All right, welcome back to the Buying Sandlot Podcast. I'm Kyle Scott, Founder of Buying Sandlot. On today's episode I speak with Adam Geisler, the co founder and CEO of Youth Athletes United, the company behind rec level youth sports brands like Soccer Stars, Amazing Athletes, TGA and more. Youth Athletes United is building a different model for youth sports through franchising and hundreds of mobile and community based locations across the US serving over 1 million kids annually. Through franchising partnerships and a portfolio of age appropriate programs, YAU aims to deliver consistent, high quality sports and enrichment experiences at scale. In our conversation we talk about the big opportunity in professionalizing rec experiences, why quality coaching resources matter, why franchising is the right opportunity for many looking to be involved at the local level of youth sports and the sports Youth Athletes United will look to expand into. Now before we get to it, I want to take a second to plug our buying Sandlot Summit 2026, a two day youth sports business conference which we'll hold in Philly next April 14th and 15th. The event is designed to bring together youth sports owners, operators and investors from across the country. This will be a high end event taking place at the amazing Chess Cafe which is a high end caterer in Philly, back in backed Switch House event center and hotel for the business end of our conference and the amazing Ballers located in the same building which is a sports and social club complete with turf fields, pickleball and padel courts and high end golf simulators. Like I'm talking the type with the undulating tee boxes that will serve as our evening entertainment. Two amazing venues in one location. Head on over to buying sandlot.com for tickets. Early Bird tickets are now available. We've already sold out of our early bird VIP allotment, but we still have limited availability of regularly priced VIP tickets as of this recording in early December. That includes access to the on site four star hotel rooms at Switch House where the event will be held and other benefits like access to a private room for VIPs, speakers and sponsors and a VIP breakfast on day two. These packages are more popular than we anticipated. With only 45 hotel rooms on site. The VIP packages are going fast, so if you want those packages and you want to stay at the hotel on site, make sure to grab those Regular Early Bird tickets do remain. They will be available into January. They are priced at 599 but the price will go up to 799 at some point early next year and those include access to the entire event and a nearby hotel Room block with complimentary transportation just a couple of miles away to and from the venue for both packages. All attendees, all meals are included, including lunch both days, happy hour and dinner on day one, breakfast on day two, and snacks throughout. Head on over to buyingsandlot.com to get your tickets. Now onto the interview with Adam. All right, Adam, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us, Kyle.

So we've, I guess. We were connected in New York a week or two ago now at the Jefferies event, and I think I was supposed to moderate a panel you were on at the John Wall street event a little over a month ago now and at a family thing and couldn't make it at the last minute. So I'm glad we're finally getting to do this. I know we've been playing a little bit of email tag for a couple of weeks, too.

Yeah, yeah. And listen, I just want to thank you as well. I do think what you're doing in the industry and what buying sandlot is giving for executives like myself and just people in history, just really giving some insight to all the wonderful things happening and so really appreciate you putting the time in getting people like myself to tell a story, but others tell a story. I want to be able to give back. But I also learn a ton from your podcast. I really appreciate everything you guys are doing now.

It's great to hear. And you know, listen, I. We're getting good traction, but I always tell people like no one was really covering the day by day. It's, it's, it's just, we just. There was a clear need and hopefully, hopefully we're serving that. And I think interviews like this and learning from people like you, it goes a long way in that. So to that end, why don't you give a little bit of your background now you come from the boxing space, right? The ring space. And now you oversee youth athletes United. So talk about your background, what your company is and what all your brands are.

Yeah. So, you know, I've been very fortunate in life as it relates to my business background. I've been in the sports side of business for the Greater part of 25 years. And I always like to joke I'm probably the best C athlete in the room most the majority of the time. But I first started out, my first job out of college was I was hired as Everlast, the boxing brand's marketing director, as the first marketing director at their 90 year history at the time. And what a wonderful opportunity to just get into the sports side of business and just in such an entrepreneurial culture of what boxing is, no governing bodies, everybody can be a promoter, everybody can be in the business. And to be on the hard good side of it, it was exciting and fun and I get to work with some of the greatest athletes in the world as boxers. And then from there I joined a founder, Josh Shaw at Mission. And I wanted to kind of partner with somebody who was starting something from really almost zero and just learn what that meant. Not having a brand and building a brand and you know, having kind of all those challenges with, with early stage growth. We did a wonderful job together. That business really, really grew pretty fast over five years. And then I joined Authentic Brands Group where I met one of our co founders, John Erlanson and I. And that was probably the largest company that I'd ever been involved in. Now I think they're the second largest licensing company in the world. Just bought Champion. They own Reebok. I was running their sporting division at the time. My other partner was the chief revenue officer in John. And it was just such a great learning experience of what really brings us into what we're doing now of just licensing and understanding IP and how to take these great brands and really maximize them. And it led us to a really fortuitous opportunity. I say us as myself and three other founding partners to acquire and build Youth Athletes United. And so essentially we had the opportunity almost eight years ago to buy two amazing founder led brands and soccer stars and amazing athletes, put them together with this vision of every kid's an athlete and they have fun while learning the fundamentals of sport. I mean that was our thesis at the very, very beginning. We brought in a family office as well to help us finance the transaction. And we knew very little about the kids space, very little about sports, but we knew if we could professionalize a very mom and pop industry, fragmented industry, put these things together, we thought that there was going to be a real impact on kids, getting them active and really just changing that whole experience of both the parent and the child. And you know, it's been, it's been a wonderful journey, which we'll talk about here in a few minutes.

