July 10, 2026

The Business of Pickleball

Make your passion your work and you'll never work a day in your life.

“Make your passion your work and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Well... that’s not true.

Most entrepreneurs start businesses based on something they’re passionate about—something they genuinely enjoy doing. But running a business is about much more than the thing you love.

If you love baking and start a bakery, baking is probably only 10-15% of the actual job. The rest is payroll, hiring, accounting, marketing, compliance, customer service, lease negotiations, insurance, technology, and a thousand other tasks that no one talks about when they’re dreaming of becoming a business owner.

Is this why most small business fail?

I don’t think it’s because of a lack of passion or hard work. Most entrepreneurs have both. The challenge is everything else that has to happen behind the scenes to keep a business running smoothly.

As my wonderful partners and I embark on the journey of building a pickleball club, we’ve encountered obstacles that almost made me feel like a naive newbie rather than a seasoned entrepreneur launching his fourth business. While the idea of running a sports club carries a certain glamour quotient, the reality of operating a brick-and-mortar business today is incredibly difficult.

Finding the right location is only the beginning. Then comes construction, permits, vendors, staffing, software systems, membership models, marketing plans, cash flow management, and the endless unexpected issues that seem to surface daily. Every decision has a cost, a timeline, and a consequence.

There is that eerie feeling that you are not in control and being pulled in a 100 different directions.

What has surprised me most is that our biggest challenge isn’t building courts. It’s building a sustainable business around those courts.

Building the courts was the easy part, now comes the real challenge.

Creating an experience that members love. Building a culture where people feel welcome. Hiring great people. Maintaining consistency. Generating enough revenue to support growth while delivering value to members. Those are the things that determine success or failure.

The good news is that entrepreneurship has a way of keeping you humble.

No matter how much experience you have, every new industry teaches you something new. Every challenge forces you to adapt. Every setback reveals a blind spot you didn’t know you had.

And that’s exactly why I still love building businesses.

Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s glamorous. But because every obstacle overcome creates something meaningful.

In the end, we aren’t really building a pickleball club. We’re building a community. The courts simply provide the place for that community to come together.

The business of pickleball, like any business, is ultimately about people.

And that’s a game worth playing.

#Entrepreneurship #SmallBusiness #Pickleball #BusinessOwnership #Leadership #StartupLife #CommunityBuilding #SportsBusiness