.
It's totally going to be partof PE programs and stuff like
that.
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
I'm so glad to hear you say that, because to me,
like pickleball is somethingthat's getting these kids off
their phones.
We call them the look down, youknow looking at their phone, and
I mean we all get on our phones, we're all addicted, but more
so this generation than ever,and so seeing them gravitate
towards the sport.
As much as it's frustratingbecause where we live there's a
huge competition for courts,like you were saying, you know,
(38:34):
there's just not enough, and soit's frustrating because we
can't get a court, but I'm alsohappy, my heart's happy, because
I'm seeing the kids getinvolved and if you have a
facility like this where you canschedule something with the
schools and not worry about therain or not worrying about it
getting snowed, the elementshere in Texas.
So it's pretty incredible and Ihad heard that stat, I thought
(38:54):
I had heard it from that guy whowas at the kitchen cabinet in
Maryland.
He's having to build one 10minutes from one of his
locations just to meet thedemand and there's no slowing
down, there's not.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
We don't see this slowing down any time soon.
Like we said, I mean the lastthree years.
Pickleball has been around fora long time.
It's been around since the 60s.
I mean we all know it.
It is just now becomingmainstream and we wanted to jump
on it because we know this isan incredible opportunity, not
just for us, but what we canbring to the community and
involve the community in whatwe're doing.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
And that's obvious.
I mean so you're taking thecommunity element of pickleball
and doing it for this communityof Denton and you're wherever
else you next put your pin onthe map.
That's correct.
Oh, I don't know what you guysare doing.
What is your tagline?
Your courts, your community?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Alright.
What does that mean?
It means you're always invitedto come in this building.
There's never going to be atime where you won't walk in
here and be invited to come andplay on a court play with
somebody you don't know.
You're a first timer.
Come in here anytime.
We're going to make it inviting.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
We're going to make this enjoyable for you and the
personality we want the courtshave, the personality of the
community we're in.
One of the reasons we pickeddenton's we kind of like the
vibe, um, and that's what I wassaying about looking at, you
know, playing in those otherplaces.
We just enjoy the, the vibe ofthe community.
We're really active in thechamber of commerce.
Um, it's just a fantastic areato play in and we want this not
just to be somewhere where yougo, play, play, leave.
(40:22):
It's actually going to have thepersonality of the people that
are in it.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
We want people to come and hang out.
Whether they're playingpickleball or not, they're just
going to come and hang out andwatch.
I mean, it's a fun sport towatch as well.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Oh yes, I'm learning watching, especially since you
have the pros here today too,wow, and I've seen them play.
I've seen Cole.
I've seen Cole.
He's come out to our courtspublic courts.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
They're very good players.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
I mean he didn't stop for four hours.
Oh yeah, favorite shot inpickleball.
Favorite shot in pickleball.
What's your favorite?
Speaker 1 (40:49):
shot.
I love dinking Do you.
That's where Dinker'sPickleball Club came from.
I'd love to sit there and dinkthat's just me.
I can't do Ernie's because Ican't jump that far.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Or that high, or that high I might land if I did that
.
I'm an old tennis guy, I liketo drive.
Give me a ball, let me movehalfway into the court and drive
that ball, and that's myfavorite.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Oh yeah, Jump it right over the top of the net.
I keep hitting it in tennisslice Put it.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
You just drop it right over the net at their feet
.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
That's my favorite.
And so how many pros do youhave here?
By the way?
Three, right now.
Three pros.
And where did you get them?
Speaker 3 (41:27):
Aiden Suarez is a.
Aiden goes to UNT.
He's a local guy.
He's taught at a lot ofdifferent places.
He's touching Stonebriar.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
He actually reached out to us yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
And we saw the facility, heard about the
facility and said dude, you'rehiring pros, why don don't need
to be part of that?
And again, part of his incomeis that rain.
If it gets rain he doesn't getpaid.
Then Valentin was the head ofpickleball at the local McKinney
I'm McKinney, sorry the localDenton Pickleball and Tennis
Club.
And then Mav teaches as well,maverick teaches up there as
(41:58):
well.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
That's incredible.
So he proactively reached outto you.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
You knew you were building?
Yes, yeah, all three of themreached out to us.
We interviewed a few others.
We looked at a few other people, and we might pick up another
one or two as well, becausethere's quite a few people
obviously that want it.
But as we speak, that's kind ofour stable and they're doing a
great job.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
This right here.
I mean they won for open playand they're teaching people how
to play the game right rightball 101 right right.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
I know and we've, you know, we've.
We did some live feeds earlierand people were popping on um
and then you know to see thesepeople, all, all of them,
showing up and and standingaround and waiting and but not
minding.
It's just you.
I'm so proud of it, what youguys have accomplished here
today and thank you for havingblazing paddles out yeah, this
is a.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
This is a great opportunity for us too.
Thank you, guys for letting usshare the moment.
Thank you, thank y'all forbeing here.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
I mean, yeah this I mean out over the airwaves like
this.
Please come and see us.
Dinkers pickleball club.
We're in denton, texas, 719south i-35e.
Website is wwwdinkerspbccom.
Our Instagram is DinkersPickleball Club.
Our Facebook is DinkersPickleball Club.
(43:09):
Our phone number is940-312-6221.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
I love it.
That's great, that covered it.
That covered it.
That's it.
We usually ask how do peoplefind you?
Now they know, now they know,now they know.
Well, I encourage everyone tocome out here and give this
place a go.
It is, it's amazing.
I am so excited that this is apart of this community.
It's not that far from useither, right exactly, and we do
(43:37):
.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
We want to be a destination facility.
We've got the course to be Allright.
Well, thanks guys.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I know you're really busy.
Oh, thank you so much forhaving us on.
Thanks for coming out, allright, thanks, guys.
August, the 4th of last year, my wife came home
from work and said Honey, weneed to go play pickleball.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
And I was like what is pickleball?
August of last year, August of2023.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And now you own it.
