How RacquetX Is Reimagining the Racquet Sports Industry - with Robyn Duda
Welcome to Racquet Fuel, where we launch into great conversations and share powerful tools to help you become a stronger rackets leader. Your hosts are Kim Bastable, a former All American tennis player and now the director of professional rackets management at the University of Florida, and Simon Gale, the USTA senior director of racket sports development. In this episode, we speak with Robyn Duda, CEO of RacquetX, the big racket sports Expo that just finished year two in Miami. Join us now as we unpack the logistics and leadership challenges of this huge event.
Kim Bastable:Welcome to Racquet Fuel. I'm Kim Bastable, here with my cohost, Simon Gale. Simon, we have a fascinating guest today. She's an entrepreneur, promoter, an experienced designer, and innovator. You were at RacquetX this year, so you're probably excited about hearing all about Robyn's story and and the innovation that RacquetX is.
Simon Gale:Absolutely. And it's two years I've been now and and I was fortunate to speak last year and and did a webinar just before, RacquetX this year. So I've got to know Robyn a little bit. But generally I see Robyn in work mode, not conversation mode, and she's kind enough to give us some time today. So looking forward to this conversation.
Kim Bastable:Welcome, Robyn. We are happy to have you here. Where are you coming to us from?
Robyn Duda:I live, in the country in Georgia in a in a biophilic wellness community.
Simon Gale:That's an episode on its own.
Robyn Duda:It it is. It is. It's about an hour. I love experience. So, I mean, anything you can wrap around something interesting.
Robyn Duda:It's been an hour south of Atlanta in the country, but it's just 30 acre organic farm, 20 miles of trails. But yet, there's, an inn and and restaurants, and you're in a community, but it's it's not like a suburb. It's a little village, if you will. But committed to sustainability and community and all that kind of stuff.
Kim Bastable:Pretty cool. Very cool. We need another podcast just to hear about that,
Simon Gale:I think.
Kim Bastable:Okay. But we'll we'll stick to the business end of this. So we wanna learn a little bit about who you are, how you got here. You have your own company, Robyn Duda Creative, your CEO and cofounder of the two year old RacquetX. So let's talk before, like, RacquetX.
Kim Bastable:How did you get into event management and maybe you had some other spaces before that?
Robyn Duda:Yeah. It's deeply rooted. I felt like I planned some great birthday parties as a kid, unlimited shoestring budgets, being super creative with my family in the backyard. But primarily, I mean, I grew up playing basketball. While I I hate saying that I didn't grow up playing racket sports like I should and probably say, I didn't.
Robyn Duda:I was basketball, and I traveled all over the country with my father and did that. I I my claim to fame is that I I think in a game, we did play against Subaru in an AAU travel league game. So I was not nearly that good, but it was at a high level. I went to college. Well, I got actually got hurt.
Robyn Duda:My junior year of high school, all the d one schools drop you then. I mean, it's it's how it works. There's a million athletes that were in my position. It's very difficult wrapping your head around failure at an early age. I ended up being scooped up by a division three school in Middle Pennsylvania called Muhlenberg.
Robyn Duda:And I was the first recruit, went early decision, loved the campus, didn't really wanna make a hard decision. I went and quit playing basketball right before the season started. I got a full academic scholarship or as much as they can give in division three to disappointed everyone. However, the line silver lining was that I became the president of everything in college. I was that kid.
Robyn Duda:One of the things that interested me was a student run event, like Gallup. It's called the Henry Awards, and it was black tie event. I got the school to give us $20,000 to plan this. It was like best worker, best professor. You know, it was very, you know, kind of thing.
Robyn Duda:And it was a way to create community around this small liberal arts institution, and I fell in love. I mean, it was it was after I quit basketball. I took that on the second semester along with club rugby, which is also probably another podcast. And I I never turned back. I said, if I can do this for the rest of my life, I need to find someone to pay me to do this.
Robyn Duda:But growing up, I grew up in a very small town in Pennsylvania. You ever watch the office, I grew up in a suburb of a suburb of Scranton, and event planning wasn't. And even in college, the dean of academics, my senior year said, what are gonna do? And I said, I I I wanna be in events. And she's like, that's not a real job.
