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Welcome to the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

Every episode is titled "It starts with tennis" and goes from there.

We talk with coaches, club managers, industry business professionals,

technology experts, and anyone else we find interesting.

We want to have a conversation as long as it starts with tennis.

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Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the GoTennis Podcast powered by Signature Tennis.

Check out our calendar of Metro Atlanta Tennis events at LetsGoTennis.com.

And as you're listening to this, please look in your podcast app

where to leave a review and do that for us.

We're shortlisted for the best tennis and racket podcast award

and we would love to earn your five-star reviews.

In today's episode, Bobby and I talk about 2024, 2025, our rebranding,

and ask for your five-star review. Have a listen and let us know what you think.

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The Atlanta Tennis Podcast, which is changing its names, that we are changing our name, right, Bobby?

To the GoTennis Podcast. And it's interesting timing because we're actually nominated for an award.

We're nominated for the Best Sports and Racket Podcast

from the Sports Podcast Awards. And it's hard to change your name when you're trying to get people

to vote for you or an award. Why not be the best time, that's all.

Right, but we'd planned on doing the name change because from a GoTennis perspective,

this is the thing we're trying to do and this is what we want to talk about today, which is the

the consistent branding across all of our platforms. So we originally had the Atlanta Tennis

Podcast, which we started kind of mid-pandemic and then GoTennis has now become a thing.

And we're going to bring them together to be the same branding, the same concept, the same entity.

Now, you and I have been talking about this for a while, Bobby. Why are we doing all this?

Well, I think it's just the continuity. You know, bring it all together. We're wearing a bunch of

hats. There's a bunch of things we're trying to accomplish. And just to simplify the process,

where GoTennis becomes synonymous with everybody's first click when they want to learn something about

Atlanta Tennis, in Tennis in general. So we want to be the source, and rather than all the

things that you're in a tennis podcast, there's that they're not profit. This is where you're going to

come and you're going to be able to learn about all the things we're doing. And hopefully, it'll

simplify in better your life. Better your life. I like that. Definitely better your tennis, right?

So in this case, we're taking the podcast and just making sure it's known as the GoTennis podcast.

It allows us to expand. It allows anybody in Kentucky or Wyoming or wherever anybody else is

to not look down and go, "Well, I don't care about Atlanta Tennis." And so I asked it.

Hopefully, it gives us a broader audience, even though we still have kind of a hyper-localized

target with the content. Half, if not two-thirds of our content, is universal. It's 10 minutes of

tennis every week. It's the tips that we're giving at least once a week. And we're hoping to do even more

of that in 2025. But it's universal as well as hyper-localized. And I think that's really one of the

positives about it. Now, as we connect it to, you mentioned there in the middle with the non-profit,

as we connect it to the GoTennis Foundation as well, I think we can push for a little bit more of

community outreach and community work. Well, and again, I think you're right. And when you

mentioned that earlier, I was going to jump in on you and say, "Well, he's being humble right here."

But you know, you did win in a war from the GPTA, which is the Georgia Professional Tennis Association.

This year for community outreach and the work that you've done and a lot of it has been done through

what we're doing with GoTennis. So again, these are things that, as you said, we'd love other people,

other players or other instructors in other states to see what we're doing and say, "Hey, we want

to get involved. Can we help you run this in our state?" So yes, it's very much part of what we're

trying to accomplish. And we think it's a unifier, obviously. Everybody wants to get back, especially

this time of year, it resonates. So this is a good time to be spread in the message and saying,

"Hey, there's a lot of things that we're trying to do." And that's why we're coming here today.

You know, we're asking for help because it's not an easy process. We're, you know,

we're tennis instructors by trade and we're trading in some interesting waters, having a great time

doing it. So, you know, we want to reach out. We're 60,000 tennis players in Atlanta. But there's

more good hearts and there are a lot of people that even though they might not play are so scared with it.

There's a lot of people that we feel like they are looking to us to, for some information.

And part of what we want them to learn about is what we're trying to do in the community with

schools, with players, wherever this road takes us, you know, what we can do. So again, no, no time

like the president to go ahead and put it all on the one-roos. Yeah, we've make it all the same thing,

call it all the same thing. We are asking. It is our ask that says, "Will you give us a review?

