Takeoff with Simon Gale and Kim Bastable
Welcome
Episode Narration:to Racquet Fuel, where we'll be launching into great conversations and sharing 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 tennis management at the University of Florida. And Simon Gale, the USTA National Campus Director of Racquet Sports. In this episode, we'll focus on a topic most Racquet's pros only dream about because of the demands on their time. How to transition from a six day to a five day week.
Episode Narration:Now let's hit the launch button. Here's Kim and Simon.
Kim Bastable:Welcome to Racquet Fuel. I'm Kim Bastable, and I'm the director of professional tennis management at the University of Florida. And I run the director of Racquet Sports certificate program. And I'm with Simon Gale, who's director of Racquet Sports at the USTA National Campus in Orlando. With its 98 sports, include tennis, pickleball, and padel.
Kim Bastable:And we're here to discuss powerful topics that are relevant and important to leadership in business and the rackets industry. We're gonna attempt to keep each podcast around thirty minutes in time so you can take what you learn and put the tips into play quickly and efficiently. Simon, it's good to have you here. And before we begin, why don't you share why you agreed to dedicate time to this podcast in your busy schedule? What do you hope it accomplishes in our industry?
Simon Gale:Well, firstly, thank you for asking me to to cohost on the Racquet on Fuel podcast. It was an exciting opportunity. I'll be honest, I've never done one before so it was exciting to be asked in the first place. But I think our industry is at a point in time where we need to take a serious look at how we attract, retain and develop coaches and I think as the podcast evolves, we'll explain some of those industry issues. But it's an exciting opportunity for me to talk about something I'm very passionate about.
Kim Bastable:Yes, you and I have had many conversations. We never have a shortage of, energy for our conversations and the topics we cover and I think that's what makes this fun. That's why I thought it would be good for us to go back and forth on the on the industry issues that are just pertinent to people who are trying to become leaders in the rackets industry. So let's talk a little bit about your history first. How did you, get to the position of being the director of Racquet Sports at the campus?
Simon Gale:It's a long story, I'll be honest. But I've been in the industry now over thirty years and that just means I'm getting older, guess, right Kim? Yeah. So I look back now and when people ask, how did you get to this this point in your career? I think ever since I first started when I was around 17 working at a camp out in in country Western Australia, that I was always interested in the business of tennis.
Simon Gale:So I've always been that teaching pro with a briefcase type tennis guy and I was always motivated to be in a leadership role and run my own business. And so for the best part of probably twenty five of those thirty years, I've been in leadership roles. So I've worked at a variety of tennis facilities including summer tennis camps. I started up in Vermont at Windridge Tennis Camp, spent seven years trying to find a sponsor to be able to end up in The States. And I'd almost given up and at the last minute something came through and thank goodness it did.
Simon Gale:Tennis in Australia is a little harder to make a living, I thought and I think it was a more professional industry here with a lot of opportunity. So I started at Windridge Tennis Camps and I've worked at tennis resorts, commercial indoor, member indoor, country clubs, member indoor and outdoor facilities and now have the privilege of being director at the largest complex in the world. So I still pinch myself when I walk into work at times and wonder how I got here, but it's been an incredible journey. I would say through that time I've been able to probably cover all roles in tennis in terms of the forty hour a week teaching pro, a director, a general manager and more recently I was managing partner of a club up in New York before I took the job down here at the National Campus. So I hope it gives me a well rounded experience that I can talk on all aspects of that journey and pathway and help new pros coming into the industry understand what a pathway or how you can evolve as a person in the industry.
Simon Gale:So yeah, I've been very lucky, had a nice career and I'm very fortunate to be part of the National Campus team.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. I think that's why we hit it off. I've been in the business as well, you know, the forty years and I remember writing a paper in sixth grade saying that I was gonna be a tennis professional and I meant a teaching tennis professional in sixth grade.