Yeah. So, all right, given give an overview of what each of the brands is and then I do want to get into that consolidation and professionalizing aspect of rec, which is a huge trend and opportunity in the space as I think you and many other people know.

Yeah. So the biggest thing is we like to call ourselves an educational sports franchise. And so I'm going to ask you a quick question, Kyle. Think back to what was your. Can you think of like a crowning moment you had as a young athlete? Right. Something that just, you think back to and like this was just such a great achievement for me in sports. Can you think of one offhand?

Yeah, at different ages too. I got a fourth grade baseball championship, a game tying and winning goal in high school hockey and men's league baseball. So it spans each decade.

And you think about those moments and what it felt like to unleash that inter athlete. Like for me, like, you know, it probably speaks a lot about my athletic career, but mine was in eighth grade and I remember against Bowie and sitting in front of coach King getting fouled with five seconds left and I had to make the two game winning free throws. And I looked at my coach, my team, and said, coach, I got it right. And like that was that crowning achievement. And so we want every kid that goes through our educational sport programs to have that feeling, right? We want all. Every kid is an athlete. And so everything we do is curriculum based to give them those fundamentals so they have that physical literacy and that excitement and that ability to be proficient in whatever sport they choose. And so we've got three brands, we've got soccer stars. The reason we love Soccer stars because it is the gateway sport, the first sport experience that you have. So a kid can walk, we can run a class, right? So that's the entryway into youth Athletes United. Then we've got amazing athletes, which is our multi sport curriculum. Think about it as a PE program or predominantly in the childcare space so kids are getting to touch and feel and really experience all those early sports with 10 different sports. So from golf, from lacrosse to hockey to soccer to baseball, so they're learning all those different experiences. So by the time they get to about five, six years old, we want kids to really say, this is something I want to do. So we're in the unintentional play space. We want them to have an intentional decision by age 6 and that's where they can come back into soccer. Or they go to one of our other brands, tga, which is tennis, golf and pickleball. And so that's just an important part for us is we want to be at the foundational pyramid before specialization really starts. And we want parents to be parents, right? Parents don't need to be coaches. They can, and some are better than others. But let us be the coaches. Let us teach our children and guide them down a path where they can come back to their parent, their caretaker and Say this is something I want to do or these are a few sports that I've had good experiences that I want to try. That's our job and role in the space.

Yeah, I think now at where I'm at, I, I've coached probably every age between three and nine at this point, not beyond, but I'm, you know, I'll get there soon. And I find just talking to other dads and, and parents, I find that Those ages like 3 to 6 are a lot tougher than when the kids are older. Because when they're older they're there to play sports and they're receptive to your coaching the older they get usually. But at that young age, I think for the average volunteer parent coach, it's really difficult to understand what is age appropriate for the kids. So is that, is that the primary reason why like, you know, this professional wreck at that age is so important? Is that how you guys see it?

Yeah, that's a really good analogy. And we're really close with the group at rush. We actually formed a partnership with them because of this exact thing that you're talking about. They're great coaches and they have amazing coaches. But call it at U5 and above, that's where they're really good at taking kid who's ready to start becoming specialized. But put them with a four year old, a three year old, a two year old and they fall apart. They don't know what to do. We actually don't want soccer coaches as much for those ages. We actually want people who are enrichment experts, people who have good energy and can connect with children. We can teach them how to coach soccer at that age. And so everything is very age and stage appropriate. The curriculum between two and a half, two to two and a half is different than two and a half to three. And so we have these ages and stages and almost this Montessori approach. But yes, 100% it's building those, those building blocks, those foundations for the kids. And it's also storytelling. Kids don't, they go to school to learn. When they get into sports, they don't want to be coached. They don't want to feel like they're learning. They want to have fun. You know, the cones are carrots and the balls are spaceships and having all these fun themes and imagine to play, to teach them all these fundamentals without them realizing that they're even doing it. That's the space that we live in.

Yeah, I guess at that age you're not, you're not teaching them bicycle Kicks and soccer.

Oh, you're not. You're not.

So I think this really touches on, I think, an opportunity that I see in our writing and chronicling the space. I see there's so much effort and dollars going towards large facilities. You know, these kind of travel and high school age tournament venues and live streaming and tech and now conversations about nil and sponsorship. All real things, all super interesting. But then I, you know, I look at the media business as like a funnel. You know, you got content, and at the bottom we have an event, and that's what we want to sell, is the event and the content all pushes towards that. I think in sports, you know, you flip it around, it's a pyramid. At the top, you have the high school and the elite athletes in the middle, that club level. But the widest part of that is, is are these younger ages between 3 and 7, whatever it is, where it's, it's recreation. Parents want their kids out of the house just getting active. They don't need to specialize. And it feels to me, maybe you'll tell me that it's not like that. The recreation side can be. There's a huge opportunity to professionalize rec like you guys are doing. And I just don't see that many places talking about this age group where you may need the professional more than you do at age 8 and 9 for all the reasons we just discussed. Is that a fair assessment on my side or am I just. Do I have blinders onto a whole side of the industry?