Will you give us a five-star review?" We don't care. Just reviews are good. So we're up front

award and we'd love for you to help us you being the listener. I'm looking at you listening and

watching to be able to go in, make sure you follow us, make sure you click auto download if you don't

mind, cost you nothing and really helps us out a lot. But the reviews are really what we're looking for

here. Well, let me give you a second if you don't mind. We're also looking for you to participate.

We have a section where we want to hear your tennis playing stories. We want this to be community-based.

Part of the absolute unique thing about Atlanta, which started us on this journey, was Alta.

And the fact that there's this 60,000 person recreational tennis league, unlike anything else that

exists in the world. And Alta and tennis is such a unifier in our city that we want to hear the

stories good and bad because we've been in it and we say this out loud because I've written so many

business plans over the year. Where now I'm saying combined, we've had a hundred years worth of

experience in tennis and as horrifying. But we want to hear your stories because we hear them.

And when we talk about it, just for instance from the podcast, we've got a very good response

from industry insiders. But we want to hear the fun stuff from more than just what we've encountered.

We want to hear from other people too. So we'd encourage everyone not only to review and look at

to see what we're offering, but we want you to get involved. And we want to hear what you have to say as well.

Yeah, we've got a lot of things to ask. And Bobby, I was just going to stick with the one thing

asking for a review at this point because we asked for too many things. We could go down the list.

But yes, let's go tennis.com/mystory. It really is that simple. You can put in your story. You type it

in in text. You can send in an audio file. You want to tell the story yourself. We will copy and

paste you into the podcast, telling the story. We've interviewed some people at multiple clubs saying,

"Oh, yeah, we've got some great stories." But then we haven't heard from you. If you're listening,

you know who you are. But we're interested in that as well. But right now, we're focused on the

podcast, the rebrand, and the reviews to say, "Hey, you know what? These guys are doing a great job."

It's not that great, but at least you're working hard. Whatever it is to go in and click that button.

And Bobby, in the last couple of minutes, I want to give us a little bit of a shout out, like,

pat ourselves on the back a little bit if we can say that. And you mentioned the GPTA award that

I accepted. I still think it should have been to go tennis because as an entity, GoTennis was doing

that and I was just the face of that at the time. So we appreciate that as an award, the Community

Outreach Award for 2024, which is great. But we also did so many other things. We had, now I'll read

through some things. Our first fall festival was a huge success. The cool number that I saw coming

out of that fall festival, Bobby, eight million impressions. Within the 30 days around that event,

eight million impressions online and in person. And we thought that was really cool. So we're looking

forward to doing that again next year. We got a summer slam. We're thinking about doing as well.

The podcast obviously is up for the award. We won the Community Outreach Award for last year.

We sponsored the pro league Atlanta pro league.com. We sponsored one of their teams. We'll plan on

doing it again this year. We proved a lot of things that people want to do. The trip to the Atlanta

open was a big success. We had over a hundred people going to that even though it was rained out and

didn't play right. But expected. It's a little proportions. Yes. Uh-huh. Well, and we also proved some

things like online registration. Windom here now uses it for registration for their academies.

And we've got others in the area that are using it for their ladies days. There's online registration.

Tennis for children uses it for their monthly recurring fees. So we have that. We have the

Bobby, you also use our monthly newsletter. I was going to say the newsletter is a great

information source and it just gives the local instructor access. Yes. There could be a card for what

you do specifically at your club, but look what you can do by informing the folks of all the things

that are going on in tennis. It's tough. I mean, we get it. I'm a director. Most of my time is

spent on the court. We're trying to facilitate everybody's life to bring more to the people because

more is a good thing. And you know, again, in that jumps off of what we're trying to do with community

outreach. If we need everybody involved to really accomplish what we want to accomplish. And that's,

you know, that's probably here. It's a new year, new day. Yes. And 2025, that digital newsletter is now

free because we want to help you. And the cool thing about this, Bobby, if you remember the story,

one of the early interviews we did with Greg Rupert of RMC, Reserve Mike Hort, he talked about the

beginning of his journey was doing something for himself. He fixed one problem that he had the play-by-point

guy. He had a similar story where he said, I just did it for one club and I got it right and then

I went to the next club and I moved on. So one of the things we're doing in tennis since you and I,

you say we've got thousands of years of experience, I think you said a hundred. But in this case,

we're doing this for ourselves first. We're making sure we're making our own lives better in the

tennis world. We're helping the rob carvers of the world and the West Adams and the Ben Hesley's and

we're saying to them, hey, look, we can make your lives better. Your tennis life, your racket sports

life. Let us help you in some of these ways. Yeah, we benefit in X, Y and Z ways. But in this case,

we're here to help. And I think that's kind of the thing that nobody ever gets to hear in this

industry, Bobby. Like, no, really, I'm here to help. And I'm not going to charge you for this thing.

