Episode 46 Transcript

Host: Mark Renneson

Intro [0:05]

Mark:  Owen! Owen! 

Owen: Daddy!

Mark:  Oh that’s a good jump. Hi! 

Owen:  Hi daddy! We’re going in the car now.

Mark:  Yeah, well we’re going to on the bike. And then, and then maybe we’ll go to the park.

Owen:  Yeah, the park!

Mark:  Okay. Let’s go. I’ll go meet you at the door. Let’s go!

His hat? He did not come with a hat today. It’s so warm out.  

[someone speaking in the background]

Mark:  There we go. What do you say? 

[someone speaking in the background]

Mark:  What’s on your helmet? Sharks? We’re going slow right now, yeah. There’s a puppy. Alright, let’s go!

Pickleball Coaching International [1:27]

Mark:  Hey, there it’s Mark from Third Shot Sports on a bike. Welcome to another episode, (laughs…) our post 100,000 downloads episode, Episode Number 46of Pickleball Problems.

Alright, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Mark Renneson, from Third Shot Sports. This is a bit of an unusual episode, as you can tell probably by now. We have just hit 100,000 downloads and I don’t know — I think that’s a pretty good accomplishment. I definitely wasn’t thinking about when we started Pickleball Problems. 

If you’re hearing the wind right now, it’s a little different from our usual studio. That’s because everything is, well, kinda messed up these days. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic. This is being recorded in late November and I’ve just picked up my 2-year-old, Owen, from his daycare. We’re riding our bikes home. We’re here in Canada and typically by this time of year, actually one year ago, we had about 24 inches of snow. And right now, it’s unseasonably warm so the roads are still dry and we’re biking. So I figured at a 100,000 downloads, we should do something special, but I’m not sure given the pandemic and everything that really — yeah, there Santa — that it warrants it.

So what I decided – sorry I’m huffing and puffing because we’re going up hill. What I decided to do instead is just give you, dear listener, kind of an unvarnished podcast episode, and to tell you a little bit about where things are with Third Shot Sports and our various projects, and where I’m hoping for them to go because we’re not too far off from 202 and, this might be a good chance to talk about that a little bit. 

So if you’re looking for a really detailed analysis of Pickleball technique or tactics, you know what, this probably isn’t the episode for you. You should go back and listen to some of the other ones or get ready for future ones because this is going to be all about what’s going on with Third Shot Sports, what we’re up to. And with that, we will be back in a second after a word from our really terrific sponsors.

Sponsor: Pickleball Coaching International

The Pickleball Lab [5:00]

Special episode number 46, after hitting 100,000 downloads. Today, we’re talking a little bit about what’s going on in the world of Third Shot Sports; what are we up to, what can you look forward to in 2021 because let’s be honest, 2020 was it pretty garbage year for a lot of reasons. I’m hoping to talk about some of the exciting things we’ve got going on — I’ll try to block some of the wins as we continue on our bike ride. Owen’s in the back, a 2-year-old.

Okay, so what can I tell you about? Well, let’s start with what we did, I think in 2020.

So I want to start with Third Shot Sports. I spent a lot of the year, well, a lot of the first quarter on the road coaching. It was great. It’s still, believe it or not. My favorite thing to do is to be on court with people, being part of other people who are getting better at something. I’m sort of a teacher by nature and I come from a family of teachers and it was a real pleasure in January and February until the middle of March when this all started, to be doing as much coaching as I would. I’m really grateful that so many people are interested in having me come down and do clinics with their players or do a professional development with their instructors.

Yeah, he’s got tennis rackets, you’re right, Owen. 

Since then, it’s been eight months since the pandemic started, I’ve taught exactly eight pickleball lessons, so it’s been a bit of a downer from that perspective. What we’ve realized that we need to do, if this is going to survive as a business is to pivot towards more pandemic-proof aspects of the business. And that’s why you’ll see a fair bit — we’re doing a fair push of something called The Pickleball Lab. The Pickleball Lab is really an experiment. You possibly know that I do a lot of stuff on video. If you look at our YouTube channel, we’ve got tons of free videos you can go out and watch, and I like watching those too and I like making them. The YouTube channel was great. I really liked doing it, but it takes a ton of time to make every video. Every video that you see that we make at least, every minute of final product is at least an hour of work that goes into making it and editing it and all of that, so it’s a lot of work. It’s really labor-intensive and of course, YouTube is free. 

