Racquet Fuel

Episode Narration: 00:02

Welcome

Episode Narration: 00:06

to Racquet Fuel, where we launch into great conversations and share powerful tools to help you become a stronger Racquet's leader. Your hosts are Kim Bastable, a former All American tennis player and now director of tennis management at the University of Florida, and Simon Gale, the USTA National Campus Director of Racquet Sports. Today on Racquet Fuel, we'll address industry compensation with respected industry consultant and UF adjunct professor, Doug Cash. Compensation packages dictate employee behavior, and payroll is the largest cost on most club budgets, so it's a vital topic to cover for employees and employers. Now here's Kim and Simon.

Episode Narration: 00:40

Simon.

Kim Bastable: 00:41

Welcome to Racquet Fuel. I'm Kim Bastable. At Racquet Fuel, we try to educate current and future Racquet's leaders with some actionable information in just thirty minutes. And today, I'm here with Simon, my trusty cohost. Simon, how are you doing?

Simon Gale: 00:58

Fantastic today, Kim. I'm really looking forward to talking with Doug Cash.

Kim Bastable: 01:03

Yes. Doug Cash is our guest. We are very familiar with Doug and and very excited to have you, Doug. Thanks for being here.

Doug Cash: 01:10

Well, you're more than welcome, Kim and Simon. I look forward to it, and let's let's get going.

Kim Bastable: 01:15

Well, we are thankful because and I'm particularly thankful because Doug serves as my adjunct professor at the University of Florida, and no one would argue he's the best in his field. I mean, we know it. He knows these numbers inside and out. Our students are very lucky. They get to single handedly work with Doug if they take the University of Florida's director of Racquet Sports courses in the module of of club financial management.

Kim Bastable: 01:41

Doug is their guy. And today, we're gonna talk about the challenging topic of compensation because hiring and retention is a must, but we may expand on that as well to the many things that that Doug is knowledgeable about. But particularly, Doug, I just wanna go back. You began your career as a pro, and then you moved in into leadership and TCA clubs and then beyond, and now you run your own consulting business, cash flow tennis. This may be a big question, but can you kind of explain how compensation has evolved, maybe while you're also giving your backstory of your history?

Doug Cash: 02:20

Sure. In 1974, I was teaching physical education at a school in Hague, New York and making about $89,000 a year. And that was enough back then to actually live. And there were no indoor tennis courts. So if you lived in the North, you either had to be nomadic and go north and south during the year until they opened Midtown opened in 1969, was really the biggest in the world at the time.

Doug Cash: 02:48

And so they opened a club in Rochester, New York, which was my hometown. And they asked me if I wanted to come in and be a teaching pro. And they offered me $10 an hour to teach. And if I taught forty hours, that was $20,000 If I taught fifty five hours, it was $27,000 and I was making 8. So financially, it was a good deal to do this.

Doug Cash: 03:12

Plus I had taught tennis in the summers through all this time and never thought of making it a career because there was no indoor. You couldn't do it up north. And so financially, it started with there was an easy choice to start teaching tennis because it was financially greater than my school teaching salaries. And over the years, that is something that hasn't occurred and even hasn't even kept up for a first year pro versus teaching school in some areas. And so compensation was a big part of why I made that decision.

Doug Cash: 03:44

And back then we were basically, you eat what you killed type pro. Whereas if you taught it, you got paid for it. If you didn't teach it, you didn't get paid for it. And you can work as many hours as many days as you wanted. And And it was a boom of tennis, so it was easy to find hours.

Doug Cash: 03:59

So that sort of started me in the compensation world without really realizing I was in it. But then over the years, compensation has been a taboo subject. It's not talked about much. It's something that there are no data on other than what you experience yourself. People get paid one way, we'll talk about some of the things later, and they don't know the other way because that's all they've ever seen.

Doug Cash: 04:24

There's you know, my wife is a nurse and you could figure find out online what a nurse makes with so much education at every market in The United States. And there's a number there. I'll try doing that in tennis and you'll get a few bites from like glass door and places like that, but there's no surveys. And so all those things, compensation is something that as somebody if you go to a conference and someone's teaching how to hit a major league forehand outside and somebody wants to be inside like me talking about compensation, you won't get many people to show up because they want to not hit the forehand and compensation is just a topic not talked about. So there's so much with it and it is the biggest expense of any tennis department.