Robyn Duda:And I vowed that I would show her, and then I would come back and I would teach someday, which is what we'll come back to that. And I did. I sent out my resume. It was I think it was pink resume I sent out to a ton of places. Everywhere in New York City because where else you know, you you limited not you know, this was late nineties or I graduated in 2000.
Robyn Duda:And I, you know, I got someone to bite in New York, a a big time wedding planner who was in all the magazines. I left, you know, small town Pennsylvania for New York City making hardly anything to go live my dream planning events. I absolutely hated it. I questioned whether it was for me or not. I lasted six months.
Robyn Duda:It was if ever watched the devil wears Prada, that was it was pretty similar to that. And I ended up in tech doing events. And I got a second life, and corporate was a much better situation for me. And one of my first events was traveling to London. So I never even had a passport before.
Robyn Duda:And you get addicted to this concept of connecting people. And very quickly, was fuel from all over the world, people from different backgrounds, people from different types of businesses, and you can kinda be this puppet behind the scenes that gets handshakes to happen and hugs to happen. Again, it was a ten years I spent in tech, moved into the trade show side of the house. Long story there, won't get into, but I I moved to the trade show side of the house reluctantly, revamping a chemical event, and ended up in trade shows for a few years. I quit.
Robyn Duda:It was a large multinational organization. I quit. I didn't wanna make money for shareholders anymore, not being able to execute what I thought was a great vision about how we should be connecting and that experiences truly matter. And I started consulting. So that was, eight about eight years ago, eight and a half years ago now that I mic dropped out of corporate America to do my own thing and to pursue creating what I thought were much more meaningful experiences.
Simon Gale:Wow. That's a lot. I mean, you're clearly very very dynamic and willing to kind of go with the flow. So you get into this, the consulting world, where does RacquetX start to formulate and come together and and were you approached on that or is that something that was a brainchild of yours? How does RacquetX even get started?
Robyn Duda:No one tells you that consulting is a real grind. Trying to find your own right just being a solopreneur trying to do everything and get new business and do all the things you want in the projects. I survived, COVID included, but none of this was easy by any means And regardless of what I touted publicly, none of it was easy. But Marco Giberti, my cofounder, somebody who I've known in the industry and he's an event tech investor. I've known him.
Robyn Duda:I started speaking a lot. I have my own, you know, trademarked methodologies and experience design. I did workshops and, you know, we kinda ran a bit in the circuit together as well. I just said, this isn't no one listens to what I tell them. This isn't like, I I hate now that all of these ideas and, like, I could see where change needs to happen and it just goes into a drawer.
Robyn Duda:I said, I'm I'm getting paid, and and I'm doing well, but, like, it's still not fulfilling me. And he's like, wanna get back in the game? And I said, tell me more. And he said, we're launching a paddle club, in an ecommerce site. He and and a few of his good friends that they grew up in Argentina together.
Robyn Duda:They all played tennis growing up together. They all played paddle. He's like, and we were looking online for, like, where do we go to find out stuff about how the industry works? And he said, we we just didn't. We saw the association stuff, which was pretty specific when it came to their coaching or court building, you know, specific things, but there was no one place for the industry to unite across all Racquet sports.
Robyn Duda:He said, do you wanna launch it? I said, well, let me take a look at the business plan and see if there's a there there, and it was. In my opinion, I thought, wow. This is very rarely is there, you know, some some white space like this. We know that had been tried in the past, and there were lots of other things happening, but we you know, I just I jumped on board and and never looked back and just I am a method actor.
Robyn Duda:I am Racquet sports right now. I I it's all I consume to try and figure out. And for me, it's, like, figuring out what makes the industry tick. What are the problems? What are the challenges?
Robyn Duda:What is it like to be in this space on a day to day basis? And if I could understand that, I don't have the answers or the solutions but I can create an ecosystem where the solutions become much more easily present.
Simon Gale:So if I look back at year one and then year two, there was some evolution there and it was very heavy racket sports and tennis had a fairly small footprint. Obviously, Padel and pickleball are hot right now and emerging and new so there's a lot going on in that space. But this year, there was definitely, I I don't know what it was called, but the last day was more of a business focus. Yeah. Right?