So what we did is we started this experiment, The Pickleball Lab — lab experiment together. And the proposition was, “Hey, if you have enough belief in what we’re doing, that we make high-quality products, if we offer something that’s a premium price, even better than our YouTube videos, even better than our free newsletter, Inside Pickleball, and we ask you to pay a little bit of money for it, $100 for the whole year, will people go for it, right? Will they trust that their $100 will be well worth it? If it’s good value? Will they want to support the work that we’re doing? And it turns out, many of you did. So that’s been an exciting thing for me is to build out Pickleball Lab as a huge upfront investment in time and money and resources. Many of you have supported, I’m really grateful for that. If you are thinking about it or you haven’t heard about Pickleball Lab before, check out thepickleballlab.com, and you can see what it’s all about. It’s basically, we sort of rebranded it as Pickleball’s best online newsletter, magazine. Many of you know that there’s another magazine out there for Pickleball. Most of you get it for free. If you love looking at ads and that’s a great option for you, and it’s totally free, it’s great, I get it. But if you’re looking for really content-heavy material, but it doesn’t have any ads, Pickleball Lab might be for you. There’s not a single ad throughout the 12 months. So thepickleballlab.com, check it out. 

Now, we have lots of other really cool things to tell you about, and we’re going to do that in just a moment. 

Sponsor: The Pickleball Lab

Pickleball Coaching International [10:04]

Mark: Alright, we’re back to Pickleball Problems here on a bike ride with me, your host, Mark Renneson. I got young Owen in the back and we’re celebrating our 100,000 downloads. And we’re just going through some of the things we did in 2020 and what we’re looking forward to in 2021. So I just mentioned The Pickleball Lab.

One of the things I need to mention is Pickleball Coaching International, PCI. Owen likes PCI. 

I mentioned earlier that I really love coaching and I’m reasonably good at it. And one of the things I really like is working with other coaches, people who want to get better at teaching Pickleball. This is not necessarily for coaching advanced players, although that is included, but even just introducing the game to new people or helping current players get better. And so we started a wing a couple of years ago now of Third Shot Sports called Pickleball Coaching International. And a little over a year ago, we had so much feedback from our members who wanted not just Pickleball coaching resources, but actually wanted the certification. Once you go through a process, go through an evaluation process and come out the other side, having sort of shown that they’ve met certain standards and they trusted us to set those standards. Anyway, PCI now has coaching certification. In fact, quite a few people — I don’t know the numbers off hand, who have gone through the certification process, not always successfully, sometimes people have to go back and redo it, but that’s okay, that’s what happens when you have high standards.

Anyway, I’ve been really happy that we have this sort of cohort of Pickleball instructors who believe in what we’re doing, who believe in our methodology, which is quite different than some of our colleagues out there. My approach has always or tries to be always really a practical and to the point, and encourages people who are teaching Pickleball to focus more on their students than on themselves, and to think about what will make the biggest difference to these players in the shortest amount of time. So that’s always kind of been our approach and not everyone responds to that. But the people who do sort of find a home with PCI.

Our level one program is out there. It’s 100% online. You get great things like liability insurance which is important, great deals on products from Selkirk Sports, like 50% off, an AMPED paddle, 30% off one of their brand new Vanguards. There’s nowhere else you can get deals that good.

Anyway, if you’re a people instructor or thinking about becoming one, PCIpickleball.com is the place to check out and really happy, the response from members has been a pretty solid, and that’s generally how I judge the quality of our work, is the people who are putting up the money to be part of it, what is it that they say? Should they get good value for it? Do they feel like it’s worth it? And overwhelmingly the answer is yes, so PCIPickleball.com, if you’re interested in what we’re doing on the coaching side of things. 

