Episode #608: Dario Miceli-Making Padel Magazine and Championing a New Sport in America

1
00:00:01,680 --> 00:00:05,280
This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks NYC. I have the pleasure of bringing

2
00:00:05,680 --> 00:00:08,960
straight out of Brooklyn, New York, running the

3
00:00:09,600 --> 00:00:13,360
Padel Magazine, Dario Miceli. Welcome to

4
00:00:13,440 --> 00:00:17,040
your first Halo Talks, my friend. Uh, thanks Pete, thanks for having me. Happy to

5
00:00:17,040 --> 00:00:20,400
be here, always happy to be talking about padel and,

6
00:00:20,720 --> 00:00:24,480
uh, you know, advocating for the sport, letting people know kind of what

7
00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:27,600
we're doing and kind of where the sport is going. There's a lot of people

8
00:00:28,420 --> 00:00:31,620
around the world, but in the United States that are working hard to grow the

9
00:00:31,700 --> 00:00:35,540
sport, and everyone's doing a great job so far. Yeah, so as

10
00:00:35,620 --> 00:00:38,900
I mentioned right before we got on here, I think the health club industry, which

11
00:00:38,980 --> 00:00:42,660
is some of our core listener base, have embraced

12
00:00:42,740 --> 00:00:46,580
pickleball as like their first wave into racket sports.

13
00:00:47,380 --> 00:00:51,140
Obviously, guys have taken tennis courts and repurposed them into

14
00:00:51,540 --> 00:00:55,300
pickleball. We're starting to get some of the tea

15
00:00:55,380 --> 00:00:59,220
leaves are are forming related to, um, padel courts.

16
00:00:59,780 --> 00:01:03,540
Uh, but, but first off, tell me why one of the guys that, uh, was

17
00:01:04,020 --> 00:01:07,860
educating me said that he's, uh, playing, uh, padel and he should be

18
00:01:07,940 --> 00:01:11,300
telling me that he's playing padel. Yeah. Um, where, where did that issue

19
00:01:11,940 --> 00:01:15,780
arise and how did we resolve that quickly? So I don't know how we're going

20
00:01:15,780 --> 00:01:19,460
to resolve it quickly, but, uh, it came from, you know, there's already

21
00:01:19,620 --> 00:01:23,180
a few other sports that people kind of refer to as padel.

22
00:01:23,820 --> 00:01:27,420
There's the kind of platform tennis that sometimes people call

23
00:01:27,500 --> 00:01:31,340
padel. There is the other type of padel that people play on

24
00:01:31,500 --> 00:01:35,340
Venice Beach. It comes in a similar-sized court, but it's not raised

25
00:01:35,500 --> 00:01:39,180
like platform tennis, but they call that padel. And padel obviously

26
00:01:39,580 --> 00:01:43,420
comes from Mexico. It's really big in Spain and Argentina. And

27
00:01:43,500 --> 00:01:46,220
I think when Americans hear that, they want to kind of put a little

28
00:01:47,260 --> 00:01:51,020
Spanish-sounding accent on it, so they say

29
00:01:51,100 --> 00:01:54,450
padel. But if you ask any Spanish person or any

30
00:01:54,770 --> 00:01:58,530
English-speaking person, they'll tell you that the correct

31
00:01:58,770 --> 00:02:02,450
pronunciation is paddle. Gotcha. Okay, so we will use that. I will not

32
00:02:02,610 --> 00:02:05,170
make that mistake for the rest of the podcast. Thank you.

33
00:02:06,530 --> 00:02:10,130
So tell us how you got involved in this initially,

34
00:02:11,330 --> 00:02:15,170
and what— did you start playing and

35
00:02:15,250 --> 00:02:19,010
then said, hey, I've gotta be like the media and the magazine outlet

36
00:02:19,330 --> 00:02:22,290
and also kind of going old school with a magazine, kind of touch on that

37
00:02:22,850 --> 00:02:26,530
for us as well. I don't come from a racket sports background. I think like

38
00:02:26,610 --> 00:02:30,130
every American kid, I played a lot of baseball, football,

39
00:02:30,530 --> 00:02:34,210
basketball. But I found out about

40
00:02:34,370 --> 00:02:38,210
padel because the very first padel courts, the first facility, which

41
00:02:38,290 --> 00:02:41,890
is called Padel House, was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

42
00:02:42,210 --> 00:02:45,490
And it's in an old nightclub that I used to go in when I was

43
00:02:45,490 --> 00:02:48,650
in my 20s. Which one was that, by the way? It was, uh, Villain.

44
00:02:49,450 --> 00:02:52,810
It was on— I didn't hit that one. It was on Kenton. It was

45
00:02:52,890 --> 00:02:56,330
short-lived. I think it was only around for a few years. But, um,

46
00:02:57,450 --> 00:03:01,210
I was really surprised. And my, uh, then-girlfriend, who's now my wife, lived

47
00:03:01,370 --> 00:03:04,330
down there and used to walk by all the time. And I was like, you

48
00:03:04,330 --> 00:03:06,250
know, what are they doing in there? What is this? They had a really cool

49
00:03:06,330 --> 00:03:09,530
sign out front. I had no idea. And I went in and I signed up

50
00:03:09,610 --> 00:03:13,250
for a private lesson, and I played, and I Just right away,

51
00:03:13,490 --> 00:03:17,330
it was accessible and it was fun. And I knew I wasn't very good

52
00:03:17,410 --> 00:03:20,130
at it, but I was still having fun. I was able to hit the ball.