Simon Gale:And know,
Kim Bastable:you just, yeah, you just decide you wanna be in some business, and here you are years later still doing it after as well. I kinda had the same path of country club, Racquet Club, high school coach, college coach, public park time, and then got my master's in psychology and leadership so I could get into the education field. And and this is fun to be able to bring the the passions of racket sports with education. And that's really what, yeah, I think inspired this podcast, and I knew you and I could do a lot to try to inspire both people within the industry and then people who are considering the industry to really understand the business of leadership.
Simon Gale:Kim, to your original question about why do the podcast and and and kind of maybe what the purpose is, a big part of it is to to be able to have more people like yourself who at an early age or at some point in their tennis journey say, want a career in tennis and what does that look like and what does that pathway look like and how can we help facilitate more people moving into the industry and maybe even look at how the industry needs to evolve to make us more attractive. And I think that's a big driving force of today's episode, but why we why we wanted to do this podcast.
Kim Bastable:Yes. Definitely. That's exactly you know, the goal is to grow interest in, like I said, existing pros toward leadership and then, yeah, those young people to say, I want to be in tennis not just because I want a better forehand, but because I believe in this as a a real a force for good and health and all the positives that that tennis provides. So let's talk a little bit about the key issues and challenges that we've had. What have you seen currently facing you or maybe in the last, you know, ten years facing you as a leader toward the hiring and attracting and retaining of coaches?
Kim Bastable:What what have you seen?
Simon Gale:I mean, I've been in this country over twenty years and I think I've been doing or going to conferences for probably fifteen of those. And I remember early on, it might have been Doug Cash getting up there and saying the average length of tenure of a tennis pro at a facility is eighteen months to two years. And that just sounded incredibly low. And then as I evolved in in my roles and started to need to hire more, the importance of retaining people became a priority to me. When I was teaching full time, that wasn't something I was worried about.
Simon Gale:But as you hire people and you spend more and more time hiring, why are these people leaving so early? And and my brother is director at Royal Oaks, I'm sorry, River Oaks Country Club, Jarrett Chirico is at Royal Oaks. And we we've talked for fifteen, twenty years about the great pros and people that we lose from our industry. We seem to attract them fairly easily but by age 25 to 30, they're talking about getting out. And when you talk about that and then you listen to them, there's some general themes that start to show up.
Simon Gale:And so that became curious to me or I became curious about, you know, what are those? Are they consistent and what can we do as employers to improve their situation and keep them in the industry because we can't afford to lose these good young pros. So I started looking at these industry challenges and issues which I don't think anything we talk about today will be revolutionary in terms of the industry issues. I think they're all most of us are aware of them. But what are we doing to address them versus we talk about them and then go back to doing what we always do?
Simon Gale:So we, or I started looking at one of my previous clubs at how do we address some of these things and and make change. And one of the the the number one issue at the moment in my mind and from polling over 200 pros now through some different presentation polls and so on, the six day work week, six plus days, some people are working seven, is a major a major contributor to to to burnout and dropout. None of us are immune to it. We've all been been there and done it, for some reason, some of us keep going, but many dropout. Six day work week, no progression within any sort of pathway for professional growth and personal growth.
Simon Gale:Compensation plateauing quickly and benefits that are not common in our industry. And then close behind those three would be split shifts, the AMPM, the working when everybody else isn't aspect of the job. I really looked at those a lot and then a little behind that, but still important to a lot of people has been the lack of diversity in our industry, particularly female and pros of color. And we need them as role models to inspire the younger generation to look up and say, hey, there's a pathway for me no matter what my background is. So again, I don't think I'm saying anything many of us don't talk about regularly at a conference or around the lunch table with our colleagues.
Simon Gale:But again, I I challenge us to do something about it versus just talk about it.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. Mean, the survey that I just recently did, was that I found after surveying just 200 pros and across The United States that seventy eight percent were were working six days a week and 12% were working seven days a week, which it's just not a sustainable model, particularly in an era when you have people that are choosing to actually work less make less money by working less hours. That would be their preference. That's the generation that that we are now having before us. So we we definitely have to adapt and change.