No, you're 100% right. And listen, we like that there aren't too many people in the space. I think there's a couple other good people in the space. But we are the foundational piece. When you go and you see SFIA reports of participation, they don't talk about the ages and stages of what we do. Right. We are at that fundamental, that fundamental pyramidal piece that you're talking about. And the good thing is, you know, why everybody focuses on call it that middle part of the pyramid is, listen, there's high unit economics. Parents pay a lot. I mean, travel businesses, your child in a travel baseball team, soccer team, you can pay 3, 4 grand per kid, right? So there's a lot of money around the services, the events, the sponsorships, the tournaments, and there's great players there. But ultimately we want to get more kids that can certainly be in that space. We want to level them up in that space. But what if they decide they don't want it? They don't want to. Where do they go? So one of the things that we've also really focused on is how do we take this platform that we have. Youth Athletes United work credentialized, right? Parents come through our business, they come through our programs and they know whether they take soccer, amazing athletes or tga, it's a trusted brand under Youth Athletes United. But what happens when they get to elementary school? And so one of the things that we really looked at and you kind of, you kind of hit on it is there is a lot of parent volunteer in the rec space, the travel space, tournaments. They got what they have going on, they're doing a great job. But it's that rec space that just still is very parent volunteer driven. So we said, how do we look at that space and be disruptive and innovative and create something that's good for the kid and for the parent? So what we said is the biggest thing is weekends, right? So parents who have a kid in rec to take a Saturday or a Sunday and go out there with a child who is still learning the sport, sometimes they don't want to do it if the child is not that committed to it. Right? So that sometimes can be a point of failure and opt out. Two is, you know, during, you know, how do we get those kids to practices, right? So then that's another commitment for a parent, for a child that is just learning their way through the sport. So what we did is we've actually created the soccer Stars school spirit league. And so what we do is we run practices as an after school club at the school so parents don't have to worry about bringing their kids to practices. The practices are happening right at school. And then we have the parents and the kids commit to two games in a season. With those games, the kids get a soccer stars jersey, Adidas logo, their school crest logo. It's non competitive co ed rec and these kids play other schools. So we have, we get a minimum of four schools involved and these kids can play their schools for the first time. They can represent their school. The kids have so much fun doing it. We do it during the week at one of the schools. So again, we're eliminating those points of failures for the parents and they're getting that first experience. So the kid that really has enjoyed being that game experience, we might continue to level them up and travel. But more than anything, we're getting kids active and we're doing something that nobody else is doing in the space of just professionalizing rep because it's coach led and not parent led. Right. That last Pain point is the parent volunteer. I have a busy job, I do a lot of things and you know, I want to be a parent to my kid, not a coach to my kid. So removing all those pain points and we will do that across soccer, we'll do it across golf, we'll do it across pickleball, we'll do it across flag football. So just finding ways where we can bring more theater and getting more kids active at that non competitive co ed rec space. We see that as a huge opportunity and just the right thing to do just in life and in business.

From a time standpoint, you sort of just touched on it. You're able to sort of piggyback on the school day to not create that point of failure for the parent. It sounds like you guys at the size and age, you're able to use, I would call underutilized sports spaces. You don't need a full soccer pitch. Talk about how that's important because it's another one of these trends we've covered where it's like, hey, there's public spaces, there's private spaces available that can't support such and such age group. But you could put up a couple of cones and a net. You can get kids active and actually monetize an existing space.

Yeah. So we say, listen, give us 1500 square feet of grass and we can run a class. Right? So we'll run it. Churches, temples, synagogues, hoas, firehouses, we just need grass. Right. And what's also interesting is the difference between a lot of what you cover is you cover destinations versus locations. So in our business we focus really heavily on locations. We have to be within 15 to 20 minutes of the parent of the kid. Right. If you have a young child, that kid has to go 25 minutes. The parent won't drive, the kid will fall asleep, they wake up, they have the bad experience for the kid, the coach and the class. Right. And so we have to find a lot of locations that are convenient for the parent, you know, so that's called 50% of our business. The other part is we just bring the content to the parent. We're actually going to preschools, elementary schools, to your point, using that underutilized space, that park, that field that just nobody else is using. Those are gold for us because we know the parents coming there. But then there are times where you've got a really good destination, you've got a facility. And the biggest thing about these facilities is, you know, you work with D1 and all these great facilities before 3 o' clock. There's not a lot happening or even 4 o'. Clock. That is our prime time. Right. We want that two to four time slot. So we actually come into a lot of those facilities. We get the young kids after school and we're able to run classes. We're also able to do parent me classes in those early mornings so we can fill some of those dead times in those facilities. But you know, again, you want really good destinations where the parent that is going in there feels that they're getting some extra added benefit because they're having to drive a bit further. But predominantly we're focused on just utilizing what you said earlier, just finding patches of grass. We don't need pitches, we don't need fields. We just need convenient locations for the parents.

Yeah, I actually think it's a huge opportunity. Not even just this age group in sports in general, there's so much of this new development, but it's like, hey, make. Make the best of the existing spaces. Improve them, utilize them, find ways. Rather than, you know, 50, $50 million, 100,000 square feet here and there. It's like a Mad Libs. You said, like parent me classes. How young will you guys go? I know we were just the Jeffries thing and I think Jordan Baltimore from Empire Baseball said they start at like 18 months and people almost fell over in their chairs. How young do you guys go?