Simon Gale:Yeah. And that that was new and I thought that was great addition and it probably appealed to a a bit wider audience as well. What were the big changes from year one to year two? And and where is it headed in your mind year three and beyond?
Robyn Duda:Well, I didn't start at, like, day zero, it was this is a b to b event. This is the there's a b to b place here. And as I started speaking to the industry, everyone plays that's in know, for the most part, everybody plays that that's in this industry. They love it. They're a fan and enthusiast, and they love and there are a lot of products like seeing the end user be a part of the selling magic that that happens as well.
Robyn Duda:And and I said, well, this has to be a b to b to c. This is both consumer and business. And why wouldn't we do that? Why wouldn't we open it up to both? So that's where the festival type of language we we started out with, where that came from.
Robyn Duda:It was like, we are trying to be all things to all people because I wanna see what also sticks, what what are the needs there so that we can iterate properly. So one year year one was it was throwing lot. It was just it was seeing what the response was and where we could go with this. And then, you know, very quickly, we had a ton of clubs at the show. I mean, we tried diverse amounts of content to see what what worked and what didn't.
Robyn Duda:We looked at data as much as we capture across the board, who went where, who did what, where are they from. And then we realized there were a couple of key demographics that we really needed to hone in on. One, we needed from a b to b standpoint. We need a promoter. There's somebody doing interesting things next to us.
Robyn Duda:Premier panel. We were very lucky to be able to partner with them this year. We're during the Miami open, and we're gonna keep creating partnerships with experiences like that. We're really good at b to b. Let's do a club summit, which we launched is what you saw Simon on that Monday, which is like, alright.
Robyn Duda:This is our first go at it. And I'm I'm I try and be very transparent that people don't think I'm coming in with a fully polished product. I just there's an element of we know what we're doing, but also we're building this for you. So you gotta tell me what you want, and then I'll keep moving in that direction. So we put the you know, we had almost 200 clubs.
Robyn Duda:We had there were a 108 different clubs represented from 10 different countries and about a 175 different people at that club summit. There's something there. There's some kind of magic we're creating there. It's investors. It's owner operators.
Robyn Duda:It's multi sport facilities, both public and private across all different sports. Real estate developers too showed up. So that was a year one to year two change, Simon, and and we're gonna keep extending that. We're going on the road. We're doing a road show.
Robyn Duda:I wanna be in the being in the field is, like, the best part of this. And we talked about this a bit, Simon, like, being in a club, in it is, you know, and kind of understanding how they do what they do is gonna be really fun for us. Startup pitch competition. We had a ton of innovation that wanted to be mean, they didn't know how to really interact and engage with us. So one, getting more technologies on the courts and and creating packages for that.
Robyn Duda:But then any company that was under three years in existence, under 10 employees, under $3,000,000 could apply. We over we had 31 companies apply to be a part of the startup pitch competition. Clearly, there's a need for visibility of we want new innovations. Well, all of them. I'm sure we could all agree on that.
Robyn Duda:Innovation is what moves our industries forward. So that was a big change from from year one to year two, and we're gonna keep doing, you know, creating that initiative. And those I would say those are two of the two of the biggest. There's some stuff that we certainly haven't gotten right yet, but we also added squash was the other big one. Every year, we wanna keep bringing in no matter how big their market share is.
Robyn Duda:We really wanna be the place for all Racquet sports. And if we can't do that, if we don't represent all the Racquet sports as best we can, even if it's on a small scale.
Kim Bastable:So for someone who's not been there, such as myself and the listener, many of the listeners, it's three days, I believe.
Robyn Duda:Three days.
Kim Bastable:What's the experience like? Exhibit show, speaking, informational, I know. I think there's courts under the roof. I mean, I've heard I've heard stories. So give give a give a list of lay of the land.
Kim Bastable:And then how have the vendors wowed you on how they have made the most of their spaces? Because I think I've heard some stories about that.
Robyn Duda:Yeah. And it's education, discovery, and play. Right? And I think those are three things that really go hand in hand creating an experience. My goal is always to get to engagement.
Robyn Duda:Right? You can do one thing really well, but if what we're doing isn't leading to our people engaging with either discovery, you know, learning or or education or play, we kinda missed the mark. So there's two theaters we had this year. One was an innovation stage, which is was a very heavy tech focus. And the main stage, which is it's all over the map, but it's also it's b to b and b to c content.