53
00:03:20,610 --> 00:03:23,010
I was able to kind of play with the people I was playing with and

54
00:03:23,010 --> 00:03:26,770
get the ball back and forth. And it just, it was

55
00:03:26,850 --> 00:03:30,210
so addictive right away. They call it, they say the sport is very sticky and

56
00:03:30,210 --> 00:03:33,250
it is. You play it once and even if you're not very good at it,

57
00:03:33,810 --> 00:03:36,690
whether you come from no racket sports background or you were a D1 tennis player,

58
00:03:37,570 --> 00:03:39,730
either way, as soon as you're on the court and you're hitting the ball back

59
00:03:39,810 --> 00:03:42,850
and forth, it's just, it's a really addictive sport. So,

60
00:03:43,800 --> 00:03:47,400
Private lessons turned into clinics, turned into playing on my own, turned into making a

61
00:03:47,400 --> 00:03:51,000
bunch of friends. And I was meeting all these people and they already had an

62
00:03:51,160 --> 00:03:54,600
interesting story to tell. The sport was growing in all these interesting directions

63
00:03:55,080 --> 00:03:58,200
and nobody was really telling those stories. And I figured,

64
00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:01,800
well, if no one's going to do it, I might as well, you know, do

65
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:05,400
it myself. And what were you doing before? What was your day job

66
00:04:05,720 --> 00:04:09,080
before? I'm a real estate investor. I still am. That's my— that's my day job.

67
00:04:09,940 --> 00:04:13,140
So, um, I kind of

68
00:04:13,780 --> 00:04:17,540
had this crazy idea of starting a print magazine, and I

69
00:04:17,620 --> 00:04:21,300
found printers and I found writers, and we were digital for the first 7 months.

70
00:04:22,180 --> 00:04:25,860
And then we put together our first, um, print magazine,

71
00:04:26,260 --> 00:04:29,540
which came out in March. You can see it here. Sweet. So we've got about

72
00:04:30,100 --> 00:04:33,380
120 pages, uh, 14 articles in there telling stories

73
00:04:33,940 --> 00:04:37,060
everywhere from Tokyo to London. Alicante, Spain,

74
00:04:38,740 --> 00:04:42,340
New York, all over the world, just talking about the people building the sport

75
00:04:42,820 --> 00:04:46,500
and what they're doing. So in some of the things

76
00:04:46,660 --> 00:04:50,420
I read, you talk about one, maybe one of your first articles

77
00:04:50,820 --> 00:04:54,580
was like America's new Wild West. And I've been a part

78
00:04:54,660 --> 00:04:58,180
of a lot of industries as a very early-stage

79
00:04:58,500 --> 00:05:01,780
investor to working with groups that are in like the

80
00:05:01,860 --> 00:05:05,380
longevity space as an example, that it's definitely the Wild West right now.

81
00:05:06,020 --> 00:05:09,840
So give us a little background on, you know, why you use

82
00:05:09,920 --> 00:05:13,440
that term and why you view it as such and what are the

83
00:05:13,840 --> 00:05:16,720
pros and cons of that? I mean, I think it's a great analogy.

84
00:05:17,840 --> 00:05:21,360
There doesn't seem to be a blueprint. There doesn't seem to be any type of

85
00:05:21,520 --> 00:05:25,360
hierarchy. No one's in charge. There's no sheriff, there's no

86
00:05:25,840 --> 00:05:29,600
rules, there's no laws. And people are doing whatever they want to do. And that

87
00:05:29,760 --> 00:05:33,600
is— so far, it's been a really good thing. People have been innovative. People have

88
00:05:33,840 --> 00:05:35,740
been working together. collaborating.

89
00:05:37,740 --> 00:05:41,420
People like me, I just started a magazine and the reception has been incredible. People

90
00:05:41,500 --> 00:05:45,180
are supportive and really excited about it. And so

91
00:05:45,340 --> 00:05:48,300
far everybody's been treating each other in the sport with a lot of respect. So

92
00:05:48,620 --> 00:05:51,820
in that way, it's a little different than a Wild West. But in terms of

93
00:05:52,300 --> 00:05:55,660
if you're a new entrant into this market, and especially in the United States, the

94
00:05:55,900 --> 00:05:59,500
UK, Canada, you can do whatever you want. You have got

95
00:05:59,740 --> 00:06:03,420
such a, you know, such a great opportunity to get

96
00:06:03,660 --> 00:06:07,220
into a sport on the very, very ground level in one of the biggest,

97
00:06:07,540 --> 00:06:11,380
most active markets in the world. That's the United States. And so I

98
00:06:11,380 --> 00:06:14,740
think that's why I call it DIY. Yeah. When you take a look,

99
00:06:16,020 --> 00:06:19,860
I play a little bit of pickleball, not that avid of

100
00:06:19,940 --> 00:06:23,300
a player, but I do see there's a Pickleball Channel,

101
00:06:24,100 --> 00:06:27,940
there's Pickleball Central. There's actually an investor, the

102
00:06:27,940 --> 00:06:31,220
guy who owns the Carolina

103
00:06:31,700 --> 00:06:35,360
Hurricanes and also the now owns the Portland Trail Blazers,