Doug Cash: 05:15

And it is the things that attracts people to a job, partly that is compensation. And it's only talked about a very small time in the interview process.

Simon Gale: 05:25

So Doug, you said it a couple of times there that we don't talk about it as an industry. And I think you moving into the consulting business and working with so many clubs around the country, if you weren't doing that and gathering your own data and presenting it, it would be absolutely not talked about at all. I get outside of your presentations, nobody talks about it. How important do you think it is that we have more open conversations about it?

Doug Cash: 05:51

I think it's really important for for lots of reasons. Number one, there have been one or two surveys done in the last thirty years, but the USPTA and PTR, have frowned upon it and they don't like it published. And some of the reasons is, am I paying my pro too much or am paying my pro too little? If I find out those things, then I have to make adjustments. If I don't know those things, just stay where I am.

Doug Cash: 06:16

And and the last thing an organization wants to do is we produce a survey that says you should be paying your pro 75,000. I'm paying 90. Why am I paying 90? I'm gonna cut that person's pay because that's not what I should be paying. And so it just never was done.

Doug Cash: 06:32

And it's something that other industries do, which I mentioned. And it is something that we as an industry between pricing, because obviously pricing is tied into compensation. If you charge $50 an hour for less than it's hard to pay a pro 60. Okay? Is that possible?

Doug Cash: 06:50

Sure. And I'll give you some examples later what some of the clubs do actually do that. But pricing and compensation are to boost subjects. We need much more data and there's all kinds of different clubs. You've got country club data, you've got commercial club data, you've parks and rec data, You've got camp data.

Doug Cash: 07:11

There's all kinds of data of what people pay people out there. But again, if nobody knows it and you're right, when I get into a club, since it's a large expense of a club, it's gotta be talked about because it is the largest expense. And so you better be able to manage it properly. And each club has different goals of what compensation does.

Simon Gale: 07:31

Well, I think one of the the issues we have as an industry is the carousel of teaching pros who leave to go down the road to another club for 2 or $3 an hour, and they look at what they make per hour, and there's a general lack of understanding that yes, it is 50% or more of most clubs' expense number. And I think if there was more open conversations in the industry, but as well with owners and and senior leadership with their pros to understand why we pay you what we pay you, and why we can only go here. There's more clarity versus I leave and go down the road for 2 or $3 an hour. What do you think about that from a communication point of view?

Doug Cash: 08:12

Well, the first communication happens is people think about what I make per hour and they compare it. They don't look at what the compensation package is. For when I was running Midtown clubs, we presented each new professional in their offer a package which showed if there was a salary involved, what hourly rate would be involved, how many hours you're gonna teach, those would become numbers. But then the value of benefits. We also paid at that time 50% of a health insurance.

Doug Cash: 08:41

So that had a value of $5.06, $7,000. You had four zero one k matches, you had educational funds, you had disability, all those things cost money. So what a pro makes is not just the $75,000 they get in cash minus taxes, but also the $15,000 they make because we're paying for their benefits. And then if you jump for $2, but that person doesn't get health insurance over there, they just lost money. So when they jump for a two hour raise and pay, again, I hope they think it through with the whole package of vibe, not just the hourly rate.

Doug Cash: 09:16

And the average staff pro for years had a length of time at a club about two years before they jumped. They do it in new position or a comparable position. And almost always, that was a way to get a pay increase to jump another club. The other thing the industry has not done well on is a structured review and compensation package increase year after year. Many clubs do not have a review system with a compensation component, so people don't know how to get a raise other than if they leave.

Doug Cash: 09:49

If you knew you were gonna get a raise for doing a good job every year or every six months or whatever you decide to do, then you see a future. If you have to leave to get a raise, you're going to leave.