And now I own one of thelargest indoor pickleball
facilities in the state of Texas.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
If that doesn't define the addiction of
pickleball.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Yes, it's addicting and I don't know what does.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
He came walking up and he took me to lunch.
Today we went to lunch.
He says we need to open apickleball facility and I'm like
you're smoking crap.
I was like there's no way,there's no way and I started
looking at it.
We started going to like theFinch Park, the parks around
town.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It was like you know, when you pick a pickleball
facility.
All right, John.
Hey, when are we today?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
We're at Dinker's Pickleball Club here in Denton.
I guess it used to be aBrookshire's is what we just
realized.
So this is, you know.
People are repurposingbuildings.
This is a great example of anempty building.
It's been empty for three years.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Three years.
Yeah, and now it's the home of15 beautiful pickleball courts
15 amazing looking pickleballcourts and two skinny courts,
and this place is justspectacular looking.
I want one.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
What's a skinny court ?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
It's a.
Why are you asking me this?
Are you trying to trip me up?
Speaker 4 (01:24):
No, it's a half of a court For people who don't know.
Some people don't know what askinny court is.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
It's a half of a court to practice.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah, okay, I thought you were trying to trick me,
not funny.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
I don't try to trick you, you trick yourself most of
the time.
No, the skinny courts, yeah,they're warm up.
They're half the size, half thewidth, so it's a good warm-up
area and they've got a wholeagenda of exhibitions and
instruction.
And then I think they open upfor full open play about 3.30
(01:54):
today.
So for the first several hoursyou're going to have alternating
classes and their teaching prosare going to show off a little.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Some exhibitions and I think we're going to have some
pros come too.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I hear we are going to have a couple pros here, yeah
so this is exciting and we'rereally excited.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
They had Blazing Paddles out for their grand
opening.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Yeah, I mean, I imagine excitement is off the
charts for these guys right now.
They purchased the buildinglast August I think is what she
said and they're opening.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
They didn't purchase.
They're leasing Leasing.
We'll get the owners over hereand get the backstory on it.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
Yeah, blake and Doug are the guys who were nice
enough to invite us, and then,of course, ashley and Suzanne
from the Twisted Pickle.
We're working with them too,out here today.
So it's a big old pickleballfamily out here.
It's going to be a fun time, itis.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
We're live All right.
Well, first off, thank you somuch to John and Karen for
having us on.
I'm Ashley Blakely and mybusiness partner, suzanne Greber
, and I own Twisted Pickle andwe are a business development,
operations, marketing and mediaagency of consultants that helps
not only Pickleball brands togo to market, but we also have a
(03:09):
niche in helping these largePickleball facilities come to
Texas and be able to have ago-to-market plan.
We like to get them tosuccessfully to day one and keep
them successful on day 100.
Speaker 6 (03:25):
And I'm Suzanne Griever and, as Ashley said, you
know we have a pretty widescope of services that we offer,
but we both have backgrounds inbusiness operations and video
production, marketing, brandmanagement, and so we're able to
scale up or down based onwhatever the business owner
needs.
And so Dinkers had done a greatjob of getting their
construction substantiallycomplete.
(03:45):
And so Dinkers had done a greatjob of getting their
construction substantiallycomplete, and so when we came in
, we were able to really focuson getting them engaged in the
community, working on theirbrand identity, working with
their staff, doing customerservice training.
So they've been great to workwith.
So, yeah, so it's been a funproject and it's fun to see it
open today.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
They said you were lifesavers.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
What did you say?
They said you were lifesavers.
Good, good, that's what we need.
Speaker 4 (04:10):
Karen, If I'm the Dinkers Club or if I'm another
club that's opening up.
What does it look like when Iknow you guys have been
successful for me?
What does success look likefrom their perspective?
They're a startup.
We have no idea what it's goingto look like, I mean this looks
like a success today.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
Yeah, no, it's a great question.
I think that success in ourform for our clients is really
about.
We bring them peace of mind andwe lessen anxiety and we're
problem solvers.
We are a crisis management team.
We're an automatic ad waterleadership team.
We bring in the ideas thatpeople haven't thought of.
Because Suzanne and I are both,with our strong backgrounds,
(04:52):
love to research all aboutPickleball, knowing all of the
business operations side of it,just the breakdown of PPA versus
MLP and UPA, and those arethings that I think people want
to get into the business ofPickleball, but they don't
naturally know the business ofpickleball.
And there's, there's a wholeworld that has to be understood
to be successful.
Speaker 6 (05:12):
So that that's kind of it from my my point of view
and I would only add to that isyou know, success is different
for each client that we have,and so when we do start an
engagement, we determine whatsuccess looks like for them, and
part of that was they wanted toreally have a community feel,
and so that's something we'veleaned into, and we love being
(05:34):
up in Denton Ashley and I haveboth been in North Texas for a
long time, you know and theirmotto is your courts, your
community, and so we've gottenthem super engaged in Chamber of
Commerce.
And so we've gotten them superengaged in Chamber of Commerce,
and then we have a full house.
We had a line waiting, as youall saw, when people were coming
in.
So that engagement is part ofhow we are judging our success
(05:54):
so far.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I mean, you had the Mean Green football team here.
Speaker 6 (05:59):
We did have a lot of players from.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
UNT Right, that was super cool to see.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Now another thing, and you guys, we met you guys.
It's kind of funny.
We met Ashley playing one night.
We were playing in a league.
I don't know if I would callthat playing John or if you were
more melting me on the court,you were on the sides of the net
, okay yeah.
We still became friends.
We did, we became friends.
Neither is Karen, and so fromthat we learned oh my gosh, well
, we've got some commoninterests.
(06:25):
Oh yeah, you're fine, that'sTaylor.
Speaker 5 (06:27):
Who's Taylor Mason?
Speaker 4 (06:34):
And we started talking to Ashley and they have
it's really kind of a cool thinktank I don't know what you'd
call it, like kitchen cabinetand we were asked to attend.
I guess it was your second oneIs that the second one?
And it was a collaborationevent.
