All right, welcome back to the Buying Sandlot podcast. I am Kyle Scott, founder of Buying Sandlot. So we have a really good episode today with Vince Russomagno. He is the owner and CEO of All Star Sports Academy. All Star has seven baseball facilities around the Philly area and I grew up with some of these. They've been around for a long time. Vince took over the business in 2019 and he has plans to self fund expansion, mostly through acquisition to maybe up to 30 facilities along the mid Atlantic, northeast East coast. He talks a lot in this episode about what separates All Star from perhaps some of the newer facilities and complexes out there that are mostly in the in the tournament business. He's in the training and coaching business and All Star has trained many Major League Baseball players over the years. Vince himself is a former minor league player. So this conversation really dives deep into not just the business aspect of baseball and softball training facilities, which I know there are lots of owners and operators in that space in our audience, but also into the actual coaching of baseball. And I probably get way out over my skis and talking about the limited knowledge of baseball and training and coaching that I have, but I thought it was a really good back and forth with Vince. I want to welcome all the new listeners to Buying Sandlot. We had a lot of people come in after our last episode with David Rudolph, who is the CEO of Play On Sports, which owns the NFHS network, Go Fan and Max Preps, three of the leaders in high school streaming, ticketing and now news and information. So I would encourage you, if you haven't already, go back listen to that. It's our second episode. CEO David Rudolph of Play On. All right, before we get to the podcast, I want to take a quick second to tell you about our Buying Sandlot Premium memberships. So for those who don't know, you can go to buying sandlot.com and you could subscribe to our newsletter. It goes out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday week, Wednesday and Friday. And it's completely free and we bring you all you need to know the latest news and happenings, insights, investments, deals, opportunities in youth sports. But in addition to that, for our more serious subscribers, we've launched our Buying Sandlot Premium community. So what do Premium Community members get access to? Well, first of all, a couple times a month we will send out Deep Dive into in depth industry segment specific reports in youth sports. So for example, we did a super deep dive a couple of months ago into the impact of tariffs on the youth sports industry. We've done a deep dive into the new economics of creator backed teams and leagues and how youth sports hosts can think about monetizing in more modern ways. Coming out next week and which ties in really well to this episode. We have our facilities benchmark report. So we were able to survey almost 50 facility owners and operators in our audience in an in depth way to really understand their business. We then are able to aggregate those results and put together a benchmarking report so people in the facility space or investors or just other operators in the youth sports stack can understand where some opportunities and challenges lie. And so facility owners can stack themselves up against their peers and investors can know what to look for in in a good investment in this facility and complex boom that we're experiencing. In addition to that, Premium members get access to a private Slack group. Now this for my money over time will grow to be the largest networking group in the business of youth sports, period. And that will include operators, founders, owners and perhaps most importantly investors. So in recent months we've had no shortage of people on both sides of that coin come to us and and say hey, I have this product or service or in one case a league and I'm looking for acquisition or I'm looking for seed capital or I'm looking to take my facilities business to the next level. Any way you can put me in touch with investors? And on the other hand we've had investors come to us and say hey, we're deploying three or five million dollars into this space and would love any introductions Buying Sandlot can make to members of its community who are looking to raise capital. And we've taken some of these opportunities on a one off basis. I worked with a flag football league out of Long Island. We sent them I think a couple of dozen qualified leads to acquire their league. As another example, I'm an advisor on an AI startup looking to consolidate the experience of youth sports parents who have to download three 5, 7 apps just to exist in this world and consolidate those all into one AI backed experience. And they're looking to raise a pre seed round ahead of their beta launch this fall and and we were able to send them more than three dozen qualified investor leads. But these sort of one off opportunities don't scale for anybody. So in our buying Sandlot Premium private Slack investors, owners, operators can get together and talk about these opportunities and when people come to us that we have an investment opportunity or we have capital to deploy, that's going to go first to our premium members. So I would encourage you and then there will be other benefits. Like anyone who signs up for an annual membership, you get free advertising in a single buying sandlot newsletter. And then right now that is close to $1,000 value in and of itself and the membership is much less than that. So there's a, there's an immediate bargain there. And the other side of that is we plan to host an event next spring. More details on that coming later, but our members will be sure to get discounts on that. So if you haven't Already, go to buyingsandlot.com, subscribe to our email for free. And then after you fill out the survey, you should be prompted if you want to upgrade. That's how you can get access to all of those extra features. All right, now that that's out of the way, let's get into the interview with Vince Rusomagno, CEO and owner of All Star Sports Academy. All right, Vince, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So I don't know if you could see it. I'm wearing my Philly City Connect T shirt here today. I'm going to ask you to give some background on yourself and All Star Sports. And I think maybe our listeners will understand why I'm wearing the Philly shirt today. So why don't you introduce yourself and All Star Sports Academy.