So we've got this cute little Mimi and Pepe. We do parent. We start them at 1 years old. I mean, if they can walk and crawl, we just, we use soccer as the vehicle just to really connect with them. They understand, you know, some of those early motor skills, those fine motor skills. And we've got a few other pieces of equipment that we incorporate in class. We start them really young and we just want that experience for them and for the parents. And if we can get the parent engaged and youth athletes united, whether it starts with soccer stars or amazing athletes at those tots curriculum was like, we like to call it. It's just such a great opportunity for us to keep them in that athlete pathway for as long as we feel we can service them. And that might be through six years old, it might be through 12 years old. You know, it may be longer. But we want to, we want to keep them in our athlete pathway for as long as we feel like we're giving them a serviceable product.

You guys are a franchise, right? So I want to get into that piece before we do talk about consolidation. A lot of the talk that dominates the industry today, I think is consolidated. It's consolidating this hugely fragmented market. Big opportunity, lots of pitfalls there, though. Every time I talk to someone, they point out a different thing to watch out for. Whether it's a sport, you know, sports specific, region specific. There's always these edge cases that are difficult to deal with. So how have you consolidated several existing brands into one and then franchise out? How have you guys thought about consolidation? Why does it work for you? What have you learned along the way?

Yeah, I think what we learned is it's very easy to put consolidation on a piece of paper. Right? Seven, eight years ago we did, and we said, here's how we're going to consolidate. It took us a good four or five years to really figure it out. So one of the big things and parts of consolidation was first, how do we make sure the experience from a technology standpoint is seamless? And so we had to go through a whole build buyer, license, internal discussion with ourselves and our investors of do we go build our own tech platform? Do we buy something off the shelf and try and do it, or is there a really strong licensing program out there? SaaS program. And the reality was is there were tremendous SaaS programs. The challenge with all of them is they'd get you 70, 80% away there. And that last 20% was really important for your customers and your franchise partners. And so ultimately we had bought a couple businesses that were on tech legacy stacks. And so it was either do we go give licensing fees to somebody else and build on that platform, or. Or was there enough there, enough meat on the bone to start building on our own. So we took the long and hard and arduous road and took about five years to build our own tech stack. But it's there. So all of our brands are consolidated. One tech stack makes it very easy for the franchisees from a back office standpoint, then from a consumer standpoint, it's the same consumer experience no matter where you go, which brand it is. That was a big part of consolidation. And then the other part, I want.

To double click on that for a second. I've talked to a lot of operators across the board and they're always struggling with this. Most don't have the scale or the capital to build their own tech stack. What did that investment look like? How painful was it? And to me, the one thing I've always found nice about SaaS is they handle the updates. If there's a problem, they deal with it. You're on a big platform that removes that pain point. Have you Run into any instances there where you're like, shoot, there's a bug or we need to update to integrate with this. And now we gotta create a separate project. How much of the ongoing maintenance is that to kind of run your own tech stack?

It's a lot. I mean, listen, we've plowed, called 4 to 5 million dollars of investment to go and do this. And we did it slow and steady and sometimes the tech investment can feel like a never ending black hole, like it never stops, right? But you do start to get to a steady state where your maintenance of it becomes less and less and less capital intensive. If you asked one of our founding partners, Carmen, he'd be the worst for the weary. It was a lot just to merge databases and kind of get to that steady state. And there's a lot of lot that happened in the background. And yes, you ask our franchisees and they will tell you we are not perfect when it comes to tech, right? We will launch really good new features and something will break you gotta fix. Like there's always that part of tech. But the biggest thing is that when they come to us and they say, listen, I have this, this need or this desire in the business. We have a tech investment committee. Our franchisees kind of tell us these are the big things, that they're important to them. We are kind of like the division casting of things that we know can be important to them. We work together but they get access to us, right. If they have a ticket that goes in, they know it can get solved within 24 hours or it's two weeks depending on the workflow, if we have a feature set because something new has changed. So we've created this new School Spirit league and we need some new features within our system for registration franchisees. We can do it. So that control to continue to invest the way we want to is phenomenal. Yes, it would be great to have a SaaS platform for our industry. There's not enough of us as players for there to be called a mind, body, soul or league apps or on Team Snap. There just isn't enough for those groups. And so you found a few of the big players like ourselves, 99 soccer shots like we've all kind of found our own ways through our tech stack.

Talk about that consolidation piece. Beyond the tech, what's the same across your brands? What's unique to the brands individually? And then I'll get into the franchise side.

So on Amazing Athlete sockets and tga, they all service the same consumer, right? So that consumer base, sometimes the Ages. There's a gap in ages, but they're all servicing the same consumer. And so you could say, are they competitive to each other or are they accretive to each other? On paper, we always said they were creative, and that's really what started to play it out. Four to five years. That's four to five years. The biggest thing that we're really proud of is if you look at somebody can own soccer stars and amazing athletes and tga, that we always said was on paper a really good idea. Now that we have a consolidated tech stack where they can doesn't matter what brand they have, very easy for them to set up their business. Two is for them to be able to go into customers. So B2B to sell to a, a Lightbridge or a Primrose or a Kindercare to sell into those places and know they can sell soccer stars in one day, amazing athletes on the second day, and even tga, a tennis or golf class on the third day. That's what's really starting to come together and is really exciting. And to see 20% of our ownership base own multiple brands in any franchisor and again, not too many franchiseors come on here. But in franchising, that is really hard to do because there's usually such differences between the businesses. We found enough commonalities and opportunity where both brands can win within a franchise owner. It gives them more opportunities to go and service the customer. And then ultimately, you know, they're running a soccer class on a Tuesday and they're running amazing athletes class on the weekend, or TJ golf class. They can service up an offer to that customer right on the Tuesday, say, hey, you've taken this Tuesday class. Come join us for these weekend classes. And so being able to cross market across that database with a tech stack, unified marketing, and just a similar consumer base, it sounded great on paper. It took us probably five years to start to really see it come to fruition, and now it's really accelerating. And that's what's been very exciting about the consolidation. And so we've bought, you know, these three brands we've bought called 11 small brands that we've tucked under and so converted into soccer or amazing athletes, even tga. So we've got this platform that's working from, from a consolidation standpoint, and it's got a really nice M and a roadmap for things that we can add on to the existing franchisees or even bring in a new brand, a new sport, a new modality that fits into our platform. So that's really exciting to be there after call it seven, eight years of really building the foundation.