Simon Gale: 10:00

Well, there's a consistency to your comments here and it's communication, communication, communication and openness. And maybe as an industry, that's an area we clearly have to grow. My last question for you is is I've often heard you say compensation dictates behavior. So what does that mean to you?

Doug Cash: 10:17

Well, it's a if you pay somebody $40 an hour to teach a group lesson and $50 an hour to teach a private lesson, which one are you gonna teach? The $50 one. And is that the one you want somebody to teach? Well, by your compensation, you're saying yes. By practicality, I want them to teach the group lesson.

Doug Cash: 10:41

So I'm gonna pay you more to teach a group lesson because that's what I want. And there's a, you know, a lot of people that get paid a lot more to teach a private lesson than a group lesson and the club actually makes more money on the group lesson. So to me, I don't know why people are paid that way. And when I asked that question at most clubs, they stay because we've always done it that way. And that is by far the biggest answer I always get.

Doug Cash: 11:06

Well, we've always done it that way. We've never thought of that. So I believe if you pay people more for eight people in a class than three people in a class, you might get eight people in the class versus three people in the class. And so I think compensation does dictate behavior, but I'm gonna change it. It's the right compensation dictates behavior because the wrong compensation will do it also.

Kim Bastable: 11:31

So Doug, you made the comment that we have not done a good job of structuring packages and increasing them on a regular basis. And I think increasing the pricing is also, as you said, a part of that because compensation pricing. So talk a little bit just about pricing. I know you have kind of done some back history work, but what's happened to pricing over the years you've been involved in the industry?

Doug Cash: 11:59

Well, pricing and and compensation obviously go hand in hand, but let's let's talk pricing for a second. I'll use a tennis example, and then I'll use a car example. In 1974, as I said, I was getting $10 an hour and we were charging $22 an hour for private. There you can go online and find a calculator that will CPI that to today's what you should what that means today. And today, it's a hundred eleven dollars and sixty three cents.

Doug Cash: 12:27

And most I can tell you right now where I was, they don't charge a $111 today for that private lesson. Are there reasons for that? Yeah. Number one, they're afraid those people won't pay it. Number two, it's gets more expensive.

Doug Cash: 12:40

But at the but at the same time, the pay hasn't gone up cost of living either. So there the pricing of something let's take a car for example. 1935, a Ford cost $595. Today, that's $11,000, but it costs sub 45 today. Now, are they apples to apples?

Doug Cash: 12:59

No. But it's still a car. So and, you know, other than what happened with COVID, you know, milk was a $19.74 was a a dollar 57 and you before COVID could buy a gallon of milk for $2. Now it's much more expensive than that, but you couldn't do that. And so that's just cost of living increases on that.

Doug Cash: 13:18

So what should the pricing be? I have a philosophy you should raise prices every year. Not a lot, but get the people used to it. I raised private lesson prices, for example, $1 or $2 a year. No one's not gonna if they take a lesson every week, that's fifty two weeks.

Doug Cash: 13:36

No one's gonna not take privates for $50 more a year. They're just not. They're gonna do it. What happens in many cases, which is why I have clubs do a pricing history to show them how often they've raised prices in the past. If they raise it $10 because they haven't raised it in ten years, it has a different effect than $1 a year.

Doug Cash: 13:56

And many people because of the compensation, so let's go to a country club for a second. And guys getting 80% of whenever they charge. Well, does a country club wanna charge more? So the pro makes more, but they don't get much of that. Because if you pay somebody 80%, you really pay them 88% because you got payroll taxes and stuff on that.

Doug Cash: 14:20

So they make 12% on a dollar raise. So they're gonna raise dues where they get a 100% of it versus 12¢ on a dollar if they raise less in prices. Also, how how high do we go before we price out a great deal of people in The United States because the prices are too high, which is why group lessons are the thing of the future and the ratios of people in groups is increasing because of lack of pros and lack of courts. So my favorite ratio now is eight students to one pro and two courts. So you can charge a little less, still make as much money and pay the pro a little more.

Doug Cash: 14:56

And I would outlaw private lessons from the sake of financial because you can't make that kind of money on them. Is there a need for that in tennis for people? Of course, there is. There always will be. But from a financial standpoint, it's one of the worst things you could put on a tennis court.