There was, I don't know, maybea dozen different pickleball
entrepreneurs or people who arein the in the industry, somehow
sharing ideas and sharingsolutions, and we got to present
a problem to the group ourfirst one there.
(06:55):
I thought that was so cool,thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
It's so cool because this is such an we're so early
in the sport.
Yeah and uh, on the lastpodcast I was.
This would be like being therewhen the NFL was started.
How cool is that Right.
And nobody.
It's the wild, wild west.
You've said that a hundredtimes.
And so we don't have, there'sno roadmap.
So how do you make itsuccessful?
And that seems what you're.
You're helping theseentrepreneurs figure that out
(07:18):
and I love that you're bringingthem together because, um, we
don't know the landscape and weall have a little piece and each
piece helps create that biggerpicture.
Right, absolutely.
Speaker 5 (07:31):
The kitchen cabinet is something I'm really
passionate about.
It was a thought process I hadlast November.
We had just come from nationals.
We attended the businesssymposium, which was amazing.
I was the first time doing thatand Suzanne and I went.
And I went to Suzanne literallya few weeks later and was like
I think we need to create kindof our own mini business
(07:52):
symposium and have it continueto grow from there.
So what we do is we reallysupport the Texas-based
pickleball owners.
We like a format where we meetevery other month.
It's an idea, as you weresaying, idea generation care and
think tank and we give feedbackand really the precipice of it
was how do you have an honorarystaff, cabinet or board members
(08:16):
to really be able to bring yourproblems to and say I need help?
This is what I'm doing.
There's space enough for all ofus and everybody needs support.
It's not just about support onthe court, it's support in
business.
So that was really the brainthought process of it.
Now I have people that come upto me that are like I know I
don't live in Texas, ashley, butI really want to be a part of
this.
We had another franchisee thatflew in from the from the
(08:40):
Northeast that wanted to attendand it was insane.
I met him last November andwe've been talking on LinkedIn
and he flew in for it.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That's so cool and you know.
Since then, I just want you toknow that several of the folks
have reached out to us and andgave us such words of
affirmation and love and supportand it feels so good because we
felt alone and now we have.
You're doing in the businessworld what pickleball does in
the for the players it createscommunity.
(09:08):
You're creating a community ofbusinesses that can support each
other.
It's been so beautiful I can'teven I'll show you the email
from Christie that came withthat.
It made our day the other day,you know when we're down in the
dumps like that, and you getsomething random like that and
you go, oh my goodness, that'swhat I needed it was so cool you
never thought you knew that youneeded.
(09:29):
Exactly, Exactly, and you know.
And then they helped us withour problem.
You know, we walked away fromthat meeting knowing what we had
to do.
Even though we knew it, wedidn't want to cause our heart,
you know, wasn't leading ourdecision, not our head, you know
, was leading our decision, notour head.
And they gave us the toughfeedback.
And it was, and it wasappreciated, it was kindly
(09:53):
delivered and and then like Isaid, the support, follow up
just means everything.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
That's amazing.
I'm so grateful to hear that.
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Because sometimes, sometimes, the answer is not yes
and we had a.
You know, we had anotheropportunity to hold a huge event
, but it was going to be a greatdetriment to our financial
well-being for the work that wewere going to put in.
We felt like, well, I think wewere just whistling past the
graveyard.
We were pretending like, okay,this is still something we can
(10:16):
consider.
But it was no, you can't betaken advantage of.
And I think sometimes you needto bounce those ideas off
like-minded people and have themsay Absolutely taken advantage
of.
And I think sometimes you needto bounce those ideas off
like-minded people and have themsay absolutely.
And then the looks we got fromeverybody we were pitching it
out there, like I don't think weneed to talk anymore, yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I mean, like I said, we were being led with uh.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Taylor, Taylor, third head growing out of our body
going.
Wait a minute.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
That's what we count on Taylor for Bring us some
information and feedback Honestblunt feedback.
I loved it.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And we'll get Taylor on here, because we've got to
talk about her story too.
So how did you find pickleball?
Speaker 5 (10:53):
I'll let you take that one.
Speaker 6 (10:56):
How did we find it?
I know it is interesting,everybody's story.
You know I had been acompetitive athlete that had
been retired by multiple kneeinjuries when I was younger and
hadn't really been able to findanother sport that I could
compete at.
And it was like this pickleballthing's taken off and I was
like I'll try it and see andjust really enjoyed it.
And you know just so.
(11:17):
It was basically after it wasafter COVID I just moved back to
Dallas.
I had just moved back to Dallas.
So it was a way to buildcommunity again and try a new
sport, to see you know howeverything would work and just
fell in love with it immediately.
And that's how Ashley and Ireconnected.
We knew each other before butwe both started playing about
the same time and that's wherewe reconnected.
(11:39):
And then Twisted Pickle wasborn shortly after that.
And when was that?
When was Twisted Pickle born?
Shortly after that?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And when was that?
When was Twisted Pickle born?
When, did you like?
How long ago Did you guys getinto pickleball?
Speaker 6 (11:48):
So Twisted Pickle's a little over a year old and I've
been playing for like right attwo years now.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Okay, perfect, perfect.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Yeah, yeah, so similar.
I mean I didn't grow up inleague sports or racket sports
or anything.
I was on the dance side, but Ihad.
Honestly, I had a health scareand needed to redefine who
Ashley Erickson Blakely was.
I lived in LA for a very longtime and worked in TV and film
and my best friend still livesout there and she's.
(12:17):
Every time I'm out there tovisit she's like let's just go,
you can play pickleball.
And finally I was like, uh,give me that thing and I'll go
with you if you'll just stoptalking.
You know, right, um.
And so I played.
It got put on Instagram and oneof my childhood friends, keith,
who's actually here todayplaying who you guys know, um,
we've been friends since juniorhigh he saw it on Instagram and
(12:38):
he called me and was like hey,I'm going to pick you up
Saturday at 8am.
And I was like for what?
And he was like we're going togo play pickleball.
And I was like no, we're not, Iwas just messing around.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
He goes, no, I'll pick you up at 8.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
And then it was just on and I had a partner for all
the time and we've had a blastand, like Suzanne said, we kind
of reconnected.