Inside Pickleball [13:11]

Mark:  So, what else are we doing? I mentioned earlier our newsletter, we rebranded it. I realized the Third Shot Sports Pickleball newsletter doesn’t really roll off the tongue. So we rebranded it as Inside Pickleball. Inside Pickleball is what it’s called, you can find it at thirdshotsports.com/newsletter. And, I called it that because one, it sounds better, but two, it really, I think speaks a little bit more to what we’re trying to do with this project. We are trying to provide enough insight that you can really help people get inside the game of Pickleball. And whether you’re a beginning player or a novice or an intermediate, or even a pro, to help shed a little bit of light, kind of like we try to do here on the podcast on the sport of Pickleball in different aspects of it. And so, that’s why I call it an Inside Pickleball. So if you haven’t subscribed yet, check it out. It’s totally free. There are ads cause we got to like pay the bills. 

Speaking of which, I’m just in my house. I’m going to go in for a second and get this little guy a snack — speaking of which ads, I do want to talk a little bit about our partners. Once in a while, you’ll hear advertisements for them on this podcast.

Hold on one sec, I’ll finish it. Yeah, we’re going to go to the park. I’m just going to get you a snack. I’ll get you a pouch and then we’ll go to the park, okay? You stay here.

Sorry – okay so yeah, we play ads once in a while. I don’t know if our sponsors will love this format of a podcast, but here we are. They have no creative control, sorry guys. So some of our sponsors, I want to talk about, I’m going to talk about them sort of in order of which they came on board.

Selkirk Sport, we have worked with them for a number of years — I’m just filling up his bottle. He’s still 2, so he still has a bottle. Selkirk Sport has been a partner of ours for a number of years and I’m so proud to work with a company that is so consistently high-performing. We do our best to provide high-quality work, this podcast, maybe not withstanding. But the rest of our work, our videos, our articles, Pickleball Lab, Pickleball Coaching International, all that stuff, we work really hard to make really good stuff. And our motto has always been, maybe it’s not a motto, it’s sort of a belief, is that if you produce high-quality work, then eventually down the road, you’ll get rewarded. You’ll be able to pay some bills with it. And I just find that working with the guys and girls, the team at Selkirk, they consistently deliver really high- quality stuff. And whether that’s their paddles, whether it’s their clothing, whether it’s their customer service, shout out to Jen, whether it’s their social media, shout out to Hayley, or anyone else at the team. David who’s in, — he’s the guy who, when someone orders a paddle at Third Shot Sports, David’s the guy who makes sure it gets out on time and takes care of all that. And I know there’s a whole team behind them that I don’t even know the names of, but it’s a real pleasure to work with the team. Those guys have always said to me, I hope I’m not divulging too much. But when he first started working together in 2015, I said to them, “Oh, hey, do you want me to send you like quarterly reports? How many of your paddles we sold?” And they sort of laughed at me and said, “No, we don’t want to work with you because you’re going to sell our paddles. We don’t care about that. We’re here for the long-term. We’re here because we want to be the brand that’s around Pickleball for a long time to come that stands for quality, and we believe that you have the same kind of values that we do. And so that’s why we want to work together. And that kind of attitude gives me so much creative freedom, so I really appreciate the approach that they’ve taken with me and the trust that they’ve shown me and my team when it comes to making decisions. 

Yeah. I’m getting you. Hold on, hold on. 

So that’s Selkirk. Hey, let’s listen to a quick ad from them.

Sponsor: Selkirk Sport 

Jigsaw Health [18:50]

Mark:  Okay, welcome back to Pickleball Problems, the 100,000 episode. Just finished talking about Selkirk Sport, one of our sponsors.