104
00:06:35,600 --> 00:06:39,120
Dundin Capital Partners, basically rolled up a lot of the

105
00:06:39,200 --> 00:06:42,640
pickleball industry from the rating system to the

106
00:06:42,720 --> 00:06:46,080
tournaments to some of the bigger

107
00:06:46,480 --> 00:06:49,680
events. Has any of that— has there been any

108
00:06:50,320 --> 00:06:54,080
institutional capital that's kind of hit this space yet? Not quite

109
00:06:54,240 --> 00:06:58,000
yet. I think we don't have the scale. Pickleball has the great

110
00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:01,990
advantage of being extremely, extremely accessible. You can put

111
00:07:02,070 --> 00:07:05,910
a court up pretty much anywhere, paint some lines, put up a net,

112
00:07:06,310 --> 00:07:08,310
and you're good to go. You can play it for free in a parking lot

113
00:07:08,390 --> 00:07:11,830
if you want to. Yeah. It's super easy to play. A

114
00:07:12,150 --> 00:07:15,990
padel court can cost you anywhere from $30,000 to $70,000. You got to get

115
00:07:16,070 --> 00:07:19,830
signed off by an engineer. The municipality needs to know about it. You'll need

116
00:07:19,910 --> 00:07:23,750
building permits. And that has kind of stopped this mass adoption of the

117
00:07:23,910 --> 00:07:26,670
sport. The footprint is a little bit bigger.

118
00:07:27,600 --> 00:07:31,120
Importing courts was difficult when tariffs were really high. Not

119
00:07:31,440 --> 00:07:35,120
everybody knows how to build them properly. There's installers around the courts around the

120
00:07:35,120 --> 00:07:38,960
world. So there's a lot of barriers to entry. So

121
00:07:39,120 --> 00:07:42,720
we haven't reached that type of scale that pickleball was able to achieve pretty

122
00:07:42,960 --> 00:07:46,560
easily. So the institutional money has stayed

123
00:07:46,800 --> 00:07:50,400
away for now, but we see it more and more. There's

124
00:07:50,720 --> 00:07:54,560
more growth. At first, it was just wealthy individuals. It was

125
00:07:54,800 --> 00:07:58,530
Americans who traveled abroad, found the sport, fell in love with it, brought it back,

126
00:07:58,530 --> 00:08:01,890
and they thought, you know what, I'm gonna put my personal million dollars into this.

127
00:08:02,050 --> 00:08:05,810
But we're seeing more and more venture capital funds who are saying all we

128
00:08:05,890 --> 00:08:09,570
do is invest in new facilities opening. All we invest in is

129
00:08:09,810 --> 00:08:13,330
the technology, the apps, the AI cameras, the coaching.

130
00:08:13,970 --> 00:08:16,930
We're seeing more of it. It's not quite to that pickleball level yet, but

131
00:08:17,890 --> 00:08:21,490
we'll get there in the next 18 months, 24 months.

132
00:08:21,730 --> 00:08:22,610
I would say so.

133
00:08:25,900 --> 00:08:29,420
This is Pete Moore. I wanna let you in on a little secret. There's this

134
00:08:29,580 --> 00:08:33,260
company called Promotion Vault, and what they do is they give out rewards from

135
00:08:33,660 --> 00:08:36,860
retailers that allow you to incentivize your members

136
00:08:37,500 --> 00:08:41,340
without having to do zero down and one month free, or giving

137
00:08:41,660 --> 00:08:45,340
away shakes or giving away t-shirts. What you want to do is build a

138
00:08:45,580 --> 00:08:49,210
rewards program that lasts, that people value. And that

139
00:08:49,290 --> 00:08:53,130
doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the deal. There's something

140
00:08:53,210 --> 00:08:57,050
called Rewards Vault. The Rewards Vault is going to allow a member

141
00:08:57,610 --> 00:09:01,450
to set up their own profile. They are going to answer questions. You are

142
00:09:01,530 --> 00:09:04,970
going to get those answers. You're going to be able to target those members and

143
00:09:04,970 --> 00:09:08,490
you're going to reward them inside your club, inside your spa,

144
00:09:08,970 --> 00:09:12,650
and outside of the club and outside of the spa to get them to

145
00:09:12,810 --> 00:09:16,270
become loyal, to get them to pay their monthly dues. And

146
00:09:16,830 --> 00:09:20,510
to be rewarded properly for the actions. A lot of companies are cutting back

147
00:09:20,670 --> 00:09:24,190
on rewards. You shouldn't be. Promotion Vault's your answer. Trust

148
00:09:24,350 --> 00:09:25,230
me, this is real.

149
00:09:29,790 --> 00:09:33,310
Dude, the one thing about pickleball that surprised me

150
00:09:34,110 --> 00:09:37,870
is the amount of pickleball that's on television, which I think is

151
00:09:38,030 --> 00:09:41,390
probably— the only reason why I want to watch a pickleball game is because I'm

152
00:09:41,390 --> 00:09:45,210
waiting to get onto the court. for the next game. That's typically the only reason

153
00:09:45,530 --> 00:09:49,130
why I would watch pickleball. With

154
00:09:49,370 --> 00:09:53,210
padel, do you view it as more akin to

155
00:09:53,450 --> 00:09:56,650
a tennis game and maybe more exciting

156
00:09:57,930 --> 00:10:01,770
to a viewer? I would say out of all the racket sports, it's got

157
00:10:01,770 --> 00:10:04,970
to be one of the most exciting. There were studies done and

158
00:10:06,010 --> 00:10:09,860
they took top-level tennis players and top-level padel players A rally in

159
00:10:09,940 --> 00:10:13,780
tennis— in padel is almost twice as long. So your average rally in tennis

160
00:10:13,940 --> 00:10:17,620
is going to be less than 5 seconds. Padel rallies last almost 10.