Robyn Duda:It was, you know, the head scientists who were amazing from Therabody and Restore Hyper Wellness, talking about performance and recovery. Things that no matter who you are, you could be interested in. Of course, there were some hard hitting sessions as well around pickleball and some lawsuits that are happening, but, like, things that are largely interesting to people and that capture a wide net and a wide audience on that main stage. The discovery zone is where your your vendors are, your vendor village, if you will, or your trade show area. And that's discovering the latest and greatest across infrastructure, equipment, apparel, and technology.
Robyn Duda:We really try and focus and and and hone in on on those, you know, core categories. And then there's the play side. We built 12 courts this year. Different mostly all of them, except for a few pickleball. It's an opportunity to showcase different court builders, what they can next to each other so you can see the differences.
Robyn Duda:You can have a great infrastructure buying opportunity to kind of showcase these things, but then we program all of the courts. So while the court is a sponsorship, we have the rights to program all of it, which was two hundred and eighty eight hours of programming. It's like we have 12 different conference rooms. We have a director of court experiences who manages that and trying to get, again, the latest equipment, technology on there, opportunities to play. We had a kids day.
Robyn Duda:We had puppy yoga. We had tournaments going on. Whatever we can do to serve the audiences, we're trying to get there in a really fun way that they can take things away. So so that's the experience we're trying to create like a Disneyland of Racquet sports, really, if you and the best part for me, and Simon, you've been there and I don't know if it's you, I loved seeing people believe they're pretty solo sport, trying the other ones and having honest respect, conversation, dialogue, and fun crossing over into them. And I I just thought that part of the magic was kind of seeing that come to life.
Simon Gale:Yeah. Think the programming of the courts and being able to try them and facilitating that, especially for people who maybe not have tried Padel or maybe they've never played squash, just the ability to get a hands on experience was great. But I think it's even easier than that, Robyn. I just made three notes. I said, it's Miami in March.
Simon Gale:I mean, who doesn't want to go there? Food and entertainment, Miami Open, Premier Padel and then you bring all this together. The timing and where it is makes it an easy sell. Most people are like, yeah. I'll come from the Northeast in March to Miami for three days.
Simon Gale:So I think it's really come together nicely, and and you built it really well from year one to year two. So congratulations to you.
Robyn Duda:Thank you. Part of what we, you know, since this is more on the business side of a podcast, you know, what we I'm not saying we're trying to create a lifestyle brand because I'm not naive to think that we can accomplish that totally. But how do we create a brand that has that elicits feeling for folks? And one of the things that we're we've been working really hard on from year one to year two is kind of launching this concept of America's Racquet Week, and we hope that that keeps building. I don't need to own all the things that happen in Racquet sports under the RacquetX umbrella.
Robyn Duda:That's impossible. We're not trying to be that. But if we can create a space where all Racquet sports feel like they have the ability to participate and they have a wide reach that we help from as a marketing engine to bring in, it's a win. So when we got a little bit of traction on on that America's Racquet week concept, we just wanted to keep building because it's it makes people feel like they're coming to something bigger than just this one piece.
Simon Gale:So with this as a start up business and it's a massive operation, I'm sure it's just been a huge lift for you and your team. Talk from a leadership point of view a little bit some of the challenges that you've had to to get this. I mean, that's a whole other to a clear god.
Robyn Duda:We're lucky you even opened the doors here once. I was
Simon Gale:Yeah. And you could sense that in the discussions and so on and and the anxiety leading up to it, could just sense it. Of course, why wouldn't there be? But what are two or three maybe major challenges that you've dealt with along the way?
Robyn Duda:I mean, we're entering into it's events are hard to begin with. This is not for the and I'm not this isn't anything toward me. You kinda have to be a little crazy to wanna do this. It's unbelievably stressful. There's no well, we're gonna put we'll push back the date, or we'll open it a little later.
Robyn Duda:It's like, this is showtime people. And, like, there's a revenue goal that, like, you have to hit by a certain time and there's operation. There's there's a million moving parts. So challenge wise, we've never built courts before. Right?