Were they all franchise brands when you acquired them?

Everything's been franchise brands since we acquired. And some things we've started organic within our business. So like that whole School Spirit league that we came up with, that is actually one of our franchisees. So one of the, I think the rare things that we do just as a culture, as a business, we actually really encourage entrepreneurship. So one of our franchisees actually created that School Spirit. They came to us and said, I used to actually do this when I went to school in the uk. Why don't we have it over here? So well, let's build it together. And he built it. And again, when the franchisees go and build something, there's a lot more adoption from the franchisee to franchisee of saying, well if he's going to do it, you know, he's in the weeds. He's doing, doing it versus corporate. Listen, we always have really good ideas, right? We don't always have to operate them and execute them. So they want to hear from each other. We've had that a few times over. We've had franchisees actually develop new programs that weren't necessarily franchise but worked well in our franchise system.

The ability to operate multiple brands is really interesting. I guess there's not a lot of additional fixed cost. Right. I mean they're pretty asset light businesses beyond the franchise costs and some of the apparel, like it's easy. To your point, it's easy for somebody on a Monday to be the amazing athletes, guy or girl. On Tuesday to be the soccer stars.

Guy or girl, 100%. And to your point, you know, when you start to get really good, you have coaches that can coach multiples of those classes, right. They throw on the different uniform. All of our curriculum is digitized, very easy to follow. So they can learn all three businesses. So that one coach might be able to do two or three different modalities, which is great. To your point, your biggest expense, you have to have an additional bag of equipment, right? So that's, that's the biggest expense. Not that big a deal. So because we're in a mobile business and we didn't talk about earlier, that is one of the most unique things about us. We have no fixed assets, no long term leases. Everything we do is either rentals, revenue shares or permitted, permitted space. So we're this really flexible mobile business model that allows the franchisees to be everywhere to service their community.

Yeah, I'm beginning now to kind of put two and two together as to why as you stay at this age, because as it gets older, some of those things you just described get harder. It gets harder for a coach to coach two different sports at age 10 compared to age 3. You have more equipment, you need different, more specialized fields and things like that. So I could see, you know, I'm sure that's one of many reasons, but I could begin to see that as you're talking through it. How much time do you guys at the corporate level spend on kind of marketing the brands and the product versus, you know, selling. You're in the business selling franchise. Like how do you sort of split your time to. To make sure Soccer Stars continues to be a well known, well respected brand with good programs, but at the same time growing your footprint? And then how do you sell, how do you sell a franchise? I imagine it's by zip code or region or county or something like that.

Yep. So it's a really good question. And so the reality is you have to spend more time on your existing business. The better you do, the more franchise you sell. And the reason being one of the things that we love about franchising, it is fully transparent. Everybody has an ftd, a franchise disclosure agreement, a lot of good franchisors, and the majority of them do it. They'll have an item 19. They have their full P and L and financials. You can see exactly what other people are doing, how much they're making, what their expenses are, what their profits are. And so that's such a wonderful thing to be able to go into that business and know everything, know you're buying a playbook and see what the revenue and opportunities are. And so having that full transparency means you also need. You also franchisees have to validate very, very well for you. So if franchisees aren't happy in your system, you will never sell another franchise. Right. So you've got to focus on how franchisees continue to grow. I think areas that we really lean in with our franchisees are giving them a lot of opportunities in terms of channels of growth. Right. You never want to have all your eggs in one basket. So we focus on preschool, we focus on parks and rec, we focus on elementary schools. We always say, you know, we are this content machine. So anywhere we can run classes, think about all the places that parents are. Sometimes we run them at bars and have some really, really great classes where parents are sitting there and, you know, they're sipping, drinking, relaxing while the kids are doing classes. Right. If that's a way that we can provide impact. Phenomenal.

And so, by the way, great example what I was saying earlier, you know, you have so many of these facilities are now adding food and beverage options. But you know, at this younger age, you're like, hey, we have a place that has food and beverage. Let's just have the kids play here.