Our second sponsor, I really want to give a shout out to our friends at Jigsaw Health. We’ve been with Jigsaw Health since 2020, I guess, early 2020. And Patrick and Ashley and the whole team at Jigsaw Health, you’ve seen their videos. They’re hilarious. They’re creative. They’re fun. I mean, honestly, I like sharing those videos, not because they’re sponsors for us, but because I just really love their creativity, and I think that’s really exciting to work with a team and a company that is looking to innovate, and it’s really sort of all in when it comes to Pickleball.

I’ve never been private to this person, a person who had like a lot of supplements. I was kind of like a drink of water sort of person. And I think it’s okay to tell this story. A couple of years ago, I was doing the broadcast commentary at US Nationals, and the broadcast booth is right on center court, just above the VIP area. And there was this young couple that was always in the VIP section but they would sit like way up high, like just below the broadcast booth. And I was like, “Why are these guys here?” Even when it was so sunny and there was like shade and there were better seats down lower, but there’s this young couple who’s always sitting right underneath the booth. 

Yeah, you can go in the swing. You want to go so high?

Owen:  Yeah!

Mark:  Okay, we’ll do a big one. Ready? Set. Go!

He’s on the swing. 

I was friendly with them, but they’re there every day. Eventually it’s like, “Oh, Hey guys, like what’s, what’s up? Can I ask, why are you sitting here in the blazing sun?”

I don’t have a tennis racket for you. 

“Why are you sitting in the blazing sun? It’s so hot. There’s shade down below.”

And they said, “Oh, well, we really love Pickleball, but we really, really love Pickleball when we can watch it and hear you do commentary about it.” 

And I was like, “Oh, isn’t that a nice compliment.”

Anyway, we started to get to know each other a little bit and they expressed an interest in working together and they mentioned how a lot of the really sort of top tier pros were getting on board, Lucy Kovalova, Matt Wright and Joey Farias, and Irina Tereschenko, Ben Johns, I should mention. And it was really sort of neat to at the time I was like, “Oh, I don’t know. We don’t really do supplements. We don’t really do like hydration stuff.”

And they said, “Look, can we send you some samples?”

And I said, “Sure, no problem.”

And they sent the samples and I didn’t know about the performance at first, but I really loved the taste of them. It was nice to drink something that tasted good, you could add to your water, it was easy. And from then on I was like, ”Okay, well, why don’t we test this out?” So when I’d be either training a bit as a player, or more importantly, like coaching, you know, eight, 10, 12 hours a day on court, and I have some Jigsaw Health stuff, it was great. I felt less tired at the end of the day. I looked forward to taking water breaks instead of something I had to do. 

What do you want to do? The big swings? The big swings, wel they’re really big. You want to try? Sorry, I’m in the middle of my talking about Jigsaw Health. He’s at the age where he wants to do all the big kids stuff. Okay, there you go. You climb on. 

And so they sent the stuff and the more I talked to Patrick and Ashley, the more I realized how much they both love Pickleball as players, how they together as the team that was running, the company had such big, they were all into it. And sometimes just had to sort of create something from nothing — yeah. I’ll help you. Do you want to sit on it? 

I really appreciate people who are willing to kind of like — okay, you hold onto the chain. I’ll push you a little bit high, not too high.

People who are willing to invest time, money, effort, into something – I appreciate that. And so, that’s why I worked with Jigsaw Health. Not to mention, they make some really great music, so why don’t we listen to a quick Jigsaw Health ad. Back in a sec.

Sponsor: Jigsaw Health

PicklePlay [24:33]

Alright, welcome back to Pickleball Problems. I’m your host Mark Renneson. Today is a really weird episode. We have 100,000 downloads and we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and so everything is kind of off. And I’m at the park with my kid, my 2-year-old, who is now on the big boys swing. We’re talking about some of our sponsors who I really want to give some appreciation to.