Robyn Duda:I mean, that was in year one at least. We're not we're not infrastructure folks. We're not we we don't know. And I think we did our best to try and navigate that, but, like, we didn't know a lot of things. So when we had we were shut down by the fire marshal day one, year one of setup.
Robyn Duda:We had three days to set up. We were shut down by the fire marshal because there were one of the court builders was welding in the facility, which the language barriers, there were people coming off from other it was just it was a whole mess. We ended up being able to figure out the permitting issue. We didn't know if we were gonna have court. Like, like, going into day two of setup with forty eight hours left to go before we had to open the doors, which, I mean, would have been an absolute night minutes half of the event.
Robyn Duda:So that was one. But it's just been navigating the intricacies. It's like we're building a club, a multi sport facility in three days that stays up for three days, then you have to move out in a basically a day and a half. So logistically on that front, that that's always a challenge for us and has been continue will continue to be a a challenge. I'm I'm sure there's always little nuances.
Robyn Duda:And then in all honesty, I mean, getting the right team in place is also not easy. Again, this isn't any no matter what your position is on our team, it's not for the faint of heart. It's a start up. You're grinding. There's not a ton of reward yet.
Robyn Duda:We hope in the long run that there is, but I'm so lucky that going into year three, we have, like, the hardest working team in the event industry, in my opinion. These folks would they do anything. And I've watched them kill themselves, their bodies physically, mentally to try and get this event because we see the potential and we see what this could be if we do it right. But it was definitely a challenge for two years to get the right team in place.
Simon Gale:So talk about that a little bit more because there's a vision then year one and you start with, you know, a smaller team. Year two, it probably builds. Year three, you've added another role because this is the vision now and we're adapting. But with that comes delegation and roles and responsibilities and that's I'm sure your responsibility. What have you done along those lines?
Simon Gale:How has your team evolved and how have you delegated to not have this sit on on your shoulders at all times?
Robyn Duda:I'm a very good leader. I am not a good manager. That has kind of always looms in the background. I can motivate. I can get us pumped.
Robyn Duda:Psyched. Here's the vision. Here's where we're going. But management side of it is a struggle for me. Year one, I did everything.
Robyn Duda:I mean, I had a team and took it, but I'm not taking any credit away from the things that they did, but my hand and my eyeballs were on every single thing that happened. And I was overly anxious about every single word we were using and questioning whether they were the right lexicons. Was this the right place we're putting this? Is this the right partner? While we got to here, I'm not sure how well that served us or me in for that matter.
Robyn Duda:And I decided going into year two that I can't one, I I'm either not cut out for this, or two, I have to change, and I have to pull a little bit of corporate robin even though you don't wanna go back to that world, and and you've kinda moved so far away from that. You you probably it's time to pull some of those tactics and some of those process, you know, operationalize things a bit in order to be a much more efficient well of machine. And part of that was also trusting. We had done this for a year. I knew who I can trust, who I couldn't, and being able to then actually put strategies and and have them start to own strategies where I'm helping them build it, but where they start to feel like they really owned it.
Robyn Duda:And and that happened in year two. And now I feel like I think everybody has a good idea of what all of our strengths and weaknesses are, and where we can, you know, all benefit from each other moving the business forward. But for me, it was delegation. You you have to give, like, somebody enough ropes so they don't hang themselves, but that they still have the ability to be free. And that's how I've kind of led good good, bad, or ugly.
Robyn Duda:You could take it as as you will, but it works for a specific type of personality and person. But it's not for everybody, but I'll tell you that.
Kim Bastable:I actually love that you've differentiated that leadership and management and the struggle that you have. I think that's a struggle for many people who are are visionary and strategic and ideas. And I think we've made the observation that in the world of tennis, to get to be a successful tennis player or Racquet's player in general, kind of you're on your own. You you've gotta kinda figure it out. You came from the basketball, the team sports world.
Kim Bastable:I would have thought maybe you had a little bit different feel for that team element, but it doesn't sound like you really even though you came it's kind of a contrast. Even though you came from a team sports world, you still struggle with that?
Robyn Duda:I don't know. I I mean, yes and no. I think for this, this was I felt this was so personal. And and, again, right right or wrong, I felt like this adventure was this is somebody giving me a pile of cash thing, Robynne, go do your thing. And it felt deeply my responsibility.