Kids play here. And so just finding all those wonderful opportunities where we can provide the content is big for us. And so, you know, we spend our time helping them sell, helping them grow, helping them on programming. When it comes to marketing, it's really a very local marketing business. So it runs very traditional. You know, if you're going to actually sell, you're knocking on doors and meeting with directors and making those personal relationships. When you're running a public class in a park, it's lawn signs, it's flyers, it's Facebook groups. It's really grassroots and word of mouth. Remember, you have to be within 15 minutes of consumer so you could be the best digital marketing expert in the world. You're so geotargeted in your area, you can only spend so much to acquire new customers. So it has a really low CAC and a really easy entry point for the franchisees. And so we spend a lot of time helping them become really good easy marketers. Because very few of your franchisees are good marketers, just not in their nature. Right. You're lucky if you get a good one. So you have to make marketing easy for them so that all that validation, all that good success and everybody doing this is a passion play of truly want to possibly impact their community through sports that helps sell more franchises. In terms of selling a new franchise, there's a few different ways that franchisors can do it. We started and primarily used a franchise sales organization in particular franchise fast lane. They represent a big broker network who represents a lot of entrepreneurs that decide this is their first experience first into franchising. And so they guide them the path. And if somebody says, listen, I'm interested in pets, kids and maybe home services, that tends to be the three that come together. We tend to win when it comes to the kids side, the enrichment side, we just got really good unit economics, good territories, good management team and just a really strong passion play. We get a lot of those people in there. And so that's how we sell a franchise. Franchise fees around 49,500. The franchisee gets a territory of 4,000 population. So we try to make sure that it's got really good zip codes with what we Call qualified locations areas where they have high enrollment in preschools, elementary schools. If it's tga, they've got public golf courses or private golf courses in the area. So we try to give them a really good territory range so they can be very profitable in their territory and they're protected by the territory. And so some franchisees will buy 1, 2 or 3 units. So they've got, you know, 800,000, 1.2 million population. Or they'll go narrow and deep and they'll say listen, I want soccer amazing athletes in TGA just in one, my one territory. And I just want it consolidate and own everything just in my one territory.

In addition to like this marketing playbook that you speak of, do you guys. The curriculum for the product itself, how structured is that? How much freedom does the individual franchisee have sort of to meet the kids where they are in that area?

I think like any good franchisor, you want everything to be consistent in the same. Right. So we strive for that and we've got really strong digitized curriculum. It's been built over 20 years across all three of the founder led brands that we acquired. And so that's really important. But you always want somebody to be able to give, call it their local market flavor and so you want that coach to be able to have their personality and put their things into it. So you want kind of that 8020 rule, you want that consistency but you want to have enough flexibility where they can do some things that make it fun or just based on environment or the weather. Just the kids temperament, you know, they can kind of shift some things around. But for the most part the biggest thing is just having those building blocks and knowing when to move kids in into more progressive movements so they can learn on time.

So, so where do you guys. And you were, you were very, you were very busy at the, at the Jeffries conference. You're. Lots of people wanted to talk to you, which I take that as a, as a sign. Business is good. Where do you guys, what do you see on your growth path besides selling more of the existing brands? You talked about it earlier. Maybe bringing in some other brands or starting other brands. Do you stay in sports? There's a natural sort of evolution to enrichment. It's maybe not just straight sports at that age. How do you guys think about that piece of it?

Yeah. So what I think is interesting from us as a group, as a management team, we were acquisition entrepreneurs. Right. We don't talk about it too much in kind of our space, but it's been really unique that we were able to take these amazing founder led brands and really take them from good to great. Right. We bought professionalization services and marketing and technology and all these things that those as on an individual basis they just didn't have enough resource to do. So that's given us this great platform for us. You know we are in a sale process. I think we've talked about it. We are bringing in a new investment partner. We've been family office back. They've been an amazing partner for us really. Source of use of capital for us is looking for additional verticals to put in. You know we love, you know we love lacrosse, we love basketball, we love a lot of those different verticals where we can see those being standalones and standalone franchises for us. So those are really exciting. And right now we actually integrate a lot of sports and Steam. We try to find that correlation where we are really strong within sports and adding that educational piece versus just throwing it on and how do those things have the connectivity? Because we want kids learning in an active environment. And so if we can give parents and kids that opportunity to. They're getting a really strong educational sport program and they can get a Steam component as well. That's kind of what we're evolving to. Whether they ultimately come the same size, who knows. I mean right now we're just having so much fun doing what we're doing. We do what's right for the franchisees. They really help guide us. As long as they're feeling really good about it, we want them to be partnered in whatever that next brand or for vertical is that we put on. Because if 20% of our franchisees or 30% of franchisees aren't buying into our next concept, maybe it isn't the right concept for us as Youth Athletics United. Right. So we really want them bought in. But that's kind of, that's the vision of where we're really looking for additional capital for growth. And there's some amazing partners out there that hopefully by the time we get to to your conference we'll be able to talk about it a little bit more.

Awesome. Do you guys think about building a brand versus versus acquiring? You know, given that like the sports specialization is more thin at that age, can you take the playbook you have and stand up a basketball brand?

So I think being, being an entrepreneur you kind of, you have to know thyself well. What we know about ourselves is we are not good at starting anything from zero Founders are amazing. The three founders of the brands that we have are amazing. None of us have the intestinal fortitude to start anything from zero, right? And so if we get into a concept, we will usually look to find somebody who's done something really well. And the biggest thing is finding that curriculum, right? Finding somebody who's really built that curriculum that aligns with what we've done. And they've had, call it that, 10, 15 plus years of building something really good. If we put into our system, you know, use what we do in terms of how we make these brands, take these brands from good to great, that's probably the path that we would take more often than not if it's not going to be a standalone. Like martial arts is one where we love martial arts for our business, but it just didn't feel big enough where it could be a standalone. And so we actually built that one we called De Novo from the ground up with a franchisee. They helped us build it, they helped us co edit the co author of the curriculum together and then we slowly built that into our system. So if it's a standalone, most likely we'd go find a really great founder who's done some good heavy lifting work and hopefully we can be the unlock to take it to the next level.