Kim Bastable:So what have you done? What have you done at the campus? What have you done to address this challenge? We need to keep these pros for a longer period of time and keep them happy.
Simon Gale:You know, I I think when I first arrived at the campus, at the end of the day, the the campus was a young business. It still is. It's only six years old. So it's very young as a business and you're still working out what works, what doesn't, how do we manage this business the best way we can to be what the campus should be, the center of excellence and a kind of model of delivery. And so for me, there's a platform here to have a bit more of a voice in the industry because of where I work and I really value that.
Simon Gale:And so when I transitioned into the role, Kathy Woods was here before and she did a phenomenal job getting the doors open, putting programming in place, hiring pros, building a team. And so I inherited something that was very well set up, but we weren't immune to any of those issues that we just talked about. And as I spent a little time with the team and really engaged with them, it became clear that those three top issues of work week, compensation and lack of a career path, that they became clear that there were issues with the team. And so I spent a lot of time, I mean, I started two weeks before COVID began. So I had three months of time to get to know my team online and I used that to survey and ask questions and get to know them and understand what these issues were.
Simon Gale:So when I look back, it was actually valuable time for me because it's rare we get any time to stop and reflect. So those three core issues became crystal clear that we had to adjust and make some change, meaningful change. So we started with compensation and pathway and I linked those two together and said, our pros tend to get stuck as say a staff pro and then the next step is a leadership role. So we created some additional tiers for pros to graduate to and clearly defined what the expectations were from a certification point of view as well as what do we need you to do from a campus delivery point of view in order to be successful in that space and prepare you to move up the ladder and with that, what compensation comes with it. Generally in our industry, compensation is a big secret.
Simon Gale:So I wanted to be more open with them and say, at these different tiers, these are the sort of levels of income you could be expecting so that you can see an actual pathway and a career versus it's a cool job I do because I was a good tennis player until I get a real job. And that always drove me crazy because I found that offensive because I've spent thirty years doing this and you just think it's something cool to do for a couple of years. So we looked at those things and so the pathway was built and it was a big progress or process of change to go through what we went through as a company and present it to the senior leaders who needed to sign off on it. And I learnt a lot about a, how the USDA works and what it takes to make meaningful change. But in the grand scheme of things, how was this important for us as leaders in the industry and as I said, a center of excellence or role model.
Simon Gale:So we created the pathway, gave pros an opportunity to see where they could end up next and then took the time to say, here's where you fit in our pathway, here's why and let's come up with a plan for you just like you would for a high performance player. We always put all this time into our players and say, here's your periodization plan for the year and here's where we want to be at the end of twelve months. But we send our pros out to teach forty hours and then maybe at the end of the year, we say, Kim, come on in, you've done an amazing job, here's a $2 an hour pay rise. Now go and bang out forty hours again for me, would you? And I thought, what if we set it up like we do a player's plan, we need a pro's plan.
Simon Gale:What am I going to do for you this year to mentor you, develop you and educate you to a point where you have a realistic chance to move within our system. And so that was the first stage that we we really focused on. And I think that's been well received. I think our retention rate will continue to increase, it's early on, we're only a year or two into it. But combining that with improved compensation, we had a, I'll be honest, and I've said this at many conferences now, we had a reputation for below market compensation.
Simon Gale:And we had to address that and be an attractive place to work and I think we've set it up now where as a package, this is a great place to work. And I don't think that was our reputation a few years ago. So it's still evolving but we're trying to put ourselves on the map as a legitimate career benefit and place to work is to attach the campus to your resume and be part of what we do here. So those were two critical issues that went together. And then the one I'm proudest of, which I think has the biggest impact, is moving and transitioning into a five day work week.