Wonderful. I'm Vince Russomagno. Thanks for having me, Kyle. I'm a North Jersey native to begin with, went to school up there and played ball up there. My journey took me through school and played ball in college as well, and then played briefly for the St. Louis Cardinals and their organization. I left after one year because I had some very exciting alternatives in the business world and that was my education. So I've been self employed since I've been 23 years old and I was fortunate enough to have a good team and build two large organic healthcare businesses that were national in the US and they were both nine figures with complete US Coverage and I was fortunate enough to sell them both. Since then I've been in private equity in my own family office and I've known the young people here at Allstar for about 15 years back when my son took some lessons. I helped them out for, I would say right up till now before I took it over and just consulted to them on how to run the business, how to scale it a little bit, how to codify it more. And they were great people and you could tell they were teachers and they cared about the kids and that meant a lot to me. And the reason it Meant a lot is because of all the sports that I played in school, and I was pretty decorated in high school for soccer, basketball and baseball. None of those sports really helped me as much as baseball did after school. And I loved the other sports as well. But when it came to relationships, business, the lessons that you get from baseball and failure and how to come through it and the discipline that it takes and the repetition, really forge some metal for you as you go forward. So knowing that these guys were so committed to that, I always had an affinity to help them. And then at this later stage in life, when my other businesses were sold and the family office is interesting and my daughter took it over, I said, you know, this could be a great opportunity to give back to something that really made me who I am. And so I was able to work out with the leaders here a situation where I took it over just before COVID And since then, we've been on our journey to build this into something much bigger.

Tell the audience a little bit about kind of the background of All Star itself. You know, it's Philly centric for now. I was aware of it, you know, growing up playing, took lessons, still have used some of the facilities. So give an overview of kind of where it's been, where it is now, and then we can get into where you're sure.

Well, as I said, the gentlemen here have been great. They've been in it for 28 years, I believe now. And I think it started in Downingtown and Westchester and Broomall, if I'm not mistaken. And when I got to know them at the beginning, I helped them bring it all together as one business. There were some different ownership and certainly running it differently. And so we bought it all together. It was always Philly guys and Philly centric. And then as time went on, you know, opened another, opened another. I think they got themselves to four or five of them before I got more deeply involved. Again, as I said earlier, they're so committed to the player development, which is what really attracted me, because in the sports of baseball and softball, as you know, it's an individual sport, actually. It's just nine players being forced to play, play together. So you're always on stage, whether you're catching, throwing, hitting, or receiving. Right. Pitching. So that's really what the journey's been. A lot of the individuals that were leaders here back then are still here today, which I'm happy and proud of, and they've assimilated well. So that's where it came from.

So you have said recently That I think you're correct me if I'm wrong, you're at seven facilities currently in the all of the Philly area. And I think you gave an interview to the Philly Business Journal a couple of months ago, said you, you plan to go to 30 and you guys are self funding it. So talk about the what and the why behind that and why the rapid, you know, you're forexing basically a plans to forex.

Sure. Well, you know, first of all, I believe that we have the knowledge on how to do it. That's very important. Right. So in the past businesses, at one point I had 2,000 locations across the country. So scaling to that level, I've been there, kind of done that. And it was a much more complex business. When you're in healthcare. The reason that we're thinking about southern Long island down to northern Baltimore as the territory that we want to be in is we know that it's very important when you're in a business that revolves around service and people that you keep control over the scale. And what that means to me is we have to be able to get to these facilities as management within a few hours if things are necessary. And when you're in a people business, and we tell our group here all the time, we might be in the baseball softball business, but that's actually a tool that we're using to forge better individuals. We're in the people business. So that means we have to have the right people on the team that believe in what we're doing and have the same mission. The reason for the 30, obviously that's an aspirational number at this point. Who knows, it could be 50 depending on where things go. It might be a little less depending on the environment along the way, but we're doing it through acquisition. We do know that there are a bunch of great operators out there that we've already purchased. We have some in the pipeline now, five of them. And they're looking for a partnership. They're looking for the things that we can provide so that they can get back to actually working with the players themselves. You see.