Do you guys see any interest from the pro leagues or governing bodies in terms of like being involved at that age even with the curriculum? We've written a bit about how, you know, both of those want to get a bit more involved with standardized, you know, progress for, for athletes from a young age or is that just too young where you guys are at for them to like really care that much?

We've done it. I still think we've got some more pioneering to do and partnering with the leagues. I think MLS we've definitely spent some time, time trying to figure out they created a tremendous product in MLS Go. I think they're doing a really, really good job with that. But there's still a foundational piece under MLS Go where we think we can add some real value. And as great as MLS is, you know, there's a lot of complexities because teams can do it on their own, not do it on their own. And so you just deal with a lot of just challenges in how you do it at scale. I think one of the brands that does it pretty well, rcx, I think from, you know, NFL Flag and NBA Junior League, I think they do a really good job in that space. But again, it still ends up a lot more in the parent volunteer space where there's, it's not coach Led. And so how do we partner with some of those groups? Whether it's the leagues or the groups that have already kind of established the rec pieces, that's probably a bit more of our focus and what we're good at. But listen, we do believe there is some really good partnerships with those teams. But again, go back to what we talked about earlier. We need to be locations, not destinations. Sometimes you want to partner, you know, the Brooklyn Nets. Well, parents have to go all the way over to the Brooklyn Nets when it might be much easier to have that class that's 15 minutes away from their apartment. And so those are times where it just does. It doesn't always meet the needs of what we're trying to provide. But there's definitely some really fun things. And what we do believe is that we can build fans and players. Right. Even if we're getting kids involved early, in an early age and you know, we partner with Gotham, right. And we see Gotham here at one point in time, we can just do more things where we're teaching kids how to do players and fans. We just win in life, right. We just get, get kids involved at these wonderful sports at an earlier age.

You guys are, you guys are the leading, leading edge of sports development in many ways. Maybe a good segue into what are some of the trends you're seeing in youth sports? And I mean there's a number of topics here. Let's just say participation in sport interest, boys versus girls. What are some things that you feel you're bullish about within the brands that you have and then maybe about the, in the verticals you'd like to eventually get to.

Yeah, I think girls sports is having a great moment and I think there's two things driving it. One is girls volleyball, which has been around for a long time. I know that you've talked about Love B and a few of the other things have been out there. It's just, it's wonderful to see, even as a parent of a 12 year old to see girls volleyball. It just, it's such a great team sport and first sport and something that a lot of the girls tend to own. And then the other surprising one is football, flag football. Girls flag football is one of the fastest growing participation sports. I think it's wonderful. We think it's wonderful. You know, we want to be a part of that as well. And just watching that rise. Those two things are just really exciting to see. One, one newer and one kind of been around for a long, just having its moment and then, you know, what we also see is just this great opportunity for pickleball. Why we love pickleball is it just. It's so reminiscent of. Of the early days of what soccer stars and super soccer stars was just getting kids active in a fun game and maybe it's their starter sport and it leads them into tennis. Maybe it's just that sport that foundationally it's just fun and engaging and it's one of those few sports that's really easy to do parent child. And so we see such good opportunities with that. And it will have its moment where it'll start to get into those middle schools and high schools. So if we can be at those early stage and create those, you know, junior pickleball leagues and really get kids into it and just have another space where if I enjoy sports but I am not the most athletic or there's other. There's other people doing other sports that I can't compete in. Just giving kids more optionality to stay active and do something that's theirs and that they own. We love and I think pickleball gives us a big entry point into that space.

I love that because you don't. I. We don't see much talk about youth pickleball. I mean, I think the average person thinks of pickleball. They think of, you know, the older generation playing. Cause it's relatively easy to pick up and play. You could do a low cardio version. But I guess for all those reasons it's really appealing to really young kids. Much the same way soccer is where it's relatively easy, not a super complex skill set. So that's a. That's a great one to key on. Do you see. Do you see development pivotal beyond that age? Like you think it will trickle into the wreck and the. In the middle school and the high schools.

Oh, it's happening already. I mean not. Not at scale. I mean, I think if you talked about just we were talking about earlier, flag football will be that trend first. Like we'll see more of those. Those teams. I think pickleball just purely based on just numbers and spaces. It'll take a little bit further to get there. You know you want it for whatever reason. Everybody loves the credentialization of it becoming an Olympic sport. It seems to trickle all the way down when it does. But I think pickleball is good. And then you think about. It's just anybody can hit a of piece pickleball, right? Tennis racket, having that swing and being able to really control it and having really some volleys. It's hard to do at a younger age with pickleball. You can get in there really easy and start to get gameplay really almost on your second class. And so that's why we enjoy and anything where we can create some theater around it, the winning, the fun, those early development motor skills, that's something that works well under Youth Athletes United and think something that we can be very disruptive and just scale and have a big impact on the kids in the community.

Do you see things? I mean, how do you guys, you have a big soccer brand. How do you think about the World cup nudging that along middle to second half of the upcoming year and then you got the Olympics in a couple of years here. Maybe some of those are covered by amazing athletes. But do you think about some of those Olympic sports that young kids can do, like just track and field as, as great tailwinds, phenomenal.