Simon Gale:So we just started that in August, the feedback's been nothing but positive. You know, I think when you put 35 pros in a room and say, put your hand up, who wants to work five or six days a week? Nobody put their hand up for six days. So that was a pretty strong indicator that that we were doing something good. Their biggest concern was will I be able to keep my hours?
Simon Gale:You know, will I be able to make make my my living? And I assured them that, look, this has been done before. I've done it at another club prior to this and I think because we're busy and you guys are good at what you do, you will find that pretty quickly your hours will be where you need to be. And so we've we've been working through that. Some have two days in a row, some have split days, kind of based on seniority, tenure, and their preference for family and and which days of the week they they want to work and and have off.
Simon Gale:But it's really given them, I think, the the time to recoup and recover and come back refreshed, ready to work, and put in a five day week that's long versus six long days. So those are the three core issues that we really addressed over the last two years.
Kim Bastable:Which is just sort of amazing. I'm sure that people who are maybe not in the world of tennis might hear you say that and wanna say, well, duh. I mean, don't we need to have people that are only have five days a week? But it's been so long in our industry that it's just sort of been assumed that we were a six day a week profession. And it's it's fascinating that, you know, it's taken someone like you to be very intentional, which is awesome because you're teaching people that it can be done.
Kim Bastable:So what give us an example of some of the feedback you have had from that five day, you know, the reduction of a six day work week.
Simon Gale:Yeah. We've got about 20 full time staff and we all know that anyone in the industry works a long day as it is. It's not nine till five, five days a week. It's seven in the morning. You know, it's that split shift concept, right?
Simon Gale:You know, they work till eleven or twelve in the morning, and then they come back at four and work till seven, eight, 09:00. The ability to say, well, I'm prepared to do that for five days knowing I have two days off. I can do more than laundry, go out for breakfast, binge watch something on Netflix, and then have to go back to work the next day. Now I can maybe develop a hobby. I had I had one pro who's a little older and been in the industry a long time and he's actually a little lost on his extra day off because he doesn't know what to do.
Simon Gale:And I said, how about you pick up a hobby? And he says, well, I don't know what to do. So he's working through what he's supposed to do on his extra day off, but I think that's a great problem. Maybe he can develop another interest versus tennis is kind of all I do. So we've had some feedback along those lines.
Simon Gale:I think just the ability to connect with family or take an extra trip and not worry about having to rush back for work. I think it's just given that that elusive work life balance. But it's still a challenge because the days they work are long days. No different to what they were doing, but they're still long days and and we've evolved a little bit where, you know, the pros who have large followings are able to start to say, well, maybe I can finish at 07:00 on two nights a week instead of teaching till eight or nine. And so the stronger the pro with a better following, the more flexibility we have even within those five days.
Simon Gale:You're just trying to say, hey, we're not forcing you to do something in terms of you have to work six days, all day, every day. Here's here's an option and we give them a little more autonomy to manage their schedule. And if they're happier and more balanced and and and come to work ready to go, can we keep them here longer? And I wanna be at this place longer. And that's what I think will happen because I have seen it before at Yonkers Tennis when I was there, all the pros worked five days And our retention rate was five years plus on most of our pros.
Simon Gale:So I know it works, but it was a huge undertaking here at the campus just because of the size of the staff to put that jigsaw puzzle together. But nothing but positive feedback so far.
Kim Bastable:Well, you know, I've done some studies. The director of Racquet Sports, we have 77 people in the certificate program and I do some, assessments on them. And I found that, not shockingly, many of them are quite driven, mostly because they came out of the playing sector. Probably, for most part, they've all been, you know, at some point, a competitive player. And so what do you do about the pro who says, you know, they just are driven?
Kim Bastable:They wanna make another $40. And if someone says, I'm supposed to be off on Saturday, but if someone says they want a lesson on Saturday, how do you keep them from teaching on Saturday if they're not supposed to be? Is that a policy you have? They're not welcome at the facility on Saturday to teach, or, have you had anybody sort of backing down and allowing people to, know, booking lessons on their quote day off?