Robyn Duda:And I felt like it was I was the captain of the team, but I can't let this I can't let the team lose because there's a lot of other people that have invested in this team that will fail along with me. And I took the brunt of that weight of the responsibility for the W or the L onto my own personal shoulders. I did not delegate responsibility to anybody else other than myself.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. Okay. So let's speak about success a little bit. That's a great observation that you felt that the success was falling on you. So how are you defining it and what needs to happen maybe in I don't know if you thought of this as a three year plan initially and maybe to get to year four, there's gotta be something that happens.
Kim Bastable:Where are you? How do you define it?
Robyn Duda:Yeah. Success. And, again, I I look in, of course, there's growth. We want revenue to be growing in a healthy manner. I don't want explosive growth.
Robyn Duda:I want healthy growth in terms of revenue and numbers of people that are coming attendees. And and we look at it that way. We also look at from a data perspective, on percentage of companies that are coming back year over year. We know we're not gonna make everybody happy, but we what we do want, there's a great ratio between percentage of people who come back year over year. And then on a sponsorship side, are they spending more?
Robyn Duda:So we want cost per sale to be going up, and we we want our retention rates to to be strong. They're never gonna be perfect, and we don't want them. We we need to make room for new people. We know that there's always a cycle. But those are, I would say, like, the key metrics that we look at from from an event standpoint.
Robyn Duda:Me personally, I look at not just feedback. What kind of external validation are we getting from our brand? So what kind of mentions and links ties back to our brand? Who wants to be involved? Are we are we pushing constantly?
Robyn Duda:Are we starting to pull people in? I'm wanting to be involved in this. But at the end of the day, if we're not serving the attendees, we are not. And I'm I'm a very human centered design focused person. So I I know I did my design training years ago, but we wanna satisfy our sponsors.
Robyn Duda:Of course, they are what keep this going. But if I don't serve the audience, your clubs, your players, your coaches, your real estate developers finding new investors. If we don't serve those audiences, we fail. So for me, making sure the success for me is always making sure we understand what their needs are. Are we talking to them to them enough?
Robyn Duda:Are we in the field with them? What kind of content we're putting together that could serve their needs in order to satisfy them? Because if we get the audience, the sponsors will always come. I don't lead with, if you build it, they'll all come. I I do it as, let's build this together and then the sponsors will come.
Simon Gale:So through this two year or maybe it's there was I don't know how long before year one this It's not even a year. We've got ten
Robyn Duda:months I think before year one. Yeah.
Simon Gale:Okay. So you're two to three years in. How have you I'm not great at this at stopping and reflecting. I'm always looking at what's next and where we're headed. If you think about you as a leader, how have you evolved over these couple of years?
Simon Gale:How has this impacted your leadership style or or or how you view yourself as a leader?
Robyn Duda:Oh, it's humbled me quite a bit. Again, I was a solo you know, I went from team team team my my whole career to solo primarily on my own for for quite some time and then back into a team mentality. So leadership wise, I was rusty when I got back in. Very, very rusty and impatient with people. So I think I have executed more grace over the past two years being immersed back into it.
Robyn Duda:I think I I'm a little I used to be very rigid when I was a manager in the corporate world. I'm I'm much more understanding and flexible. I'd like to think I'm not easy to work for, but now I don't think I used to be. But, you know, I don't care when you do your stuff. I don't care where you do it.
Robyn Duda:You can be on an island someplace for a month. Just as long as you get the thing done by the date we need it done by and you get it done well, I could care less how how you get there as long as you're enjoying the journey. And I think that's what changed for me personally over the years is that there was always this arbitrary goal of, like, I wanna be a VP by the time I'm 30. I wanna earn this much by this date. I wanna do this.
Robyn Duda:It turned into like, and even there's the end of RacquetX, whatever happens, of course, there's outcomes that we'd like to happen in a number of years. But, like, if I'm not enjoying the journey, it's not worth it for me. There could be a pot of gold at the end, and I just don't know if I I don't know if that's what motivates me anymore. So I think, Simon, part of the not really a leadership, but I think that's that's changed my leadership style, to answer your question, is of how I view what we're building and the journey of getting there. And and I want it to be an enjoyable one for everyone.