161
00:10:17,940 --> 00:10:21,220
Yeah. And so I think it looks great on television.

162
00:10:22,500 --> 00:10:26,260
You got 4 people in these small courts. The ball whips around. You can see

163
00:10:26,340 --> 00:10:29,540
the ball really clearly. There's room for sponsors on the screen.

164
00:10:30,740 --> 00:10:34,340
You can get it from different angles. The replays look amazing. I think

165
00:10:34,740 --> 00:10:38,500
in terms of racket sports, the production quality, even in the early stages that

166
00:10:38,500 --> 00:10:42,220
we're in, look incredible. I find it extremely fast-paced and really, really

167
00:10:42,460 --> 00:10:46,220
exciting to watch. And the matches can last 45

168
00:10:46,700 --> 00:10:50,460
minutes or 2 hours. We recently had a women's match last over 4,

169
00:10:50,540 --> 00:10:54,380
I believe, which is a record. But, you know, it runs the

170
00:10:55,020 --> 00:10:58,700
full spectrum. And I think there's a big, big industry and a big

171
00:10:58,860 --> 00:11:02,380
future specifically for padel as a spectator sport.

172
00:11:04,860 --> 00:11:08,300
Did you ever actually see the sport back in the day called

173
00:11:08,540 --> 00:11:12,310
highline? It was like a gambling thing. Yeah. I almost kind of like think of

174
00:11:12,470 --> 00:11:16,310
padel as like highlight meets like a really good like tennis match

175
00:11:16,470 --> 00:11:19,910
in like a UFC octagon. Yeah. Almost like— No, no,

176
00:11:20,070 --> 00:11:23,910
it's in a— right, it feels like it's in a UFC octagon because you're

177
00:11:23,910 --> 00:11:27,670
in those tight quarters. You've got the walls all around you. Yeah. It feels like

178
00:11:27,750 --> 00:11:31,110
tennis because of that angle that it's shot at where you have, you know,

179
00:11:31,430 --> 00:11:35,030
you're behind the court. But I think it's got great

180
00:11:35,270 --> 00:11:39,050
advantages. It's a really dynamic game. In tennis, you got to keep the ball

181
00:11:39,130 --> 00:11:42,490
in front of you. In padel, the ball can come from pretty much any

182
00:11:42,650 --> 00:11:46,250
angle. You can run out of the court and hit the ball back in.

183
00:11:46,730 --> 00:11:50,410
It's such a dynamic game, and I think it lends itself, again,

184
00:11:50,650 --> 00:11:54,330
to being a really, really great spectator sport. And then if you were to

185
00:11:54,410 --> 00:11:58,090
say, let me show you what's happening with padel in this

186
00:11:58,330 --> 00:12:02,090
country as the benchmark

187
00:12:02,570 --> 00:12:06,310
or the bellwether, what country is that? The

188
00:12:06,550 --> 00:12:10,310
2 most popular countries for

189
00:12:10,390 --> 00:12:13,830
padel is going to be Argentina or Spain. Argentina has

190
00:12:14,550 --> 00:12:17,430
really, really deep roots, really deep history, even though it is a Mexican

191
00:12:17,910 --> 00:12:21,750
sport. Argentina has been really, really into padel

192
00:12:21,990 --> 00:12:25,830
since the late '80s, early '90s. Spain is where the greatest

193
00:12:26,470 --> 00:12:30,230
academies are. It's where some of the best players come from. There

194
00:12:30,550 --> 00:12:34,250
are— they have an amazing not just professional culture, but also amateur

195
00:12:34,490 --> 00:12:37,370
culture. So you have housing

196
00:12:38,090 --> 00:12:41,530
developments that instead of having a pool in the middle, they have paddle courts with

197
00:12:41,690 --> 00:12:45,290
grills around them. People want to raise their kids around this sport.

198
00:12:46,490 --> 00:12:50,170
I was just in Spain for a week training, and we were leaving our training

199
00:12:50,490 --> 00:12:54,010
facility around 5 o'clock, 4 o'clock every day, and it was filled

200
00:12:54,330 --> 00:12:58,090
with parents and kids. Wow. It really reminded me of my

201
00:12:58,170 --> 00:13:01,850
Little League games. The parents were sitting around, some of them were drinking spritzes,

202
00:13:02,170 --> 00:13:05,910
drinking coffees, Little ones running around, the 8

203
00:13:05,990 --> 00:13:09,110
to 10-year-olds on court, all the parents seem to know each other. I was really

204
00:13:09,270 --> 00:13:12,390
getting flashbacks to my Little League game. So Spain,

205
00:13:12,870 --> 00:13:15,910
Argentina, Italy, those are going to be the most mature markets.