Talk about what makes you guys unique or what's good about what you guys do maybe compared to, you know, some facilities recently. We're recording this on July 2nd. It's going to go out in a couple of weeks. So before this airs, we will have released the results of. We did a. A survey of about four or five dozen facility and sports complex owners, lots of them baseball and softball facilities. And they talked about some of the Challenges, you know, staffing challenges and tech challenges. And, you know, there's. There's many. There's many, but those are two that really popped up. It could be a tough business. So talk about what's good about what you guys do and maybe what you sort of see in the broader market of sports facilities, particularly diamond sports, baseball and softball.

Okay, well, the commentary that you've gotten from other facilities is right on the money, right? If you're in a people business, then your product really isn't a baseball or a softball. It's the people. And so what we're very good at is we're very good at recruiting talent. And so what we have set up here that mitigates those issues for the single or smaller businesses is we have a shared service that provides all of the recruiting, the hr, the IT, sales, marketing, admin, so that the training centers themselves can provide a great experience and provide good scheduling. So, yes, it's not easy. And that's why if you're smaller, it's difficult if you don't have the experience in recruiting talent and then most importantly, bringing talent into a culture, bringing the right people in, and then training them regularly and staying on top of what we call the all star way, which is a very codified way of teaching the game. Now, I'm very well aware, as I'm sure you are, Kyle, that if you go on the Internet, there's 1700 different ways to teach hitting and fielding and the rest. And I'm not telling you ours is the best. I'm just saying we had to pick a lane, and we've picked a lane that we believe develops kids, players into better adults and better players. And that's how we've overcome that challenge. On the tech side, I think there's so much good technology out there. There's no doubt about it. Great companies developing new stuff all the time. My concern for us as an organization that we have to be careful about and ultimately for the player is that when there's that many choices with that much information coming at you, you have to be concerned about what you're getting involved in. Will you stay with it? Okay. Not bouncing around. Because when young people are under development, especially in a sport like ours, where the most important muscle is the one between the ears, if that doesn't stay in the right place and it bounces around, then the body and the confidence bounce around with it. So I understand the challenge there. We try to keep the technology simple. We try to work with technologies that we believe integrate with our approach. To training the complete player. And that's what we're pretty confident in. And it's also led us to exceeding 70,000 individual lessons a year. And that's out of seven locations. So you can do the math. That's an awful lot of lessons.

It's funny you kind of mentioned the mental part. I always tell my kids I'm coaching their teams on the rec level now. And I always say, and I see it more and more especially is on any given game, some kid walks off the field, four or five kids, eight or nine years old, will end up crying throughout the course of a game. And it's such a game of failure. To your point, every, every play in baseball generally has a winner or loser. Either the pitcher lost, the batter loss, sometimes the field, a lot of times at the young age, the fielder loses, right? And so on. Every single play somebody is getting some amount of pressure that often leads to tears. But it's a game of failure. Even the best hitters, everyone knows this. 300 hitter fails 7 out of 10 times. It's been said over and over again. So the mental part of it, I agree with you, is so important. Talk about though, really double click on the importance of the human element of training and consistency because there may not be a sport. We see companies every day have AI enabled cameras to do X, Y and Z and some really impressive stuff and very useful stuff. But there may not be a sport more than baseball where you can measure individual mechanics of a swing. It's not like basketball and hockey where it's a bit more free flowing. You can measure every single thing, you can film it, you can overthink it. It's like a golf swing. Talk about balancing that, you know, and then the, the consistent coaching, quality development and why it's so important. And then maybe where, if you see others in the industry who maybe aren't focusing as much as that or, or are, you know, that you think are good examples to look to.