Kim Bastable: 15:11

Yeah. That's that's great. Let's you did you you spoke about the compensation situation at a country club. So maybe let's break that down a little bit for people who don't know. Racquet clubs, public parks, country clubs tend to have different percentages given to the pros.

Kim Bastable: 15:31

Can you shed some light on that?

Doug Cash: 15:33

Each has different goals and objectives and that's why they can pay different. Let's start with the country clubs. They are probably overall the highest paying group of other than the USDA and guys like Simon. But it's the reason they can is because there's dues lines are what feeds the revenue line. If you're you're paying thousand, $2,000 a month, whatever it is at a club, The tennis department is like food and beverage and fitness.

Doug Cash: 15:59

It's an amenity to the club and therefore they make all their money on dues. There are country clubs that lose a lot of money in their tennis department. Their payroll percentage is well over a 100% of revenue. On the commercial club who needs profits from the tennis department could never be like that. But they don't charge 2,000 a month dues either.

Doug Cash: 16:17

They're at 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 or something like that. So they have to combine making money in different areas, not just dues where a country club can do that. And it's been historical, country club pros make percentages. Commercial club close mostly make an hourly rate. That's again, why it's been done like that is because it's historically been done like that and people don't change it very often.

Doug Cash: 16:42

In fact, in the country club world, the director probably gets part of the pay percentage of everybody who teaches for them. And so it's a you know, it could be well over a 100% by the time you get done paying people. And it but they can do it. Where the lower price places like a park and rec that have a real program, you're outdoors in Atlanta, you're not gonna charge a $110 for an outdoor lesson in Atlanta. You're just not going to.

Doug Cash: 17:08

So you can only pay the pro so much. And we go back one more step on that. If I took what I made for teaching forty hours or fifty hours back in 1974, it was $20,800 for forty hours. If I CPI that, and again, remember this is first year pro, I would make a $105,000 today. If I'm teaching fifty five hours back then, it was twenty eight thousand, that's a $131,000 today.

Doug Cash: 17:32

And you gotta remember, that's first year. That's not a pro that's been there for ten years. It's the very first year of when I taught tennis. Certainly, as an industry, we're not paying people first year anywhere near 105 to 130. But that's the what I moved for back then equivalently.

Doug Cash: 17:47

And so it was an easy financial move as I said before. Should we be paying those numbers? So here's my philosophy on that. We have to pay the amount of money that is needed to pay to create the best people that work in our industry. To give an example, I do this in my talks.

Doug Cash: 18:05

Walmart is trying to hire first year truck drivers for a $115,000 a year. And they have ads all over the place. Well, Simon in one of his talks bought off what Buc ee's does. They pay some good numbers to people that, you know, don't have to have a lot of experience to run the car wash. And then we can pay the $100,000.

Doug Cash: 18:25

Our tennis industry, I've never seen an ad make this by being a tennis pro. I've never seen anybody make an ad say, make a $100,000, you know, you should become a tennis pro. And by the way, being a truck driver, most tennis pros went to college and played at least four years of college and probably ten years before that, they got their sport honed where a truck driver has been driving for a while, they but can probably learn to drive a truck in a certain period of time. It doesn't take you four years of college to learn how to drive a truck. So what the background of a lot of us has was we had to put in those hours to be able to teach tennis.

Doug Cash: 19:01

Cause I don't know many teaching pros that are good that never played tennis in their lives. There's a few of them, but not many. And so the learning curve is over a long period of time. So what does a tennis pro deserve to get paid? That is, That's a hard question to answer.

Doug Cash: 19:17

No one's ever really answered it. And the goal is as much as I can still make what I have to do for the organization that's hiring me. And again, that's gonna change for all those different entities. I don't know if does that answer your question a bit?