206
00:13:17,830 --> 00:13:20,550
Yeah. So if I were to point anywhere, it'd definitely be there. And then from

207
00:13:20,630 --> 00:13:23,830
a standpoint of— I usually see people

208
00:13:24,470 --> 00:13:28,230
either say, oh, I still play tennis, I play

209
00:13:28,470 --> 00:13:32,000
padel. Or I play pickleball. You typically don't see people saying

210
00:13:32,240 --> 00:13:35,040
like, oh yeah, I do all 3 of those. What do you think it is

211
00:13:35,280 --> 00:13:38,720
about these sports that are so, um, once you become an

212
00:13:38,800 --> 00:13:42,480
evangelist, like you kind of like stay in your lane? Yeah, you know,

213
00:13:42,640 --> 00:13:46,480
I don't think that that is a good idea. I think people should play

214
00:13:46,560 --> 00:13:50,160
all of them. And I— it's funny, in Los Angeles, which is a really

215
00:13:50,560 --> 00:13:54,160
new padel market but a very developed pickleball and tennis

216
00:13:54,400 --> 00:13:57,890
market, I have a lot of friends there who do play all 3.

217
00:13:59,330 --> 00:14:01,970
When it rains in Los Angeles, which it rarely does, but when it does, you

218
00:14:01,970 --> 00:14:04,850
can't play padel. A lot of it's outside, so they go inside and play pickleball.

219
00:14:04,850 --> 00:14:08,130
That's good. They love playing all 3, and I think they're just— it's such an

220
00:14:08,210 --> 00:14:12,050
active place, and racket sports has such great culture there. They have no problem kind

221
00:14:12,050 --> 00:14:15,810
of going in between. Unfortunately, in New York City, we see a lot of

222
00:14:15,970 --> 00:14:19,730
people kind of siloing themselves, which is, I

223
00:14:19,810 --> 00:14:23,620
think, unfortunate because There's

224
00:14:23,700 --> 00:14:25,940
plenty of room to do all of them. I think it'll make for a lot

225
00:14:26,020 --> 00:14:29,220
of diverse playing styles as well when people start mixing. So,

226
00:14:30,820 --> 00:14:33,940
our day job, like your real estate day job, is we help people buy and

227
00:14:34,020 --> 00:14:37,300
sell companies, do mergers and acquisitions, and then do private

228
00:14:37,940 --> 00:14:41,780
placements or growth equity into concepts that should scale. One

229
00:14:41,860 --> 00:14:45,540
of the things we looked at probably about 5, 6 years ago

230
00:14:46,180 --> 00:14:49,620
were a number of these pickleball Centers, and the unit

231
00:14:50,100 --> 00:14:53,460
economics just didn't— it just didn't pencil out. So I told a lot of people,

232
00:14:53,620 --> 00:14:57,300
like, dude, this— like, nobody's really, like, figured out the model of

233
00:14:57,380 --> 00:15:00,580
how to make this work. Some guys were trying to charge, like, as if it

234
00:15:00,580 --> 00:15:04,260
was, like, a country club, and then realized that, hold on a second, like, as

235
00:15:04,340 --> 00:15:07,300
you said, like, there's municipal courts people could play on. They're not going to pay

236
00:15:07,780 --> 00:15:11,380
thousands of dollars to, like, be part of this club, um,

237
00:15:11,620 --> 00:15:15,360
and basically then pay court time. Some of the groups said,

238
00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:19,040
okay, I'm going to put in like an F&B. You know, it was like chicken

239
00:15:19,200 --> 00:15:21,840
and pickle, I think, that may be moderately successful.

240
00:15:23,040 --> 00:15:24,720
But then a lot of the franchise—

241
00:15:26,560 --> 00:15:30,080
franchisors that are out there that have something called Item 19

242
00:15:30,560 --> 00:15:33,760
where they have to list out, if they want to, they can list out in

243
00:15:33,920 --> 00:15:37,600
Item 19 of their 200-page document, here's the unit economics of our

244
00:15:37,680 --> 00:15:40,960
franchisees. And a lot of them don't publish it because it doesn't look good.

245
00:15:41,520 --> 00:15:44,240
So I kind of know that it sucks as a concept. I'm not sure why

246
00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:47,820
they're still selling it. Have you seen very successful

247
00:15:48,860 --> 00:15:52,460
padel-only centers, or what do

248
00:15:52,780 --> 00:15:55,980
you call them? Is like, you know, what's a term? I call them either clubs

249
00:15:55,980 --> 00:15:59,740
or facilities. There's no model right now that

250
00:15:59,900 --> 00:16:03,260
has proven to win. There's nobody— everyone's doing things different.

251
00:16:03,500 --> 00:16:07,020
There's a franchise-first model called Conquer Padel coming out of

252
00:16:07,820 --> 00:16:11,340
Arizona. They're trying to franchise. There's a

253
00:16:11,660 --> 00:16:15,460
facility that I play at. I have a close relationship with them, Padel House. They

254
00:16:15,700 --> 00:16:19,380
are a premium kind of luxe product, premium pricing, but

255
00:16:19,540 --> 00:16:22,580
also premium facilities, great locker rooms, stuff like that.

256
00:16:23,940 --> 00:16:27,620
There's courts that are kind of— there's a friend of mine

257
00:16:27,780 --> 00:16:31,380
who puts courts in kind of empty, unused urban spaces. No

258
00:16:31,620 --> 00:16:35,060
amenities, not even showers. Nobody has proven to be

259
00:16:35,780 --> 00:16:39,460
a terrible idea. Nobody has proven to be a great idea. We're still really

260
00:16:39,620 --> 00:16:42,530
early. Yep. The economy is great.