It's just something people don't hear anymore. It's time, you know, hey, you got to make a living.

You know, we're going to ask for help. And that's why we're doing the club and doing the things that

we think that could raise, but we want to do it where you get a benefit as the end user,

trying the club, look at the discounts you get. But the reality is you need money to accomplish

anything you're trying to do. We want to do this more. I'd like to get off the court a few hours

extra week. So I could do spend more time with this. We want to do trips. You know, those are all

time consuming fun stuff. I mean, there's a charity, a goodwill that's doing an 80s party. And I was like,

you're stealing my ideas. Get out of here. You know, these are things we want to do with the tennis

community, but they take time and they take resources. So, you know, we're, we're going to really try to

get into the community this year. Shake some trees. It listen, you got a product, you got a story,

you have something that you think that relates to the the tennis playing audience. Give us a call,

give us an email. Let's get you involved. And the question there is, can we get into everybody's

inbox? What do you wish you could do? But you either don't have the time for bandwidth, staff,

whatever it is. If there's something you wish you could accomplish, write it in an email and send

it to me or Bob. Are emails or in the show notes every time? We know we can do good for not just the

Atlanta community. What we also realized is everybody in the country, we have the ability to expand

there as well. And before we forget, I want to make sure we thank our original 2024 podcast sponsor

of Signature Tennis Courts because they are the ones that have helped us make it through the end

of the year. There were always in the market. If you, the listener, again, watch her. Anybody

interested in sponsoring the podcast or a series of episodes? Let us know. There's always that.

But Bobby, what are we forgetting? We know we've got our premium membership, which is cheap. It's

less than $50 a year. You get extra benefits, extra discounts, all that kind of stuff. We just started

the Gotennis Foundation. We now have the 501C3, which is a separate side of things. We're going to

get out there and do more. Are we forgetting anything? Well, I want to let's just jump on.

Say thanks to the sponsors. Mike Invernone. Signature Tennis is owned by Mike Invernone. They are the

number one tennis facility building tennis facility repair in the area. Amazing. I've had a 20 plus

year relationship with Mike that started at White columns that continues at Windomir. He built the

courts for the Atlanta Open. Unbelievable customer service. Great guy. What more can we say? We

must be doing something right that somebody who's this established in Atlanta that wants to do business

about same thing with T2 tennis. You said Joel Valentine, unbelievably successful, the most successful

flexible play tennis league in the country. Amazing product that he's just 20 years at least again.

How long ago it started with willing to listen to us and say, hey, okay, you know, high school league is

a good idea. You know, how can we help facilitate that? So, you know, these are the guys Cadillac

was that our fall festival Cadillac has a long history. The US Open sponsors. They have been involved

with the Atlanta tennis open. You know, the marketing rep is a personal friend of mine. These are

people that want to be involved in tennis and want to make everybody's life better through activity.

So we're very fortunate to have these guys in our corner and we're trying to connect the dots.

The more people we hear from, the more helps us figure out and simplify what we're trying to do

for ourselves and for the community. So it's like we said, it's a lot of fun,

but there's still a lot more we want to do. And we hear it's a New York. We're asking for help.

You know, help us review us. He what we're doing. If you like what we're doing, give us a ring. How

do you get involved? How can we get involved more? How can we help you accomplish us accomplish

some things together? Can't say it better myself, Bobby. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to everybody out there. Thanks so much.

Well, there you have it. We want to thank reGeovinate.com for use of the studio and signature tennis

for their support. And be sure to hit that follow button. For more racket sports content, you can go

to LetsGoTennis.com. And while you're there, check out our calendar of events, great deals on

racket sports products, apparel, and more. If you're a coach, director of any racket sports,

or just someone who wants to utilize our online shop, contact us about setting up your own shop

collection to offer your branded merchandise to the racket sports world. And with that, we're out. See you next time.

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