Simon Gale:Yes and no. So yes, there's pros who who may be adapting to having these extra days off and they're used to working so I I want to work but you know, I'll give you examples of, you know, hey, I'm a couple of hours short of what I used to be, can I come in on my sixth or seventh day and pick those up? And I sit there and say, well, two or three hours is half an hour or an hour each day on the five days you're currently listed to work. Surely, between us as a team, we can find you one to two hours to get your numbers up where you need to be or an hour a day if you're looking for five extra hours. There's work there, maybe we've just got to sell you a little better, you need to sell yourself a little better, you need to work some of your groups to say, you know, maybe some of you could do with a private or start a new group or you know, maybe you can be creative with how to find hours versus I need to just the default is I'll work an extra day.
Simon Gale:Well, how do I get those hours in in the five days? So we work with them on how do we build you those extra hours so that once they're there, they don't think about using that extra day. Look, if a pro is in financial hardship and is saying, I just bought a new Tesla and it's going to cost me a thousand dollars a month and it's doubled my car budget, maybe I need to work a little more. That might be a separate conversation we need to have about how you're spending your money but we're at this point saying, we need you to stick with your five days because if we go to six for one then it opens up the door for everybody. So I don't know if I like the word policy, but it's definitely something we're trying to stand strong on.
Simon Gale:And so far, those who have been a little short have been able to pick up those hours quickly and we work together as a team to make sure their hours are where they need to be.
Kim Bastable:I think it's an education of, you know, really understanding the long the long haul. You're in this for the long haul, and that one lesson on a Saturday really is you know, it's an inconvenience even though it may seem like that one lesson or one extra lesson. And it really is helping, I think, as you as a leader to show that you've been in we've been in the industry long enough to say we've seen the hazards of these six day work weeks. We've seen the burnout, and it's it's not helping us to grow the industry. It's not helping us grow the leaders.
Kim Bastable:It's not certainly not inspiring the next gen to wanna become a a part of our industry. So it really, I think, is something to to change from the the pro perspective. But what have you heard from the customer perspective? Are the customers put out because they're unable to get their lesson on say Thursday night at seven that they've always had?
Simon Gale:Yeah, man, it's a good question and I'll just add one more thing to your last comment is a lot of pros will say, well, I only work a half day on Saturday. And I'm like, yeah, but did you shower, suit up and drive to work today? And they're like, yes. Okay, well, that's that's a workday. So you worked six days.
Simon Gale:It doesn't matter if it's a half day or a third day, you came to work. So mentally, you work today. I think if you like you said, if you want a career that goes beyond 30 years of age, for example, this is important. While you may make some extra money right now, you're going to change careers and and I want you to stay in the industry because I value your contribution. I think it's how you approach it, as you said, it's it's there's a bit of education.
Simon Gale:If they're only in it for a few years, then maybe they're going to work like that just to to make some quick money. But if there's any career aspirations or longevity goals, we've got to manage you. It's a marathon, not a sprint, so to speak. So I I think that's something that resonates. But in relation to customers, you know, the process we've gone through is is when we we we sold this to the staff and said this is what we're we're looking at.
Simon Gale:How does this work for you? Is this a day that works for you to take off? One of those questions they raised was, well, what about my customer who I normally have on Fridays who now I'm going to tell them I'm not available? So we worked on, okay, you need to approach your customer and say, look, I'm I'm going to be off on Friday starting in six weeks' time. These are the days I'm going to be available.
Simon Gale:I'd love to continue our relationship. I understand if you can't get here on one of those days, but I will bend over backwards to find a time for you in order to get you in on the days I do work. And if they can't do that, then I'll ask the pros to to facilitate finding a pro they think would be great for them on that Friday, for example, because they can only play Friday at 07:00. And that's okay as long as the customer stays in tennis, stays within the campus program, I'm fine with that and we'll we'll we'll get you another lesson on the five days you work. But we didn't have any issues with that.