261
00:16:43,410 --> 00:16:47,010
People are super interested in it. People still have money to spend. So, the tide

262
00:16:47,170 --> 00:16:50,770
hasn't come out to kind of show who's really standing on solid

263
00:16:51,010 --> 00:16:53,330
ground. Time will tell. But

264
00:16:54,850 --> 00:16:58,610
I have private equity funds coming to me asking me, you know, what

265
00:16:58,770 --> 00:17:01,650
works, what doesn't work, asking me about the American market. And I tell them what

266
00:17:01,650 --> 00:17:05,170
I just told you. Yeah. Nobody knows. And that can be

267
00:17:05,250 --> 00:17:08,589
frustrating when you're looking for something. of, you know, certain.

268
00:17:09,229 --> 00:17:12,909
Sure. But it's actually a great opportunity if you're a creative person. I will say

269
00:17:12,989 --> 00:17:16,829
a few things that stand out that are important. Like you said, F&B,

270
00:17:17,709 --> 00:17:21,389
very important. You get lots of ancillary income from that. People sticking around, people

271
00:17:21,549 --> 00:17:24,349
willing to pay for a membership. It becomes a social center.

272
00:17:26,109 --> 00:17:29,869
Multi-racket sports, multi-sport facilities.

273
00:17:30,189 --> 00:17:33,149
So a little bit of pickleball, a little bit of padel. If you've got space,

274
00:17:33,309 --> 00:17:37,150
a tennis court, ping pong, foosball kind of hangout areas, stuff like

275
00:17:37,230 --> 00:17:40,910
that. And then the third thing is going to be wellness. So if you've got

276
00:17:40,910 --> 00:17:44,510
a cold plunge, if you've got a sauna, people

277
00:17:44,750 --> 00:17:48,350
really like to see stuff like that. But to answer your question, there's no model.

278
00:17:48,830 --> 00:17:51,950
Everyone is out here. It's the Wild West and everyone's kind of trying their best.

279
00:17:52,590 --> 00:17:54,910
Gotcha. And how deep is the

280
00:17:57,150 --> 00:18:00,190
instructional component to this? Are there thousands of

281
00:18:01,080 --> 00:18:04,680
Paddle instructors that are, you know, doing things in communities,

282
00:18:05,080 --> 00:18:08,760
or is it kind of centered around where there are facilities

283
00:18:09,160 --> 00:18:12,760
and people are like, you know, saying they're an expert but maybe

284
00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:16,520
just, you know, have been playing for a couple years? And how's that evolved? Other

285
00:18:16,680 --> 00:18:20,360
than the high cost of real estate, the biggest barrier right now to growing

286
00:18:20,680 --> 00:18:24,040
paddle is the lack of coaches. Uh, we have—

287
00:18:24,840 --> 00:18:27,720
Oh, sounds like a good question then. Yeah, no, it's, it's a, it's a fantastic

288
00:18:27,960 --> 00:18:31,680
question, um, because Nobody— we don't

289
00:18:31,680 --> 00:18:35,440
have homegrown players yet. If you want a tennis coach, America has

290
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:39,360
a bunch of them. If you want a baseball coach, America's got tons of them.

291
00:18:39,760 --> 00:18:42,800
Who, who's an American that grew up down the block from you that's been playing

292
00:18:42,960 --> 00:18:46,640
padel for 20 years? Yeah. There isn't any. So we've got to import our

293
00:18:46,720 --> 00:18:50,080
coaches. You're importing coaches, you got to provide them with housing, visa

294
00:18:50,240 --> 00:18:53,840
issues. It becomes really, really difficult and complex really quickly.

295
00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:57,520
There's people out there running programs trying to convert D1 tennis

296
00:18:57,840 --> 00:19:01,440
players into padel coaches. I think it's a good

297
00:19:01,680 --> 00:19:05,360
short-term solution. But if you

298
00:19:05,600 --> 00:19:09,440
want America to be leading and get an American player in the top

299
00:19:09,600 --> 00:19:13,440
50 in the next 10 years, that's not going to work. We

300
00:19:13,520 --> 00:19:17,280
need professional, homegrown, lifelong padel-first padel people

301
00:19:18,320 --> 00:19:22,120
growing our youth, and we've got to start that sooner rather than later.

302
00:19:24,090 --> 00:19:26,890
This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the

303
00:19:27,450 --> 00:19:30,810
podcast. We are partnered up with a company called HigherDOSE,

304
00:19:31,290 --> 00:19:34,330
higherdose.com. They are the leader in

305
00:19:34,890 --> 00:19:38,570
workout recovery products, infrared technology, LED

306
00:19:39,050 --> 00:19:42,730
light masks, neck enhancers, and other products

307
00:19:43,370 --> 00:19:47,210
such as PEMF mats and sauna blankets. If you have

308
00:19:47,370 --> 00:19:51,110
not gotten on the workout recovery train yet, Your

309
00:19:51,350 --> 00:19:55,110
time and your stop is now. You gotta get these products in there

310
00:19:55,350 --> 00:19:59,030
before these workout recovery and spas end up saturating your

311
00:19:59,190 --> 00:20:02,790
market, having your members walk outta the club and going into one of their

312
00:20:03,110 --> 00:20:06,950
locations for $200 per month where they're paying $39 to

313
00:20:06,950 --> 00:20:10,790
you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery if we

314
00:20:10,870 --> 00:20:14,070
are already an authority in workouts. HigherDOSE,

315
00:20:14,710 --> 00:20:18,410
check it out. There's a wholesale code. And we look forward

316
00:20:18,890 --> 00:20:22,490
to helping you augment your products and services to meet the

317
00:20:22,730 --> 00:20:26,570
demands of your members. And hey, let's get people happy, healthy,

318
00:20:27,130 --> 00:20:30,970
and sweating, and the recovery should be just as good as the workout.