Kim Bastable: 19:33

Yeah. No, that's that's the challenge we have in our industry. There are some various differences. Simon, go ahead and fire away. I

Simon Gale: 19:41

I think we're in a stage of our industry where we're all aware that we're herding for pros, herding for quality pros and trying to attract pros and maybe out of need, there's going be some changes that happen organically here just in order for me to attract people, I need to pay more. Because I remember, quote me if I'm wrong, but it was only a few years ago that Walmart truck driver they were advertising was 85,000. That's 30,000 more than maybe three to five years ago when you first started talking about that. So you can see the adjustment there and our industry is going to have to adapt in some shape or form in order to be appealing for this next generation. So that being said, when you talk about compensation, you alluded to it earlier, it's not just what you make on the court, it's what is your package.

Simon Gale: 20:29

What do you make per year and what does that include? And benefits is something that our industry traditionally hasn't been great at offering. I think it's more common in the country club industry than the commercial industry. And the number that floats around out there is around 20% of employers offering it. So how important is that moving forward?

Simon Gale: 20:54

And is it hurting our industry that we don't have generally a compensation package? It tends to be what you make on the court.

Doug Cash: 21:01

Yeah. For sure. Why don't clubs offer it? There's a good reason. Our industry, the people that own our industry don't make a lot of money.

Doug Cash: 21:11

So a club, is not setting it's not Microsoft. It's not making oodles of dollars they can do and have lots of money. And one of the things I've always said is profit is the oxygen that make something grow. And if you don't have profit, you can't pay benefits because you don't have money. Probably, oh, 50% of my clients don't have benefits for their employees.

Doug Cash: 21:34

And, you know, again, is there there's not an employee in the world that doesn't ask the question, do you have benefits? And so I can give you lots of examples, but you have to make money to be able to pay more. You have to charge the right amount money to be able to pay more. So I mean, you talk about the work week as part of the benefits, whether it's five days, six days, seven days, and whether or not I wanna work Saturday and Sunday, do I wanna work after 06:00? And so all those things, how much vacation do I get?

Doug Cash: 22:03

And so I can give you some ideal what people are doing that are really successful. I have one club that pays a 100% of health insurance and their payroll related is about 30% and that's very high. But they have no turnover. So a family membership a family, excuse me, health insurance cost them $27,000 a year. Well, if you divide that by $35 in the court, they're getting $4 or $5 an hour just for the health insurance that they don't have to pay.

Doug Cash: 22:30

There's a club I know that you get an extra week's vacation after every five years you're you're there. So I can go on and on with things that would be everybody would like. You have to be able to pay for those things. And you gotta make money to pay for those things. So we have to charge her out.

Doug Cash: 22:45

You know, there's only three ways to increase revenue in our world. Number one is dues. Number two is court fees. Number three is programming. There's a lot of little things like food and beverage and, you know, the maybe there's some pro shop, but they don't make a lot of money.

Doug Cash: 23:01

So you have to have the right amount of members, you have to have the right pricing, and you have to have the right programming. I I know we I've talked in the past that the programming world has changed in the last forty or fifty years. When I first started in the seventies, 20% of what happened at a club was programming, 80% was play. Okay? So you had one or two pros per facility.

Doug Cash: 23:26

Today, I think it's 80% programming and 20% play. Why has that occurred? Number one is people like programming more than play. When you play singles and doubles, there's a little difference between the two is how much balls you hit. But in a game of doubles, you probably play less than ten minutes in an hour.

Doug Cash: 23:45

Where if you're a good pro, your your students should be hitting balls at least forty to forty five minutes in an hour, getting a good workout, learning something, having more fun because you're the ringleader and the band master, not having to worry about getting people to come to the to the lesson with them or if they are playing with a four, they lose their fourth, they gotta worry about that. All those things make programming more popular. And since it's more popular, there's more of it. So now my ratio is you're gonna have one full time pro equivalent per tennis court. That's very different than what it used to be because you guys program 80%.

Doug Cash: 24:18

And as Simon, you mentioned, it's harder and harder today to find pros. I have a couple other things that we need to do as an industry to find those pros. Number one, we have to compensate, which is we're talking about the right amount. Number two, we have to have the benefit benefits that are needed. Number three, we have to have the work schedule that's compatible for the rest of those people.