So next I want to mention our friends at PicklePlay. PicklePlay is the ultimate pickleball app. And one of the things that can happen, I know this firsthand, I travel a lot, do Pickleball coaching, you don’t know where the Pickleball courts are. If you do know where they are, you don’t know if they’re any good. Do they have lights? Are there dedicated courts? Are they shared with tennis? What are the programs that go on there? Are there people to play with? How do you find them? It’s like a real problem. And so PicklePlay solves that problem. And Alex and Blake are the team who run the PicklePlay app. It’s hard for me to say five times fast and I really appreciate — again, this is another case of people like going sort of all in to do this. PicklePlay works as an app when it’s a network experience and that means it requires all of you, nice people out there to download it and then to — you’re going too slow? Okay, we’ll go faster — is to go out and to share information about your courts, right? And it’s super easy to use. It’s like you just touch here, how many courts do you have? What kind of course are they? Do they have lights? It’s super easy. And the more people that do that, the more people benefit from it. It’s a totally free app to use. You can upgrade and do other things too, but it’s totally free. And so I’m really glad that pickup lane was interested in working with us because what they’re really committed to is helping to improve the Pickleball experience for everyone and of course, grow the game. And so it’s not just about finding courts. You can also find people to play with. There’s like a social aspect to it. You can find out if there’s any programs or leagues or tournaments that go on at those courts. So if you’re someone who likes to travel around and play at different places and play with different people, head over to PicklePlay.com — I’ll be more clear on my saying that, or just download the app, PicklePlay and I think you’d really be happy about it. You know what? Let’s listen to a quick add from PicklePlay.

Sponsor: PicklePlay

Acacia Sports [27:34]

Alright, welcome back to the show. Today, we’re talking about what’s happened in 2020, what’s going on in 2021 here with us at Third Shot Sports. I’m your host, Mark Renneson. We’ve talked about a few of our sponsors. I want to mention one more. Our fourth sponsor, Acacia Sports. It’s named after a tree. There’s a long story there, which maybe I’ll tell on the different podcasts. 

Anyway, Acacia Sports, they’re a relatively new sponsor for us. We signed on with them late in 2020. And Acacia makes Pickleball shoes, Pickleball-specific shoes. They make other shoes too. They’ve been in the shoe market for almost a quarter of a century, so they know what they’re doing when it comes to making shoes. They approached us and they said, “Hey, we know you’re in Pickleball. We want to get into Pickleball. Let’s see if we can talk and work something out.” And so they’ve made shoes for other sort of sports, broomball, curling, and now they’re going to Pickleball. And one of the things I love about the team at Acacia Sports, so it’s an American/Canadian based company, and they’re so responsive to feedback, right? Because they say, “Hey, we know how to make shoes, but we don’t know as much about Pickleball right away. So what we want to do is give a bunch of our shoes to different players at different calibers; rec players, advanced players, intermediate players, whatever, the whole gamut, pros, and let’s get feedback.” And they’re so responsive to that feedback, and to me, believe me I know about making mistakes when it comes to trying to grow a Pickleball business. And to me, one of the things I love about Acacia is — are you all done? Do you want to go higher? Do you want to get off? Okay. You just hop off. It’s so funny. Owen interrupts me every time. I’m about to hit like the main point. 

Anyway, I was going to say one of the things I love about working with different companies is how like the willingness to try new things to get better. And so the team at Acacia have shown in spades to me that they’re willing to take feedback even if it’s constructive criticism, not taking it personally and not say, “Hey, we’re the company. We know what we’re doing”, but to say, “Hey, we want to build something here and we know that we don’t know everything, and we want to rely on the people who do know.” So they’ve been so responsive, so I’m really looking forward to 2021. They’ve got a whole bunch of new shoes coming out with a whole bunch of new features. They’re more durable, they’re more comfortable, they look really cool. And so whether you’re someone who likes, kind of like the minimalist style, that’s like sort of understated, but when you look in close, I think of it as like a luxury car, right? You don’t really notice but when you’re looking close, you’re like, “Oh, wow, that’s really cool. That’s good attention to detail.” Or you’re someone who likes to have a flashier pair of shoes, Acacia has got something for you. I’m really excited to continue to work with them and help them to get their named and visibility in the Pickleball world, and Acaciasports.com is where you can find out. By the way, if you use that promo code “Mark15” – pardon me? The dyno red ball? I don’t know what that is. Let’s go for a walk over there. 