319
00:20:35,370 --> 00:20:39,210
Is there a paddle rating system similar to like a tennis

320
00:20:39,530 --> 00:20:42,810
handy, you know, tennis, what do they call that? What do they call it? Tennis

321
00:20:43,210 --> 00:20:46,910
ratings? Yeah, I guess your rating. Yeah, the rating system is

322
00:20:47,790 --> 00:20:51,630
really complicated. Some of it is done through apps that you book. So Playtomic

323
00:20:51,870 --> 00:20:55,710
has theirs, Play by Point has theirs. There's the World Padel rating, there's

324
00:20:55,790 --> 00:20:59,630
Red Padel. Different tournaments use different rating

325
00:20:59,950 --> 00:21:03,390
systems. They don't always convert. It doesn't always make

326
00:21:03,550 --> 00:21:06,910
sense. If you go to a really mature market like Miami,

327
00:21:07,470 --> 00:21:11,120
I'm basically a beginner. If you go to New York, I

328
00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:15,040
would be like an intermediate player. If you go to D.C.,

329
00:21:15,360 --> 00:21:17,840
I'm a more advanced player. So if my

330
00:21:18,560 --> 00:21:21,840
3.5 rating doesn't really mean too much. So are you moving?

331
00:21:22,480 --> 00:21:25,040
Are you moving to D.C. anytime soon? I'm going to start my career.

332
00:21:26,320 --> 00:21:29,840
Yeah, moving my career, starting my career in Cleveland. Yeah, there you go. There you

333
00:21:29,920 --> 00:21:33,520
go. You're the resident expert. So let me ask you a question.

334
00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:37,440
So you have a day job. You got obviously a big

335
00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:40,820
passion and you want to see this industry proliferate.

336
00:21:42,100 --> 00:21:45,540
And being an entrepreneur, you know, I've got some

337
00:21:45,780 --> 00:21:48,900
entrepreneurs that say, you know, hey, I want to be the largest,

338
00:21:49,940 --> 00:21:53,700
you know, indoor studio, indoor cycling studio operator in,

339
00:21:53,940 --> 00:21:57,220
you know, New York City, as an example. Like, what other aspirations you have? Like,

340
00:21:57,220 --> 00:22:00,980
I don't have any more. Like, that's good for me. What does success look

341
00:22:01,060 --> 00:22:03,460
like for someone that, you know, starts up what you're starting?

342
00:22:04,900 --> 00:22:07,620
Or do you say like, I'm not really trying to— I don't really have like

343
00:22:07,620 --> 00:22:10,100
a benchmark. I'm not really trying to measure this. I'm just trying to like enjoy

344
00:22:10,180 --> 00:22:13,800
it. I would say success for me is

345
00:22:14,040 --> 00:22:17,720
getting as many people to love the sport as much as I do as

346
00:22:17,800 --> 00:22:21,400
possible and really creating that ecosystem for people to go out and

347
00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:25,400
start their own thing. So if I can get a few thousand people

348
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:28,920
to learn about padel this year and one of them starts a racket

349
00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:32,760
company, one of them starts an AI coaching company, one of them starts a

350
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:36,440
consultancy, and one of them starts, you know, opens up a

351
00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:40,300
facility, That to me is success beyond what I could have possibly

352
00:22:40,780 --> 00:22:44,380
hoped for. Of course. And, you know, we see it

353
00:22:45,980 --> 00:22:49,740
with our digital platforms. We see people on our Instagram followers and in

354
00:22:49,820 --> 00:22:53,500
our LinkedIn, you know, learning about the sport and getting involved. They

355
00:22:53,580 --> 00:22:56,620
come to me and they say like, I'm starting this, what do you think? I

356
00:22:56,700 --> 00:22:59,740
always set time aside to try and talk to them the way I'm talking to

357
00:22:59,740 --> 00:23:03,500
you now and give them real, you know, actionable insights into what

358
00:23:03,580 --> 00:23:07,270
they can do. the more padel players there are, the

359
00:23:07,430 --> 00:23:11,270
more people there are to read my magazine and the more people out there playing.

360
00:23:11,430 --> 00:23:14,070
And it's just, it's a great sport. It's really the long— it's a long game.