Wow, that's a big question. It's a lot to unpack and that's okay. I appreciate it because it's because of that big question. I believe that we have an internal concern for the players and for the industry as a whole. And I'm going to start by saying I think we might be at the beginning of a bubble in our business and this is just from prior experience and I could be totally wrong, but we've got a situation today where there is no shortage of teams out there or kids that want to be on teams and very well meaning Parents, dads, moms that coach these things, teams. And I think they start off well meaning, but then because of the, let's say, supercharged environment out there, a lot of other things come into play. And it takes the focus off what's really important. We're seeing not only young people crying, we're seeing young adolescents using language that's not appropriate. We see parents yelling at umpires and screaming at coaches. We're seeing things because we run so many tournaments and have so many teams that are really concerning that it's getting out of hand. And so our job is to try to keep it tight. To get back to your question, I think that what's important for us is I try to harken back, and maybe this is because I'm older. I don't want to be a dinosaur, but I don't think Barry Bonds had the technology. Okay? I don't think Ted Williams had the technology. I know that Mickey Mantle did have the technology. Now, these are talented people, don't get me wrong. But there were plenty of other players during that time that had good coaching, good mentors. They knew how to play the whole game. They knew what was important about in the hitting area. How do you track a baseball? How are you selective? Can you bunt? How do you give a great effort? And there was engagement with the coaching. And I think we have to be careful that the technology doesn't support, doesn't get in between that. And so that's what we're very focused on, is what's the relationship with that player and how do we get that player to understand the basics of what they need to do, and then we can add some of that technology along the way.

In some ways, it almost feels like the debate that was had at the pro level over the last decade maybe preceded this by 10 years with Sabermetrics, the A's, the Moneyball philosophy coming in. Kind of around 2010, that timeframe got real popular. Some teams like the Phillies here locally, were kind of operated more in the old school way. You had other teams maybe like the Rays, the A's. I think the Giants really doubled down on analytics. Now every team has an analytics department. But it seems like it's come into balance more maybe over the last five years, where while every team does it, the sport at the pro level has acknowledged that there is that, that human element. Does it seem like that debate is happening now at the youth and high school level? Because that tech is now coming sort of down the stack to the, to the younger players? It wasn't available 15 years ago to the extent it is today.

I would hope the debate begins. I think we're even prior to the debate. I think we're in that early stage of what Moneyball was then, where this is now the shiny object and this is going to cure. All right? And it's interesting because if you watch the Phillies just two nights ago, before the rain out, they scored all of their runs with good base running and small ball. And for the first time we're hearing out of the Phillies organization about the importance of the whole game, right? The importance of people that can run, people that can bunt, moving the ball around and the rest of it. So I think the pendulum, as you said, has swung at the professional level and all things tend over time to come back to the center. My concern is we're so early in the pendulum, at the crazy level with the U sports that it's going to take time. But our goal right now is to control our sandbox. How do we control what we can control? How do we connect with these parents and players to understand that all of this jumping around that you're doing to win a new game, to win a nine year old tournament, okay, to jump from this team to the other because you're not getting the time that you, you need, how does that translate into the development of this individual, which is very important to me in a recent article out of Forbes that 90% of employees of Generation Z are fired in their first six months of the job. And I know that it has a direct effect if you're hopping around and there's no loyalty and commitment to what you need to do in the people working with you. The other statistic that was staggering is the number of jobs young people are having from when they leave school in the first three years is exponential to ever before. Because if it doesn't give them instant gratification and go their way, then they keep looking in another direction and that's going to lead to other issues for them as adults. So we try, as our mission statement states, to mentor and inspire young athletes to become successful individuals. One game, one lesson, one player at a time. And so I think we're at the beginning of that pendulum. I feel for the parents, having been a parent that raised two athletes, I'm so glad I'm not doing it now, to be frank with you. But that's what motivates me to help, you know, through All Star what we're doing with these players. And I think that I wish I could tell you that the Debate has begun at the youth level. I don't think it's even a debate debate yet.

So. Okay, so that's good. You did a really nice job, I think of the conversation sort of pulling out the philosophy you have and all star sports and baseball has. Let's talk a little bit more about the business side. Right. So you came on board a little bit before COVID said, you know, there were kind of different ownerships and you kind of pulled all that together. Get some of those efficiencies, talk about where the business is today versus where it was five, six years ago pre Covid and then, you know, dig in as far as you, you'd like, as far as you're willing into the expansion plans. Right. How do you go about it? Right. Why self fund it first take on money? It's a hot, it's a frothy market. Right. Why not, why not sell now? You know, I'm sure that, that you guys would have that opportunity if you really wanted it.