Doug Cash: 24:39

Number four, I believe that we have to make it easier for foreign pros to work in United States because there's not enough people in United States to do this. And number five, I think we should have licensed tennis pro like like, you know, beauticians and massage therapists. Why do have to be licensed to give a massage, but not to give a tennis lesson by a state? All those things would lead to more education, more of a it looks like a career. And we the other thing with this way, how do you present a career path to somebody so they know that this is what you wanna do in ten years and we'll get you there.

Doug Cash: 25:10

And again, all the other industries do those things. We don't do much of that. There's only so much advancement a single club can provide because you're hired by the tennis director and then they never lead. It's hard to get their job because they're always there.

Simon Gale: 25:23

Well, it's catch 22, isn't it? If you want that programming number to be high, you need great pros to execute it or you're not going to get those six to eight people on a court. You're going to get two to four people and the money doesn't come. So you've got to pay in order to attract talent and then you've got to keep paying well and show that pathway in order to retain them. My last thing about compensation package is I've interviewed a lot of people and a of a lot of people would rather have the money in their pocket than have the benefits package.

Simon Gale: 25:55

For some reason, our industry, maybe it's because it's so rare, but there are a lot of pros who would rather make 3 or $4 an hour than get the benefits package. It's fascinating to me, I would never have thought that way, but I do hear that. What do you think about that?

Doug Cash: 26:12

Well, Simon, you're getting older, you have a wife and a couple of kids, And so benefit package and health insurance are very important. If you're a young single male or female, 22, 23, you don't think about medical problem. And by the way, mostly they're correct. I believe there should be a catastrophic insurance for the younger people and maybe you do pay them a couple dollars more an hour, but they need something if they get in a car wreck. They need something if they come down with cancer that they may not have to go to their annual checkup.

Doug Cash: 26:49

But it's it's that's a different way of thinking. We probably all thought that way. I can't remember if my first job had health benefits. I can't even remember. Again, that was fifty years ago.

Doug Cash: 27:00

And you know, so some of those things we live through. But again, when you're that age, you don't think that way.

Simon Gale: 27:06

But have you seen, in lieu of that $20,000 health benefits package, have you seen clubs that will pay that or a large percentage of that as salary or increase someone's hourly to offset that?

Doug Cash: 27:20

The answer is yes, but there's a caveat. The caveat is you have it through your spouse or something like that. So there I've seen clubs that give a percentage of that, say your $20,000 there for a second, you get in your hourly rate if you don't take their benefits plan. But you're on somebody else's, so you have the benefits because I don't want anybody not to have health insurance. You you just can't have you can't run a business and care about your people without some type of health insurance.

Doug Cash: 27:51

Should maybe that change over the time? Yeah. And do some of the bigger companies and other industries do that? Probably. Again, we don't have our group insurances are very expensive because we don't have huge staffs.

Doug Cash: 28:03

You don't have 10,000 people like usually Florida does on a health plan. And we have 10. I mean, clubs are part time employees. And that's another subject. What should be a full time employee in tennis?

Doug Cash: 28:15

How many hours should they teach? That's even a controversial number. Okay? My number is always about thirty five hours a week for a pure staff pro, not for the director or if he runs things, but it's about what you should teach. And, you know, obviously, in five days a week, you know, you're taught you're teaching six to eight hours every day in that world.

Doug Cash: 28:37

And I think that's doable. Is it doable today when it's a 106 degrees outside? That's a little that's a difficult thing because you now have tremendous weather issues with rain. You're in Florida, rain and heat. And can a pro do thirty five hours?

Doug Cash: 28:54

Should a pro do thirty five hours? Or I had the ability to teach in air conditioning in the summer up north and it wasn't quite as hot. But that added to all the careers of the teaching pros when you're teaching indoors, it's a different game.

Kim Bastable: 29:07

You know, Doug, when you bring that up, I think there is some question about how many hours should you teach and what's a healthy level. We've had conversations with some of our other guests about the healthy level, but you mentioned the fifty five hour number early on. I'm just curious, and this is, did you ever teach fifty five hours? That

Doug Cash: 29:28

That something is realistic. In my twenties, I mean, I was money driven. I liked it. It was fun. I enjoyed it.