361
00:23:14,070 --> 00:23:17,350
It's not, it's not really like you're not trying to hit any KPIs

362
00:23:17,910 --> 00:23:21,750
necessarily. It's too early. What I do is to kind of,

363
00:23:22,790 --> 00:23:26,470
you know, it's not very concrete. I don't have sales metrics or anything like

364
00:23:26,550 --> 00:23:30,070
that. I want to build an ecosystem that kind of gets brands,

365
00:23:30,470 --> 00:23:33,880
players, investors, readers, you know,

366
00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:37,800
kids and adults, everybody just kind of into the sport. And the more I can

367
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:40,840
do that, the better off we'll all be. Well, as you say, I call myself

368
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:44,280
Captain Halo, so I want to be known to like help people use that acronym

369
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:48,040
and get people to say I'm a— I'm part of the Halo Sector. Sounds like

370
00:23:48,120 --> 00:23:51,720
you want to be the godfather of the US, uh, paddle

371
00:23:52,120 --> 00:23:55,960
industry, which I think is a very noble cause. I would be— I'd probably

372
00:23:56,120 --> 00:23:59,240
be, you know, 5th or 6th in line or 10th in line for that title.

373
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:03,380
There's so many other people doing so many great things. So, uh, That sounds

374
00:24:03,700 --> 00:24:07,380
very humble of you and modest, but it sounds like an awesome thing that you're

375
00:24:07,380 --> 00:24:11,020
doing. And yeah, we'll

376
00:24:11,220 --> 00:24:14,900
put up here in the show notes everything about the magazine and what

377
00:24:14,900 --> 00:24:18,740
you're doing and connect any investors that come

378
00:24:18,820 --> 00:24:22,500
to us related to this to you directly. And just in closing

379
00:24:22,740 --> 00:24:25,780
here, you got any quotes that you live by or

380
00:24:28,820 --> 00:24:32,500
anything that's like a Post-it note on what you're doing or when you—

381
00:24:33,230 --> 00:24:35,790
When you say, hey, what am I doing this as a second job for? You

382
00:24:35,790 --> 00:24:39,150
know, like what kind of like brings you back or— You know, I've,

383
00:24:39,470 --> 00:24:43,310
I've never— I've been an entrepreneur since I was in high school. I've done

384
00:24:43,630 --> 00:24:47,150
a million different things. And I think the one thing that

385
00:24:47,230 --> 00:24:50,830
guides me is that if you just— if you treat people well and you treat

386
00:24:50,910 --> 00:24:54,190
people with respect and dignity, you won't have any regrets.

387
00:24:55,150 --> 00:24:58,750
Your business is going to succeed and fail with things beyond your control,

388
00:24:59,230 --> 00:25:02,930
and there's nothing you can really do there. You can control how you treat people,

389
00:25:03,250 --> 00:25:06,450
how people feel when they speak to you, when they work with you. That's basically

390
00:25:06,690 --> 00:25:10,530
as far as your control goes, unfortunately. And if you do that

391
00:25:10,690 --> 00:25:14,530
right, your business can go, all that stuff will come and go, but

392
00:25:14,770 --> 00:25:17,890
how you treat people, you'll be remembered forever that way. And so if you do

393
00:25:17,890 --> 00:25:21,570
it right, you won't have any regrets. Awesome. Well, we're definitely on the same page

394
00:25:21,650 --> 00:25:25,410
with that. We call our firm Integrity Square. We live by integrity.

395
00:25:25,810 --> 00:25:29,250
So we're definitely in sync on that. Hey, we wrote a book called

396
00:25:29,730 --> 00:25:32,770
Time to Win Again, which is how to run your business like a sports team.

397
00:25:33,790 --> 00:25:37,550
So, Dave, let's make sure we get a book out to Dario. And I'll,

398
00:25:37,790 --> 00:25:40,350
I'll get you guys a copy of the magazine. Just send me your address. Yeah,

399
00:25:40,430 --> 00:25:43,950
please do. Yeah, I'll drop it off. Awesome. All right, perfect. Cool. All right, man,

400
00:25:44,030 --> 00:25:47,870
we'll meet up sometime in Brooklyn. And thanks for what you're doing. And keep, keep

401
00:25:47,950 --> 00:25:51,790
the Halo sector outdoors and playing paddle.

402
00:25:52,110 --> 00:25:55,950
We'll try. Paddle. Exactly. All right, thanks, guys.

403
00:25:56,190 --> 00:25:58,070
Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

404
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:07,480
This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks, your captain speaking. I am the

405
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:11,480
founder and managing partner at Integrity Square. We've been around now for

406
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:15,080
15 and a half years. We have been helping people

407
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:19,560
like yourselves get capital, do mergers and acquisitions, consulting,

408
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:23,480
strategic advice in the health, active lifestyle, and outdoor

409
00:26:23,960 --> 00:26:27,610
Halo sector, trying to help as many entrepreneurs as possible

410
00:26:28,010 --> 00:26:31,850
get to the next level and take that inflection point and be the

411
00:26:31,930 --> 00:26:35,690
force behind your growth. We are helping companies that have at least

412
00:26:36,170 --> 00:26:39,610
$3 million of EBITDA, around $10 million of revenue,

413
00:26:40,330 --> 00:26:43,930
and we are positioned to help you get institutional growth capital

414
00:26:44,970 --> 00:26:48,810
or to negotiate deals with strategic partners. If you go

415
00:26:48,890 --> 00:26:52,590
to integritySQ.com, You can

416
00:26:52,670 --> 00:26:56,110
see our capabilities deck. Happy to set up a consultation at any time.

417
00:26:56,750 --> 00:27:00,430
That is free of charge, and we look forward to helping solve

418
00:27:00,750 --> 00:27:03,630
obesity, loneliness, and diabetes. Go

419
00:27:03,790 --> 00:27:04,790
Halo!