We went to the same college andsaw through some Aggie
connection things but you know,weren't um, it's wasn't like we
were running buddies all thetime.
Then we saw each other on thecourt and we're like, oh my gosh
, you're playing, I'm playing.
And then we just kept talkingabout it and, like she said
(13:11):
earlier, I have marketing,social media, video production,
um, education and training in myback pocket and then she has a
whole different world in hers asshe can talk about.
But it was, it was just themarriage and I tell everybody
I'm like we are the two that hada one-night stand, had a baby,
and now we're trying to figureout how to work this company.
(13:32):
So we have been hugelysuccessful.
It's been a lot of fun,successful and just like
everything coming together andpeople coming.
Oh my gosh, I never know, Inever knew I needed this.
And then the birth of kitchencabinetin has just been so, so
satisfying.
I've loved it so much.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
You heard Aggie, right Aggies.
Oh yeah, One of you Proud.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Aggies.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
One of us.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
They're a clan.
So what about your background?
You touched on that.
Speaker 6 (14:00):
So I grew up in healthcare, you know.
So I have been very fortunatein my career and have run
several hospitals as CEO andthen went into the corporate
side of healthcare management.
But when you're over a hospital, you do construction, you do
personnel development, you docustomer service, you do
community engagement, and soI've been exposed to like all of
(14:23):
those different areas and youalso have to be really strong at
your financial knowledge.
So I've got all that backgroundthat's been able to translate
over into the sport that I loveand so I'm able to bring that to
the table.
And when we started looking atour skill sets, they complement
each other really well.
So we can, bob, and we've gotsome overlap, but you know it
just worked together togetherwell because we can typically
(14:45):
meet the needs of our clientsbetween both of us together.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I love it.
It's a good marriage.
It looks like a really goodmarriage.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
It's a really good one-night stand.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Very good one, all right, so pickleball, what about
your favorite shot, the?
Speaker 5 (14:59):
one that makes it over.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Ashley that makes sense.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
I mean, I really like my, I like the short game.
You know, it's like because I'malmost 5'10" and so people
think I'm going to be.
You have a wingspan, yeah, andpeople think I'm going to be
like a banger on it and I loveto just drop shots super close
to the net and, you know,aggravate people with that.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Ashley.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
I don't know that I've mastered what's my favorite
.
I feel like I'm, you know, alittle less playing than yeah.
That's true, thank you.
I'm a few couple months shy ofSuzanne, but we're both there at
two years and I'm so gratefulto not be in panic mode anymore
especially when you look acrossleague at.
John and Karen Whitaker andyou're like holy hell, um, and
(15:47):
so I'm just in survival mode allthe time, just in life in
general, you know.
But, um, but I do.
I love watching players do theTomahawk and so in my mind I
look amazing doing it.
I don't know what it looks liketo people across from me.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
I'm sure they want to go sit down, Ashley, you know.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
but that really is it .
Thank you, josh.
I'll tell you what what'shumbling.
I thought I looked really goodtoo, and then I filmed myself
and I was like I look like anidiot.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
What am I doing?
How about that Elaine dancethat you got?
Speaker 4 (16:16):
Oh, did you show her that night?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Oh yeah, dance.
I have to show you.
It's so good, it's so good.
Speaker 6 (16:28):
I've only comes out rarely now, but when it does I'm
like, oh my gosh, please nobodybe looking at me.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah, no, no, I don't anymore.
I'm cut a lot of it out.
I'm down to maybe five percent.
Okay, that's good, that'sbetter than 95 percent I love,
that's what it was, and it wasso embarrassing um but you've
made up for it with the rest ofyour game, so you're're fine
yeah and it brings so much joyto so many people to be, able to
watch it, I agree.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
Yes, yes.
Now let's ask a real importantquestion, so it didn't get away.
If somebody is interested incontracting with you and using
your service to find out more,how do they do that?
Speaker 6 (16:58):
So I mean our social media, our Instagram is our most
active, probably, channel thatwe have, and so that's Twisted
underscore, pickle underscore.
Okay, that's a great way toreach out to us and get started.
We're on there every day and,yeah, we'd be happy to talk to
people.
You know, right now we do a lotof work in Texas, but we are
(17:19):
open and able to do work outsideof Texas as well.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So the name Twisted Pickle.
Who's the brainchild?
Speaker 6 (17:29):
I would love to say, like we did all this, strategic,
you know, strategery that'spretty much what it was was
strategery, because in myprofessional background we've
hired, like these,multimillion-dollar advertising
firms to do brand developmentand naming.
We were at a restaurant thatmight have twisted in the name
we might have been having ahamburger and a beer and we were
(17:51):
like, you know, as we're goingthrough all the names, we landed
on twisted pickle.
You know we, uh, we like it.
You know it's different andit's got.
You know our aesthetic is veryclean, crisp, you know, yeah, so
we landed on it and we werelike that's it, and we had the
logo and we're off to the races.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I love it.
So we just got Dink Pro thetrademark for it.
It took us two years, right,and that's a long time, and I
think it's because they gotinundated with a bunch of
requests for pickleballcompanies, but we finally got it
.
Two years is a long time Now,like blazing paddles.
We wish our company was blazingpaddles.
You know, I don't know how toundo or talk about that.
(18:32):
Yeah we can talk about that atCapnick.
We could.
Speaker 6 (18:38):
Because that is something as a pickleball
business or any business thatyou really have to be thoughtful
about and file early, you knowfor protection of your name and
logo, et cetera, and so, no,it's, it's an important thing,
and you're moving so fast.
When you start a business,that's kind of the last thing on
the list that you're like, oh,I need to start messing with the
government on that, but yeah,it's super important.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Yeah, and we had a whole long list and we just kept
going back to Dink, going backto dink, going back to dink, and
you know what dink stands for?
This has not been proven, by theway, it's very.
It makes sense.
It means drop in kitchen.
Drop in kitchen, yeah, karen,no, no.
(19:18):
So drop in kitchen.