Simon Gale:Some customers did find a new pro, but I've joked with you before, it's it's my my wife was in the hairdressing business for thirty years and when we had my daughter, she went down to a three day work week from say four or five days and had those conversations. If you're married to that relationship and you need somebody to cut and color your hair and they're the only ones who do it well, you will adapt and you'll find in your personal life a way to get that rescheduled. And if you don't, then you'll move on to another pro or another hairdresser, for example. So I wasn't too worried about that, but it was a transition and and and we educated the customers, but we educated the staff on how to approach a customer. So really no ramifications at all from that.
Kim Bastable:Well, it comes down that we're a relationship business And, you make that great relationship. You teach those great lessons. You inspire people to wanna come back. The health, the experience, the it's far more than, you know, just, like I said, a forehand and a backhand. And, I think that shows you're a relationship leader, that attention to, the care and need of of the employee is is showing by this move that you've made on the campus.
Kim Bastable:And I think it's an encouraging example. As you said, you're trying to be an example for the industry, and it's a it's a super great example. I know you've shared about this at a couple different conferences, and we'll continue to to do updates on it as we go. What's your next goal? Like, what are you what are you looking for?
Kim Bastable:What are the challenges or anything right in front of you that you that you're hoping to get, you know, in the next phase of this or what you're seeing?
Simon Gale:I think, really, it's been a three year project. I mean, we all managed through COVID, right? But while we were doing that, this was the long term vision. This was my three to five year project, was to address compensation, present a pathway, and to be able to to work on this five day work week. So I would say I've checked off my my three goals that were right in front of me when I started.
Simon Gale:In addition to other goals, you know how it is, there's a page of goals and one day when I am all done, I'll probably only achieve a third of them, but the list was long. I think just continuing to build our reputation as a leading provider or the role model of what we should look like and be the centre of excellence and be a place where people come and leave and say, wow, that was an amazing experience. What a great lesson. Just overall from the minute you walk in the door to when you leave, what a great experience we had at the campus. So working on that reputation and and putting the USTA on the map as a legitimate teaching provider, they all go hand in hand.
Simon Gale:But I think evolving our our business too. You know, we're in the business of tennis. Yes, the company drives the US Open, but campus 1st Floor operations is day to day tennis business. And it's a huge business with the the volume of people who come through the campus. You're talking quarter of a million people a year who walk through the doors and more than 2,000 people a week who come for lessons and programming.
Simon Gale:That's to me like managing four or five tennis clubs at once. So just continuing to evolve so that we're the best we can be and and what other programs can we do that are new, innovative or or appeal to the country for a reason to come here. And I'll give you an example would be working with directors and and pros around the country to say, bring groups of people down, come and immerse yourself in what we do for a few days, we'll train your your people for a great three day camp experience. You can stay at the local hotel, have an amazing time in Orlando, but then if you wanna learn more about how to deliver 10 and under, you could work with our team in the family zone and you can experience Padel if you haven't done Padel before and just see how the campus operates. I think there's opportunities there to develop those relationships throughout the country.
Simon Gale:So things like that, that maybe I didn't do at a traditional club, are opportunities here and that's what really excites me about the future.
Kim Bastable:No. That's that's awesome. That's what we're trying to do with this podcast. We're just trying to create some powerful energy with these conversations around, leadership and building the business of Racquet's. And I'm excited that we've gotten started.
Kim Bastable:We're gonna do some interviews in the future of some very influential people, some authors that can really help energize the business of Racquet's leadership. So this is Kim, and this is Simon, and you've been listening to Racquet Fuel.
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 racquetfuelpodpodcast.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:This podcast is a production of Athlete Plus, the people, stories, and 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 of 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.
