Why Business Matters

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the very first episode of the Tennis Business Academy Podcast. 

I’m your host David Martins, and on each episode I will be providing bite-size, nuggets of information, advice and ideas on the subject of running a tennis coaching programme or club, Academy, Tennis Centre or any other venue where people play and enjoy tennis.

My ultimate goal is to get more people involved with our sport, so if you share that goal you’ll probably enjoy the podcast!

On each episode I will focus on one specific topic and will get straight to the point. 

And since this is the first episode, I thought I’d start at the beginning and talk about why I decided to create the Tennis Business Academy in the first place, and, more importantly, why I believe that thinking and learning about business is so important for our industry.

So, let’s do this.

And I’ll start with my own story. 

So, I started playing tennis when I was 10 and played up until I was 18. I played to a pretty good standard, but certainly not good enough to become a professional player. 

Once I stopped playing I immediately became a coach, first in Portugal where I’m from, and then in the UK where I’ve been based since 2009. 

I coached for about 10 years in total, until in 2014 I decided to change careers and went to work at a consultancy firm in London.

(I’m now back coaching, but that’s a story for another day.)

At this point you might be wondering why I’m telling you all this.

Because it was when I stopped coaching and started working my consultant job that I realised that I knew very little about business, despite the fact that I had been a self-employed coach for the past 10 years.

I had learned about the game, I’d taken my level 4 club coach qualification. Had my coaching licence and was definitely a competent coach.

But I had no clue about any of the other skills that were necessary to make a tennis coaching programme thrive.

And that was made painfully clear as soon as I stepped into the “business” world and I started interacting with all these different companies.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I had spent pretty much no time learning about off-court skills, while I was a coach.

And here are some numbers that illustrate this.

Up until I stopped coaching in 2014, I had amassed over 19 thousand hours of on-court training and experience. 

These are all the hours I spent learning the game as a player, playing matches and tournaments, as well as all the hours I spent coaching, and on coaching qualifications, conferences and CPD courses.

A lot of you listening will probably have way more than 19 thousand hours of on-court training and experience.

And that’s certainly a good thing.

But what about business? How many hours did I spend learning about business until I decided to change careers?

…

Well, I estimate about 30. And that’s a generous estimate.

I spent about 2 or 3 hours on my Level 4 qualification business project - if you can call it that - and I read the odd online article here and there.

I had no business training in my coaching qualifications, no CPD business courses or workshops, no mentors giving me advice or telling me to do ABC or XYZ. 

Really I had no knowledge of what needed to be in place to build a successful tennis coaching programme or club, beyond the on-court stuff.

Which is a great start, don’t get me wrong.

If I’m a coach that doesn’t know how to coach, I’m not going to be very successful - of course. I’m not going to be in business for very long. Far from me to suggest otherwise!

But knowing about tennis is not enough.

If we want to remain competitive, and keep attracting people to the sport we need to learn all these other skills.

Skills, like customer service, marketing, sales, management, leadership, negotiation, you name it. 

There are so many different things that go into making any organisation successful.

Now, let me be clear here: I’m not suggesting that every coach and club manager must have 19 thousand hours of training in business.

Or in other words, I’m not saying that a coach needs to know as much about business as they need to know about tennis and coaching.

Of course not.

Your craft is your craft, and you should do what you can to master it.

I’m just pointing out that the difference between time spent mastering your craft and learning about business shouldn’t be this big.

I’m pointing out that it IS important to spend some time thinking about the business side of things, so that we can give ourselves the best chance of attracting and keeping as many people as possible in the sport.

Perhaps - and I’m just gonna throw this out there - a good goal is for every 10 thousand hours that we spend learning and thinking about tennis, we spend a thousand hours learning and thinking about business.

About 10%.

For every 40 hours of working on tennis, we spend 4 hours learning and working on business.

That seems achievable to me and I’m certain that it would help us bring more people into the sport as well as help us develop our careers and clubs.

And this is exactly why I decided to create the Tennis Business Academy and this podcast.

To talk about the business side of what we do and to provide you with information and ideas that will hopefully help you build a successful tennis coaching programme or club.

And to encourage you to spend some time each week thinking about what you could do to improve your business so that your customers - and by customers I mean players - want to keep playing in your coaching programme and at your venue for a long time, while at the same time you and your business can work to attract new ones.

That’s the goal for the podcast and the Academy anyway!

Alright, that’s all for today.

Hopefully this episode has done a good job of explaining why I think that business matters, and I hope that you tune in for the next few episodes where I will be covering practical business topics and advice for your tennis business or club.

Thanks for tuning in.