Doug Cash: 29:35

And obviously physically, when you're 25, you can do that. And so, yes, I can tell you there's you know, I can't tell you the whole United States, but in my world of the companies I see, I've got two or three pros have been averaging fifty five hours a week for thirty years and they still do it. And I don't know how, but they do, so God bless them.

Kim Bastable: 29:55

Well, what's funny is they probably say they love it yet if you told some 22 year old, 25 year old, you're gonna teach fifty five hours in the next thirty years, they'd probably say I'm out. So it's an interesting interesting alright. Let me change gears here really quick. We're running out of time. Tell me about how pickleball is.

Kim Bastable: 30:13

Is it different than the tennis world? That's the one we have more data about. Padel's right around the corner. What are you seeing in compensation for the various other sports?

Doug Cash: 30:24

Well, pickleball is mostly beginners teaching. There's not as much. I'll take a private lesson every week for the rest of my life in pickleball. It's so new. Maybe that'll happen.

Doug Cash: 30:36

Maybe four people will take group lessons forever. It's but most of it is introduction to the game. Most of it is running programming, which that could be leagues. It could be special events. It could be tournaments.

Doug Cash: 30:49

That's what you're getting most of the time in pickleball. Padel, and it's really hot in the Miami area. You know, they're charging $100 an hour for court and 120 to 190 for lessons. Most cases, people are charging the same amount of money for pickleball as they offer tennis lessons at a club because you still gotta pay the pro, you still got court time, you still got most of the same things. In general, if you have court fees in pickleball and you had a lot of it's done on a tennis court, and they usually put two courts on a tennis court, usually charge 50% what the court rate is if that's something that you're charging for.

Doug Cash: 31:28

And, you know, outdoors, in general, you don't charge for court time either in pickleball and tennis at most clubs. But so, you know, I don't know anybody who's teaching thirty five, forty hours on a weekly basis every week in pickleball. There may be, but I haven't seen that yet. It's obviously growing like crazy. And and people ask me all the time, should the club have it?

Doug Cash: 31:47

And the answer is absolutely yes. And it has nothing to do with tennis. Has to do with the club. If your members want something and they're gonna stay and pay you dues longer, if they want tiddlywinks, I'm gonna figure out how to give them tiddlywinks because that's important for what they want. It's not what you want.

Doug Cash: 32:03

There are people who say, well, tennis should have nothing to do with pickleball. You know? And and I buy that to a certain extent, but it's not me, it's the member. What do they want?

Simon Gale: 32:12

So Doug, outside of tiddlywinks, what are two to three things that a club needs to get right in order to see our industry flourish moving forward?

Doug Cash: 32:21

Well, you know, we're we're flourishing. And what I mean by that is we are the new era. We have waiting lists for lessons. We have waiting lists for memberships of places. We we have done things that haven't been done since the seventies because court times are full.

Doug Cash: 32:39

So we have to, as an industry, have to not give up on the beginners. And what's happening right now is they're giving up on beginners because they don't need them. I have people that won't run what I call learn tennis now programs because and I understand why they won't run them. We don't have the pros. We don't have the courts.

Doug Cash: 32:56

They can't join the club at the end of it anyway because we're full. So we can't give up on the beginners. We can't I think every club should adopt the public park. The reason for that is 70% of the new people who start tennis play at a public park. Okay?

Doug Cash: 33:11

And if they're in a program, they'll have a greater chance of continuing than if they're just trying to play on your own. If you have two beginners going out there and trying to start a rally for the first time, they're not gonna have any fun at all. And you need them to have fun and they need to have a program and they need to have a pro or instructor. They have to have those things to to continue. So we can't forget about our beginners because this bubble is gonna break.

Doug Cash: 33:38

I don't know when. I maybe I'll be dead when that happens. That's good. But it's it's it's going crazy. I have seen the best revenue, the best profits I've ever seen in the industry.

Doug Cash: 33:51

Those are all positive things. And I and and by the way, pros are making more money in most cases. You brought that up. I'll give you two examples of what clubs have done. They've raised their prices twice, $10 an hour, and then the equivalency in a group lesson and given up 90% of that to the pro.