If you use the promo code “Mark15” when you’re at the checkout at Acaciasports.com, you’ll save 15%. So there you go. Anyway, since we’re talking about Acacia, why don’t we listen to a quick ad about them?

Sponsor: Acacia Sports

[32:02]

Mark:  Alright, welcome back to the show. We’re in the final portion right here, the home stretch. We’ve been talking about, what’s going on in 2020. Let’s talk briefly about what’s going on in 2021. Well, we’re hoping that we can sort of get past this whole disaster that has been COVID-19. I’m hoping to get back on the court, doing some coaching, probably in the mid to later part of 2021, probably not before then. We’re going to continue to really build out our online presence. Our website, we’re really looking forward to upgrading it. It’s been sort of similar for the last couple of years and as you know, we try to push the envelope a little bit, so I’m really looking forward to, uh, working with the team to rebuild ThirdShotSports.com. I already mentioned Pickleball Inside is our newsletter which is a little bit of a rebuild there.

I’m really looking forward to doing more interactive online stuff. 

Where do you want to go? Goldfish? I don’t have any Goldfish here but we can have some when we get home. Hey, what is that? Is that a pine cone? Look. Let’s check it out. Twitter-year-olds are so easy to distract. 

Anyway, so rebuilding the website, looking to do more interactive online stuff and whether you’re a Pickleball coach, who’s a member of PCI, whether you’re a Pickleball fan, whether you’re a new player, whether you’re just someone who wants to play better Pickleball, I want to be part of that and we’re going to offer lots that’s for free. We’re going to offer lots that is paid cause we need to pay the bills somehow. I’m really excited about that. 

You probably see us on Facebook, I hope. Also the Pickleball Instructor Forum on Facebook, we want to continue to build that out. Pickleball Teachers’ Network or something we acquired. We haven’t really talked about that a whole lot over the last 18 months since we bought it. I want to do a lot to sort of make it even better than it already is. Check out pickleballteachers.com right now, if you’re a Pickleball coach or looking for coaches. But I think in the next 12 months, you’re going to see us really improve its functionality, improve the user experience. 

You want to go this way now? Yeah, sure. Let’s go. Do you want to go to the slide? 

Owen:  No!

Mark:  He does not want to go to the site. 

So we got that going on. And then I want to do a few other things, if you’re listening right now, and you’re a tennis director at a club, we want to do more things that sort of support you and make it easy for tennis coaches or tennis directors to bring Pickleball into their club. We know that there’s a huge role to play there. And so, you can always send me an email, markl@thirdshotsports.com and we can help you. We’re sort of building out plans there. 

So I feel like I’ve been speaking a long time. If you’re still with me, congratulations! You made it through the end of this. But I think the, the last point I want to make is that I know, personally 2020 has been a pretty rough year for us. But having said that, I’m really grateful that, we got through it okay so far, knock on wood. Everyone’s healthy and happy and well. We’re kind of improvising a little bit how we go. I’m really looking forward to 2021 and I know that many people have not had as good a 2020 as we have. And so I feel for you, it’s something I think about quite often when we’re asking people to buy a Selkirk Paddle or a Jigsaw Health product, or new Pickleball shoes from Acacia or even mentioning the PicklePlay app. I realize a lot of you are going through really tough things right now. And so I’m thinking about you. 

But you know what? Here’s to 2021 being a better year for all of us. And even if you just want to give me a quick, hello, I love hearing from people who listen to us. So feel free to send me a, just a quick, hello, Mark. Like listening to the podcast kind of note, if you’ve got the time. Mark@thirdshotsports.com is the best way to reach me or just leave a comment wherever you’re listening to this. I’ll probably find it that way too. 

Okay, thanks again to all of our sponsors for making this possible. And mostly though, thanks to you, our listeners, who helped us get to 100,000 downloads — still can’t believe that happened.

Anyway, take care of yourselves. 

Can you say “bye-bye”?

Owen: Byeee!