So dink is not just what you doat the line, it's being able to
drop the ball from anywhere onthe court into the kitchen,
which is one of the mostimportant shots in pickleball.
Like you said, your short gameis super important.
Well, the only way you can getto your short game is by
dropping that ball in thatkitchen.
Right, if you bang all the wayup, the ball is going to come
(19:40):
back at that velocity.
So interesting, yeah, but Ilove the twisted pickle.
It's very creative.
I think it's very cute, verycatchy and, um, I just I think
what you guys are doing isamazing.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
And I do want to say to Ashley gave us great bit of
advice on day one, two aboutjust really narrow down the
focus.
Who, who are you?
What are you?
Know, this is what we are, andafter that it becomes kind of
clear what you should be doing,because you you've got to put
the energy towards what youreally want to be.
And that's when karen just saidabout blazing paddles.
(20:12):
We've somehow slipped into thislittle niche just over the last
month of events and uhactivations and live broadcasts
and things like that.
It's fun and people seem to itseems to be catching a lot of
traction.
So thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Now, how did you guys meet, doug and Blake?
Speaker 5 (20:28):
How did we meet Doug and Blake?
We do a lot of research onsocial media.
Suzanne found them on Facebook,gosh, six months ago, when they
really first just got started.
They were putting up photos andthey're just reaching out and
staying consistent.
And they were like yep, we arein the middle of building.
(20:48):
In the middle of building,we'll get back to you.
And we just kind of steadilystayed in the background,
because that's really our job isto be the support team and stay
in the background.
And so finally they reached outand said you know what?
We've got the facility, we'rein the middle of construction,
but other than that, we don'thave a plan and we want to be
smart and we need marketing, weneed social media, we need brand
(21:12):
identity and I mean down tologo slogan.
Everything needed to beperfected.
And so they were smart enoughto realize they needed to solve
a problem rather than trying todo it themselves.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Trust me, we know, yeah, after we've pivoted 500
times and spent money.
But that's okay, the good thingis Karen.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
You pivoted and you realized there was a problem.
So you pivoted and, like Johnand I talked about even before,
kitchen Cabinet is from amarketing perspective.
If you're confused on whatyou're doing, you can only
imagine what your audience isconfused on what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Right.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
And it also helps, again, relieve the anxiety.
Now you can focus and niche itdown, and I think that's the
great thing about our socialsand you know, my passion in
marketing is it's.
It's like Suzanne was sayingit's clean, it's bold, you know
exactly what you're dealing with, you know exactly who we are,
you know there's a definiteaesthetic, but people don't
(22:08):
leave us confused and soshutting down that confusion and
anxiety is huge.
Speaker 6 (22:13):
Yes, well, and we've had to like, as y'all's business
has evolved, we've evolved aswell.
That's just the nature ofhaving a business and not being
so married to an idea that yougo down with the ship on it.
You know, it's a trusting yourbusiness partner, being able to
stop, look at it critically,adjust where you need to, and
that's what we've seen y'all do,which has been great.
(22:33):
It's part of the purpose of thekitchen cabinet, I can tell you
.
You know, we were at the MLPevent two weeks ago.
It was awesome walking in andseeing y'all there doing a live
broadcast.
We were like so proud, I knowso it's like all the cabinet
members, you know, we're soexcited when they are out in the
wild, in the wild, yeah.
And so we just congratulatey'all on the perseverance and
(22:54):
also being able to see you out,you know, just becoming a staple
in the community up here.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Again why I love Pickleballball.
It's a big world and it's avery small one and it's all the
same people, right, and they all.
I'm amazed at the connection.
Someday I would love to likemap it all out, um, because I
mean, like even us, you know,meeting, and now we're at all
these events together, right,and we're involved in the
kitchen cabinet.
It's just, that's it.
It's amazing.
(23:21):
A community, well, and how manypeople do we have here, do you
think, today?
Speaker 6 (23:27):
We're several hundred , and it's I mean lying out the
door this morning when it opened, and then it's been a steady
stream of people and we're goingto be going until 10 o'clock
tonight.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Well, and I think about just the ribbon-cutting
yesterday.
You can speak on that.
Speaker 6 (23:41):
I will say I want to give a huge shout out to the
denton chamber chamber ofcommerce, even though I can't
talk.
So the denton chamber ofcommerce was so engaged
throughout all this process.
They're so supportive of thebusinesses in town and we had 60
plus people in the middle ofthe day on a friday here for
that's huge yeah, because themayor was here and he's here
playing today.
Yeah, he's playing today is hereally?
Speaker 4 (24:02):
yeah, yeah so we need to find out if denton has an
october fest.
Speaker 5 (24:05):
I'm sure they do.
Yes, monday yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:09):
So if people have not been to denton in a while and I
know north texas has gotten sospread out you need to come up
here and check out what's goingon, because between the colleges
that are up here and thebusiness development that
they're doing, it's a fun.
I mean, it's like we've metjust great people and you can
see just the turnout for this.
They're a pickleball-friendlytown for sure.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
I'm hoping this is a wild success and they open one
next to me.
Well, thank you for joining ustoday.
Thank you for inviting us outhere.
It's been an incredibleexperience for us.
We just learned how to takethis show on the road and we're
happy to bring it to these theseand support these businesses.
Speaker 5 (24:47):
Well, like I said, we are both.
We are grateful from a fromDinkers to Twisted Pickle, that
a that I got to meet you guysand get smashed by you at TCD
Lee.
Um, it was probably the thebest night of being pickled ever
was I got to meet John.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
That's okay, girl, say it out loud, it's fine.
I don't think she told me shegot pickled by y'all.
Speaker 5 (25:09):
I'm pretty sure I got a tattoo about it now, but it's
been a great relationshipbecause now we've been able to
like kind of partner and walkhand in hand, and that's what
really this is all about.
So we're grateful you guys arehere.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
And you had the best attitudeof anybody I've ever seen who
was pickled, so you knowseriously, I have to do
something good attitude goes along way.
It really does.