Doug Cash: 34:10

Okay? Because they wanted to raise the pro rates. And that really doesn't cost them any money because the customer's paying for it. And they actually told the customers, I'll go into pro and the customer doesn't have a problem with that. Most customers like their pros and want them to succeed and make money.

Doug Cash: 34:26

And most customers make a lot more money than the pros, so they don't care about the money too much. And so when clubs start doing that, that's to keep and to attract pros. And so we have to increase pro pay, but we have to make sure we have a way for paying for it. And we have to make a career, we have to have more education for people. And, you know, for instance, a lot of pros became certified in PTR, PTA.

Doug Cash: 34:53

And if I asked them today, are you current? Have you paid your dues? And they say no. And I ask them why? They say, well, what do I get out of it other than the liability insurance?

Doug Cash: 35:03

Well, that you do get out of it, but it's people aren't investing in their careers like they should be. They should be taking the University of Florida course. They should be taking every course they can get. And as Kim mentioned, I do teach in that and what I find and I teach the financial model, I find very few pros have knowledge of financial. And two questions I would ask a person interviewing for a head pro position or director of Racquet Sports or director of Racquet's position is, can you do a budget for me?

Doug Cash: 35:35

What should we do? And how much do pay your pros and why? And what percentage of revenue is that? And I'll be damned if most people can answer any of those questions.

Kim Bastable: 35:42

Yeah. We we we've seen that a lot. We've we've experienced that the financial area is a struggle for many pros. They're really good at teaching the forehand, and we need them to spend time in compensation lectures with with Doug and others who are talking about leadership, listening to this podcast, getting better at the business side. That's that's really good insight, Doug.

Kim Bastable: 36:05

We really appreciate your time. Doug's history and knowledge is is really second to none. And we just really appreciate that we've had him on the podcast today. Thank you, Doug, for your time.

Doug Cash: 36:18

You're welcome. And I got one more thing to leave you guys with is the most recent surveys of that the USDA has done is there's 3.65% of the population in United States, is about lower 12,000,000 people play weekly tennis. Okay? And that number is a good number. My goal at one time would be 20,000,000 play weekly.

Doug Cash: 36:42

There's a lot more of that that play tennis, but the only ones that really affect our industry is the ones who play weekly. If you play once a year, you're you're not gonna join a club and you're not gonna probably take lessons. But the more important and the more interesting stat is 6% of the people in United States was at just about 20,000,000 are very interested to learn how to play tennis. That's 20,000,000 more people, which I said you can't forget our beginners programs that are interested in playing tennis. And by the way, another 57,000,000 are somewhat interested.

Doug Cash: 37:14

Okay? And by the way, this is a stat that I think I never would have guessed this. About 33% of household in The United States have a tennis racket in their house. That's a 106,000,000 people that have a tennis racket in their house. And that shows you there's interest in tennis.

Doug Cash: 37:32

We have to get those people into the game. We have to program them into the game, and every club and every community should have a grow tennis program of some sort because that is our future. Once we cut that off, I'm not sure what's gonna happen.

Kim Bastable: 37:49

Well, that's a mandate that we can all take forward. We really appreciate that. That's great statistics. Thanks, everyone. Let's go out and inspire people to play.

Kim Bastable: 37:58

That's all for today on Racquet Fuel.

Episode Narration: 38:05

That's all for today, but we're not out of fuel. You can find more information and resources in our show notes and by visiting racquetfuelpodcast.com. If you like what you just heard, please subscribe. And also, leave a review, which helps other people join the mission to become stronger Racquet's leaders.

Conclusion: 38:31

This podcast is a production of Athlete Plus, the people, stories, science behind elite athletes and teams. Athlete Plus is the official podcast network of the Institute for Coaching Excellence, a research, education, and outreach center in the College Health and Human Performance at the University of Florida. The Institute for Coaching Excellence offers various online certificate programs and degrees in partnership with the Department of Sport Management. Learn more today at coaching.hhp.ufl.edu.