And the really exciting thing is they have a long lasting impact. Right. So the stats from I think the early 90s, when the World cup was here, or late 90s, excuse me, it was, I think it was about 30 to 40% pickup in soccer participation just across the board from adult all the way down. So I don't know that you'll see that at our young ages that much of an increase in participation. But there's no question parents who had never experienced, you know, World cup games are all going to say, well, yes, I want to put my child in a soccer class. Right. That is going to have a really nice effect for all of us just from participation standpoint. Impact standpoint, same thing going to Olympics. It always happens where media drives participation. And the first thing you want to do is you want to see your younger child get involved in those sports earlier. So we see those having really good impacts. Again, if it's 5%, it's 30% growth and impact is all we care about. Today we're impacting maybe 400,000, a little over 400,000 kids through our system. We want to impact a million kids through Youth Athletics United. Right. Positively impact a million kids through sports in their community. And that's what our focus is. So this is going to be a really good launch pad into that.

What about on the business side of things? I mean, you're involved in capital conversations in both directions. What are some of the trends, besides the obvious that you're seeing on the business side and where do you think this goes next? I mean, there's so much interest in the space right now. It's hot. I wouldn't Call it a bubble. It's booming. At some point things get bubblish. But like there's a ton of interest. What are you seeing and what are you keeping an eye out?

So, you know, again, there's that separation between us and sports specialization, you know, on our side. I think the more that we can do and kind of professionalize concepts with us and a few of the other good people that are in our space, the better we do for everybody. So we're, we're just trying to be great in what we do because it's hard, it's a lot of work. We're really good at it. And so it keeps a lot of people focused on kind of this other piece while we're really building that foundation piece. I think on the sports specializations, on the sport specialization side, like I love seeing concepts like shoot360 where you're seeing kids get who are probably more me right. That I can relate to. It's the C plus, B minus B athletes get that early stage sports specialization to compete. And by the way, it does help make great greater right. The B pluses and A's. Just watching them. I mean I'm watching, you know, a couple of my nephews go through that sports specialization in basketball and baseball and there's so much of it happening. So I think finding more people that can give good coaching experience, where kids learn those fundamentals early, I think is great for the business. You know, the tournaments and the travel components, all this stuff, it's much bigger than what we touch. We really like to see the impact of the individual child and what we can do. And I love seeing more of what Toca is doing. Shoot360 I think those concepts, finding a few more of those, as long as the unit economics can hold, I think that's where we're going to see a lot more growth in that sports specialization because kids need it and want it and the demands are much bigger for you to be an athlete in today's age. Even though sports specialization we want to happen at 6, your ability to play multiple sports unless you're a great athlete is harder and harder. And even when you're great, your coaches tend to push down on you early. Of listen, you know, there's a negotiation going on between the basketball and football coach of I don't know if I want him playing football because I need him playing basketball or I don't want to think about basketball because I need him next year for football. Football. And so there's so much more pressure on the kid. Today and if all those things lead to how do we, how can we come in and also do what we were doing at the school spirit league and give more kids who just want to stay active and have fun and just enjoy them of play. If we can be in that kind of professional led, coach led rec space where we can really focus on enjoying and play. And just a lot of kids, you know, if they're, if they chose basketball but they really love soccer and there's nothing else from new soccer but they can do co ed soccer, non competitive soccer with their friends and their buddies and they can do it in a way that's still fun and still get to do that. We want these kids to enjoy it. Right. And so that's, we really focus on that fun piece and I think that that's our spot.

Last one. I always like to ask people who, come on, who are some other people, companies, brands you admire in the space? They can be competitors, they don't have to be. I like to spread the love here.

Yeah, I think there's some real wonderful people in the space. I do think from the highest level, I think both what league apps and Team Snap are doing, I think their leadership teams are amazing. I love them all. Between Brian, Peter and I just think they're really leading, they're leading the space in terms of not just focusing on a transactional environment but that whole parent ecosystem. How do we make it easier for parents and kids to enroll and even some of the things that the league apps guys are doing on fun play and just giving more accessibility to those who can't. I think that I admire so much and I just, you know, in this space we all see it and I love a lot of the CEOs are seeing it as well is we want to be able to find ways that we can provide for the kids who can't. Right. The haves and have nots and really serving those underserved communities. There's some amazing, amazing people doing it. So I love seeing what those two important particular are doing. I think they're great thought leaders and visionaries in the space.

I think that's a good place to end it. Adam, why don't you plug away where can people find you and then where can they find out not only more about youth athletes but your individual brands both from a customer standpoint and maybe more applicable for the show from a franchising standpoint.

Yeah. So for me, Adam Geisler G E I S L e r@LinkedIn.com I think my LinkedIn profile is the best way to kind of find, follow me and follow a lot of what we have going on. I try to post pretty frequently to keep everybody updated, what we're doing as a business. If you want to learn more about us, go to youthathletesunited.com all of our, all of our brands are there. It's a good place to just do some research on there and listen. I'm available. Hit me up on LinkedIn. I love having conversations, love meeting founders, entrepreneurs, and between me and my partners, this is, this is what we do every day. We don't work. We're on a mission. How do we positively impact kids through sports? And so we love what we do and we want to do more of it.

Awesome. Adam, thanks so much for joining. Appreciate it.