Thank you, john I appreciate itno, you guys are great and
let's enjoy some more of thisday, all right?
thank you guys, thank you guys,thank you hey, picklers, you may
have noticed, summer hit and ithit with a vengeance.
(25:42):
It's only going to get hotterfrom, and if you're out there
playing pickleball, you know oneof the toughest things to do is
to keep the ball to where it'sstill lively.
They get soft out there.
Well, I'm here to tell youthere's a solution, and that is
offered to us by CrownPickleball.
If you don't know Kevin Perkinsand Crown Pickleball, check him
out on Instagram.
Go to his shop.
He's got balls, paddles, shirts, socks, wristbands, hats he's
(26:07):
got the whole deal and he's agood human.
We like to support good humans.
So get your crown pickle balls.
Save yourself a little moneythis summer when everybody
else's balls are melting.
That sounds bad, but you'llhave the crown pickle balls.
All right, let's get back tothe show.
All right, the men of the hourDinkers Pickleball Club grand
opening today.
Blake and Doug.
Hello guys.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
How's it going?
Hey, how are y'all?
Speaker 4 (26:28):
How are you guys, y'all, going to be running hot
right now?
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, it's, I know about you, but I'm We've got a
full house.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
You have a full house on opening day.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Fabulous, we love this.
Oh my goodness.
Fabulous, we love this.
Oh my goodness.
We couldn't ask for a betterturnout.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Now I've got a film clip to share with you guys
later because I was videoing.
When you all opened the doorsand saw all the people streaming
in, you had the people waiting.
That had to be a big like.
Okay, people came.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yes, people actually showed up.
Yes, we're good to go.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Yes, but all this time you put it all together and
you recognize it.
You put it all together and yourecognize it and you put it all
together and you see the courts.
They look really great and youopen that door, like you said,
and it was like where do allthese people?
Speaker 4 (27:05):
come from.
This is amazing.
That was great.
You saw the UNT football teamwas here.
That was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
The building owner actually sent those guys out to
have pictures and stuff with us.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
Oh, that's so cool.
Oh, that's fantastic.
Ashley and Suzanne earlier, Iknow you guys have been working
with them as well and I knowthey were real happy to see the
turnout From your success.
Is this what you envisioned?
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:29):
absolutely.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
This was the hope from day one, and we've outdone
ourselves.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
You think we're hoping it stays like this?
We're hoping it stays like this.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Absolutely, I think we've outdone ourselves and
we're very happy with theoutcome.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
I don't think it's going to slow down at all.
This is amazing, and we havepeople here from our neck of the
woods who traveled all the wayup here.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
That's awesome.
Speaker 6 (27:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
I mean we've got a handful of our club traveling up
here.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
I've got the guys that I play on my tennis team
with.
They don't ever play pickleball, they're like we've got to try
that, yeah, so they're outplaying pickleball as we speak.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
All right, so let's go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Go back to the beginning.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I am assuming you started playing pickleball.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yes, yeah, well, I was a tennis player, okay, and I
was dating a girl that was likeyou've got to try it.
I'm like no way, I'm not thatold.
And so I tried it.
And when I tried it, I thoughtthis is the most.
This is amazing.
It's an incredible game.
I like that.
I don't remember the last time.
I picked up a tennis racket now.
So that's the way I started isjust playing with her, and then
I would talk to Doug a littlebit and he and Jessica decided
(28:33):
that they were going to play itwas like August the 4th of last
year.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
My wife came home from work and said, honey, we
need to go play pickleball and Iwas like, what is pickleball,
august?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
of last year, august of 2023.
And now you own it.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
And now I own one of the largest indoor pickleball
facilities in the state of Texas.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
If that doesn't define the addiction of
pickleball, yes it's addicting.
Then I don't know what does.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
He came walking up and he took me to lunch.
Today we went to lunch.
He says we need to open apickleball facility and I'm like
you're smoking crap.
I was like there's no way,there's no way and I started
looking at it.
We started going to like theFinch Park, the parks around
town.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
It was like, wow, these people were need to open
more.
So I'm, I'm, I'm behind youguys.
This is gonna be a wild success, and then I'm gonna see one of
you near near me and we are.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
That that's the.
That that's the goal.
That was the vision and andstill is to.
To multiply this many timesover.
We can multiply it many timesover.
You will have the same podcastfrom a different latitude
absolutely.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, I love that, I love that.
Yeah, the next one will be on aboat.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Okay, I like that Now everybody knows there's a lot
of facilities opening up.
I mean, there's people poppingup all over the Metroplex.
There's enough players foreverybody.
What makes this have its ownunique personality?
What?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
gives Dinkers Pickleball Club its feel.
We're not a corporation.
This is not big corporate moneythat did this.
This is me and Blake Beardenthat had an idea and jumped off
the deep end to do it, and we'recentering this around our
community.
It's your courts, yourcommunity is our mantra, and we
(30:19):
just want everybody to beinvolved.
We want everybody to beinviting, because pickleball is
an inviting sport.
We don't want you to beintimidated when you walk in our
building.
Never step foot on a pickleballcourt before we want to teach
you the game.
We want you to enjoy it.
We want you to come in here andthat's really our whole
philosophy.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I love that You're just advocates for the game
Absolutely, and that's our heartand our passion I think we
share that, so I love to hearthat.
I love to hear that.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, we want it to look like this all the time.
We would really like.
I mean, if you look around, yousee the people watching other
people.
You see, you know they don'tmind.
And pickleball is one of thefew sports where were selling
our memberships and I told themthere was a wonderful hack which
(31:06):
you can do is you can buy amembership and meet three other
people and you can pretty muchplay for free all week Everybody
who's not just thosememberships.
And people have said well, wejust think about it.
You get four times a week andyou reserve a court for free.
If you've got three otherfriends, you're pretty much
playing every day of the month.
Go for it Every day of the week.
Love to have it.
The idea is that we get morepeople playing.
We're not going to get richtomorrow.
(31:27):
We need to keep the lights on.
We've had people before thathave come to us going why don't
you just give away everything?
Well, we have to turn theselights on.