Robyn Duda:So my leadership style has become a little more lax.
Simon Gale:So a quick follow-up to that. We talk about mentors or people who help guide us. Do do you have someone you don't have to share who they are, but do you have somebody that you you unload on?
Robyn Duda:There are people that I I look up to, of course, but nobody's me either. So I've tried to focus more on understanding who I am and honoring who I am. I'm not a traditional CEO. I'm not that's not who I am, and I don't think that's how I ever want to lead. So it's been trying to find resources and people who can help me be the best me that I am.
Robyn Duda:And I hope that I continue to grow myself and grow the business, along with that. But it's been going deeper into who I am and my journey that's helped me just kind of peel back all of that. There was impostor syndrome, all of these things, but, who who I truly am and and be true to that. And I think that's been able to help me figure out what the North Star always is.
Kim Bastable:I actually find that very inspiring because I feel that that's the first step with any good leader is that self leadership piece. And when you have yourself in balance. And I can imagine you had a few times when you were taking a deep breath when you were dealing with that fire marshal shutting you down on mean, that sounds like something we all could we can envision that and the stress of that. So my one question just before we sign off is, where was the vacation after the first RacquetX? Because I'm guessing you went somewhere.
Robyn Duda:It was. It's so funny. Like like, you're not the first person to ask me that. No. I mean, in events, I took a little bit of time, but not right after.
Robyn Duda:You're kind of we do we wanna follow-up. There's a you you can't really just shut down yet. It takes a good month of collecting the data, following up with sponsors, sending out the I mean, there's there's a lot that needs to get done or else if you don't, it kinda looks like amateur hour to a certain extent. To me, it's like, there's a machine behind this. And while we can rest, but we we don't just get to take off six months.
Robyn Duda:No one does. So I didn't take any vacate actually, that's not that's not true. My partner has three kids, and I ended up having to go to Six Flags the weekend after, which was not a vacation. No. And we did go to a Savannah bananas game the next week, which I hope you're familiar with them.
Robyn Duda:And I have wanted him, mark my words, there will be someday when I get Jesse Cole to speak at RacquetX. I have tried for two years. Costs a $100,000 now, and I have not been able to afford it. But he is the keynote that I have wanted probably more personally than I do for this business, but we need to figure out how to get him.
Kim Bastable:Amen to that. I'm in I'm in agreement of that. Maybe someday, Simon, I can have him on the podcast when we're really, really, really doing well, Simon.
Simon Gale:Yeah. Look. I think that's a price tag that will be a stretch for us one day, but we'll give it a shot
Robyn Duda:again. It's a stretch for any bag. Give it shot.
Kim Bastable:Go for Jesse. Well, you've been a very inspiring guest. I I love particularly your comment about follow-up. I think that could be an episode in and of itself because I do feel that people get to the events. I mean, that's on a club level.
Kim Bastable:You get to the event, you pull off the member guest, you move on to the next one, and you don't always do the debrief, and you don't always send the thank you notes. And that's a super important point. Yes. I I think your vacations need to be maybe a month out, but I do think you sound like you deserve them. It's been very, very inspirational assignment.
Kim Bastable:I'm sure you have some incredible takeaways. What have you learned from Robyn?
Simon Gale:Well, look, you see someone in a role and you say hi for five minutes at a conference and you have a quick conversation when she's worried about whether the the walls on the squash court are gonna stay up or not and
Robyn Duda:Don't get me started on that one, Simon.
Simon Gale:When you have thirty minutes here, I just think of the word vulnerable. I mean, it's it's really great how open you were about the process and and and how it made you feel and and how you've reflected on you as a leader. I mean, words like humbled and and I was rusty to start with. I like, I think that's what we all go through and it's real versus I'm this superhuman and I've done it all and what's next for me. I I really appreciate that.
Simon Gale:So you've been a great guest with a great story.
Robyn Duda:Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate you both trusting me to listen and and be open to having me on. So thank you so much. It's been great.
Kim Bastable:Well, we commend you, and thank you so much for your time here today.
Robyn Duda:Thank you.
Kim Bastable:Thanks for listening, and that's what we have for you today on Racquet Fuel. We'll speak to you next time.
Episode Narration: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.
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