Hopefully that's listening topeople.
That's not too bad to play airconditioning, you don't have to
worry about the rain, you don'thave to worry about the heat.
So we're hoping to kind of takecare of our people at the same
time.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
There's nothing worse than me getting up early in the
morning to go play pickleballand I get out there and I get
halfway through a game and Ihave to go home because we're
rained out.
Game's over, it's not fun.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
You're not going to get rained out at Dinkers
Pickleball Club I know, that'swhy it's so brilliant.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
All right, so how'd you find this place?
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Trial and error again .
We had a building rep that wekind of started with that's
Blake's one of his best friendsand his doubles partners in
tennis as well and we juststarted looking Other places
that we were looking at.
It just was way too expensive.
We couldn't start that with astartup like we did.
So we ventured out to smallercommunities, Denton, some other
(32:26):
places.
We couldn't find buildings thatwere big enough for kind of our
vision of what we wanted.
And then we came across this.
This is a Scott Brown commercialproperty.
Scott Brown is a real estatedeveloper here in the Denton
area that's very well knownthrough city council, the Denton
Chamber of Commerce andeverything else.
So we came and actually lookedat this building one day and it
(32:48):
about two weeks later ScottBrown actually called me
personally and wanted to talk tous about putting a pickleball,
a pickleball facility, in here.
He said we he knew that we wereinterested in in opening a
pickleball facility.
And he called us personally andsaid my wife plays pickleball.
Now I want you all to put thisin our building.
What's it going to take?
What's it going to take to getyou guys open by January?
(33:09):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
And it was part of the community too.
We looked at some of the otherplaces that we looked.
You know, like when you'relooking at McKinney, you're
looking at Plano and we didn't Itowns, which really kind of
brought us this place.
At first, like you said, it wasa little big and then it turned
out that Scott was like what'sit going to take?
(33:31):
Let's do this.
Speaker 4 (33:32):
This is huge.
Now, are you guys?
It's part of your vision tohave professional tournaments or
anything like that, here?
We would love to.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
We definitely can have tournaments.
We have some of the people Iguess you were saying that were
playing on the tour now thatwere out here today playing.
They love the courts, love totalk to PPA, one of the reasons
that we have the net setups thatwe have, and Doug designed all
these nets that we have.
They're not permanent, so youcan remove them and we'd love to
be able to put in stadiums inhere put in risers and stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
That's good.
I'm glad you touched on thatbecause I was mentioning that to
John.
I wonder what drove thedecision for this kind of
netting.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
I mean our floor can be movable.
We can rearrange the floor anyway we want to.
I mean as far as the nettingand stuff like that, if we've
got other events where we needto remove a couple of cords for
it and set something as far asan event, we've got the space in
the in the layout to do so Ithink that's great.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I mean just the vision you guys had in such a
short time came on really quick,like I said it was.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
It was august.
I didn't.
I didn't even know whatpickleball was and the first
time I played it we went outfinch park is.
I live in mckinney and, uh, meand my wife went out after she
had told me we need to go playpickleball.
So we did.
We went and found a secludedcourt and actually taught
ourselves how to play before wegot on public courts and made an
embarrassment of ourselves.
So we actually taught ourselveshow to play.
(34:53):
So we went to Finch Park inMcKinney, which is a public park
.
They have repurposed threetennis courts into 12 pickleball
courts outdoor.
We went out on a Tuesday nightat like 9 o'clock and there were
200 people out there waiting toplay pickleball.
Wow, and we're like what?
Ding ding, ding, ding, ding.
The light bulb went off and Iwas hooked from that moment.
(35:16):
I mean, I was like we can'tbeat this and I'm sweating like
crazy.
It's 90-something degrees outhere.
We got to build an indoorfacility.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I am so glad to have visionaries like you guys.
The last two summers have beenreally bad.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Oh yeah, it's been brutal around here.
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
And I'm a redhead.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
You don't do good in the sun.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
I was meant for the seas and for the cold weather,
and so I die out there.
For me to even be playing asport that it only had outdoor
facilities is like can't evenbelieve I'm doing it.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
And then, but this is the future yes, this is, this
is the future and this is kindof the kind of the vision that
we saw as well and, like I said,we knew they were coming, we
knew we weren't going to be theonly ones, but we wanted to be
one of the first.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yeah Well, you know what You've got to be on the
front part of this, it's stillearly.
It's still very new.
It really is.
We keep telling ourselves thatbecause it seems like, wow, it's
been four years, but it's onlybeen four years.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
It's only been four years.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
It's really only been four years since it blew up,
and people are still trying tofigure out whatever, but I think
the strange thing about it,though, is there doesn't seem to
be a lot of animosity or badcompetition between people
wanting no turf grabs oranything.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
No, not really.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
It's like this pickleball community is all
supportive of one another.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
And that's it.
And here was the deal when wefirst started talking about this
.
It's not the apparel, it's notthe paddle lines.
It's not the apparel, it's notthe paddle lines, it's not any
of that.
It's court space.
That was the problem.
There was not enough courtspace for as many people that
this game has grown into in thelast four years.
When we first started looking Ithink the stat that Blake came
up with for every 435 people,there was only one pickleball
(37:00):
court.
Oh, wow, wow.
And that was in the dfw area.
Or was that nationwide?
That was dfw, so dfw area, yeah, yeah it was on the internet.
So you know it's true it's gotto be.
And the the average age of apickleball player in three,
three years ago was, I think, 67years old something, and now
it's 38 or 35 or something likethat is the average age of a
(37:21):
pickleball player.
So it's the.
The younger demographic isgetting there.
This is fixing to be ascholarship sport 100%.
This is going to be ascholarship sport, so this is an
opportunity for us to improvelives as well.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
I could not agree with you more.
And you're five minutes from aD1 college, from a D1 school.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yes, absolutely, we're right down the street from
University of North Texas.
That whole football team cameout today.
We took pictures.
That was all great that theyshowed up and supported us today
with that as well.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Hopefully.
We talked about gettinginvolved with what we have been
talking about.
Denton Independent SchoolDistrict was talking about.
They wanted to do somethingwith their kids.
They wanted some kind of anactivity.
We were like we have the space,bring your kids here, let's
teach them pickleball Love.
To get kids started at thatyoung age.
It would really be big.
It's totally going to be partof PE programs and stuff like
that.
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
I'm so glad to hear you say that, because to me,
like pickleball is somethingthat's getting these kids off
their phones.
We call them the look down, youknow looking at their phone, and
I mean we all get on our phones, we're all addicted, but more
so this generation than ever,and so seeing them gravitate
towards the sport.
As much as it's frustratingbecause where we live there's a
huge competition for courts,like you were saying, you know,
(38:34):
there's just not enough, and soit's frustrating because we
can't get a court, but I'm alsohappy, my heart's happy, because
I'm seeing the kids getinvolved and if you have a
facility like this where you canschedule something with the
schools and not worry about therain or not worrying about it
getting snowed, the elementshere in Texas.
So it's pretty incredible and Ihad heard that stat, I thought
(38:54):
I had heard it from that guy whowas at the kitchen cabinet in
Maryland.
He's having to build one 10minutes from one of his
locations just to meet thedemand and there's no slowing
down, there's not.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
We don't see this slowing down any time soon.
Like we said, I mean the lastthree years.
Pickleball has been around fora long time.
It's been around since the 60s.
I mean we all know it.
It is just now becomingmainstream and we wanted to jump
on it because we know this isan incredible opportunity, not
just for us, but what we canbring to the community and
involve the community in whatwe're doing.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
And that's obvious.
I mean so you're taking thecommunity element of pickleball
and doing it for this communityof Denton and you're wherever
else you next put your pin onthe map.
That's correct.
Oh, I don't know what you guysare doing.
What is your tagline?
Your courts, your community?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Alright.
What does that mean?
It means you're always invitedto come in this building.
There's never going to be atime where you won't walk in
here and be invited to come andplay on a court play with
somebody you don't know.
You're a first timer.
Come in here anytime.
We're going to make it inviting.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
We're going to make this enjoyable for you and the
personality we want the courtshave, the personality of the
community we're in.
One of the reasons we pickeddenton's we kind of like the
vibe, um, and that's what I wassaying about looking at, you
know, playing in those otherplaces.
We just enjoy the, the vibe ofthe community.
We're really active in thechamber of commerce.
Um, it's just a fantastic areato play in and we want this not
just to be somewhere where yougo, play, play, leave.
(40:22):
It's actually going to have thepersonality of the people that
are in it.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
We want people to come and hang out.
Whether they're playingpickleball or not, they're just
going to come and hang out andwatch.
I mean, it's a fun sport towatch as well.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Oh yes, I'm learning watching, especially since you
have the pros here today too,wow, and I've seen them play.
I've seen Cole.
I've seen Cole.
He's come out to our courtspublic courts.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
They're very good players.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
I mean he didn't stop for four hours.
Oh yeah, favorite shot inpickleball.
Favorite shot in pickleball.
What's your favorite?
Speaker 1 (40:49):
shot.
I love dinking Do you.
That's where Dinker'sPickleball Club came from.
I'd love to sit there and dinkthat's just me.
I can't do Ernie's because Ican't jump that far.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
Or that high, or that high I might land if I did that
.
I'm an old tennis guy, I liketo drive.
Give me a ball, let me movehalfway into the court and drive
that ball, and that's myfavorite.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Oh yeah, Jump it right over the top of the net.
I keep hitting it in tennisslice Put it.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
You just drop it right over the net at their feet
.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
That's my favorite.
And so how many pros do youhave here?
By the way?
Three, right now.
Three pros.
And where did you get them?
Speaker 3 (41:27):
Aiden Suarez is a.
Aiden goes to UNT.
He's a local guy.
He's taught at a lot ofdifferent places.
He's touching Stonebriar.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
He actually reached out to us yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
And we saw the facility, heard about the
facility and said dude, you'rehiring pros, why don don't need
to be part of that?
And again, part of his incomeis that rain.
If it gets rain he doesn't getpaid.
Then Valentin was the head ofpickleball at the local McKinney
I'm McKinney, sorry the localDenton Pickleball and Tennis
Club.
And then Mav teaches as well,maverick teaches up there as
(41:58):
well.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
That's incredible.
So he proactively reached outto you.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
You knew you were building?
Yes, yeah, all three of themreached out to us.
We interviewed a few others.
We looked at a few other people, and we might pick up another
one or two as well, becausethere's quite a few people
obviously that want it.
But as we speak, that's kind ofour stable and they're doing a
great job.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
This right here.
I mean they won for open playand they're teaching people how
to play the game right rightball 101 right right.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
I know and we've, you know, we've.
We did some live feeds earlierand people were popping on um
and then you know to see thesepeople, all, all of them,
showing up and and standingaround and waiting and but not
minding.
It's just you.
I'm so proud of it, what youguys have accomplished here
today and thank you for havingblazing paddles out yeah, this
is a.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
This is a great opportunity for us too.
Thank you, guys for letting usshare the moment.
Thank you, thank y'all forbeing here.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
I mean, yeah this I mean out over the airwaves like
this.
Please come and see us.
Dinkers pickleball club.
We're in denton, texas, 719south i-35e.
Website is wwwdinkerspbccom.
Our Instagram is DinkersPickleball Club.
Our Facebook is DinkersPickleball Club.
(43:09):
Our phone number is940-312-6221.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
I love it.
That's great, that covered it.
That covered it.
That's it.
We usually ask how do peoplefind you?
Now they know, now they know,now they know.
Well, I encourage everyone tocome out here and give this
place a go.
It is, it's amazing.
I am so excited that this is apart of this community.
It's not that far from useither, right exactly, and we do
(43:37):
.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
We want to be a destination facility.
We've got the course to be Allright.
Well, thanks guys.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
I know you're really busy.
Oh, thank you so much forhaving us on.
Thanks for coming out, allright, thanks, guys.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.