Well, again, whatever I'm going to tell you does not take away from the great job that the prior leadership did. There's no doubt about it. It was a heck of a foundation. What we've done since COVID is we have just made it into a real codified business. So everything we do from our systems, our processes, the shared service I talked about, which provides all of those back office services, are all humming very well now. The education and the training that we do for our instructors and coaches is ongoing and we actually monitor and measure the progress of those instructors and coaches so that they're always getting better and they have to be up to standards. That's a big, big difference. Our marketing, our outreach, our relationships with organizations throughout the area that are kind enough to feed us players has become much more robust. Today we're only an eight figure revenue company with an aspiration to get to nine figures. Without a doubt. I've been there in the other businesses, I'm self funded because I've had the luxury of the former sales. Right. And so therefore, if you don't need the money and you can do what I'm able to do, then you can control it more. Okay, you can have your way, let's just say a little bit more. You can lead a better culture. That way you can make decisions faster. As far as the expansion goes, we obviously could have and can still still open what we call green fields, which are facilities from scratch. But because we know what's going on in the business, we know that there's a Lot of well intended, good operators out there that might like to cash in on the hard work that they've done, but then also be part of something going forward where they can get back to why they really started it in the beginning, which was to help players. And what got in the way was the business. And so that's why we're going down the aquifer acquisition route. We have a lot of knowledge on how to do it. We've had success in the messaging of it. And the reason again that we're staying up and down the 95 corridor for now is we've got all the sports fanaticism we could ask for. We've got a headcount that's off the charts from Long island to Northern Baltimore. And therefore, from a scale standpoint, if I can stay within that framework, we can have our 30 locations, but we can also create community. Because I will finalize my statement with this. There are a lot of people and business people and a lot of money out there that can afford to do a consolidated roll up of a business. There's no doubt about that. My philosophy though is simple. If that acquirer is not focused on making the lives of the employees and the experience of the end user better, then that's not who I want to be. You can do it for finance, there's no doubt about it. And there's many financial tools you can use to do this. But I believe that in order to create a culture and keep those former business people and their employees engaged, you have to make the effort to make their lives richer and then the customer's lives richer. If you do that, you can have great success. And that was our mantra in the prior two businesses that we sold.

I won't break it. I could dig in on one of your competitors locally who does not has what I'll call user hostile experience from firsthand experience trying to use their services. But I won't call them out. What do you guys look for? So you're going the acquisition route, 95 corridor. I think I read something recently that something like 30% of the U.S. population, maybe more, is within a six hour drive of southeastern Pennsylvania. So, you know, to your point, lots of people, lots of stuff, sports passion. What specifically do you look for in an acquisition target? In terms of area, in terms of what they're good at, Maybe things that you try to avoid?

Well, we're very well aware of the demographics, so we have all that information so we understand where we should be. So therefore we're looking for people in those Areas. We're looking for good people, we're looking for good partners. We're looking for teachers, people that want to teach the game and the business part of it just caught up to them or it's what they had to do but weren't passionate about. We're looking for people that want to stay on. Even if they are rewarded through the acquisition for the hard work, we want them to stay with us. We have spent so much time educating and keeping the acquisitions that we've bought and their people involved. And we're delighted when they tell us this has been been unbelievable. We were worried. We didn't know what was going to happen when we were bought. We thought you'd clean the place out and bring new people in. And for me, it doesn't make any sense because all we're really buying is the goodwill and the people that are in that business. So if we can make them better at what they do, make them enjoy what they're doing again or more, then you win. The other thing I'm noticing, though, is this, and you're well aware of it, there are an awful lot of large complexes being built around the country, and there are notable people in those complexes, meaning former athletes. There are certainly strategic money in those complexes, and they're going to be fine, and I know they'll be successful. But what we're really seeing is this. When something becomes commoditized as much as sports training and sports has been, you have to bring it to them. They don't want to travel to these big places. I'm not going to say that's the case for tournaments. That's worth traveling for. But when it comes to what we do, which is running our 85 teams, training those teams, doing the amount of lessons in camps and clinics we do, our strategy is a matter of bringing it and having it in their community, making it convenient for mom and dad where they can drop them off, come back and get them. And so for me, I know that there'll be a continued progress proliferation of these large complexes. But because we're focused on the player development and we want to do it in the communities they're in, we also believe that it's a great convenience to the families to be close to home to have this. And the nice part is in our strategy. There are plenty of potential sellers out there up and down that corridor, but we're looking for great partners and good people.

Yeah, in the newsletter we've been calling it the Great Youth Sports Facility Facility Arms Race. Because every issue we're covering two or three tens of millions of dollars of funding, however many thousand square feet, 100,000 square feet, we're beginning to lay them over on maps of each other. And all these feasibility studies will sort of cite the three hour driving distance and how many people they can pull from. But you're kind of beginning to overlap a lot of those concentric circles and there's a Venn diagram there where there might be a little bit of saturation. But to your point, that's more of the tournament focus. Do you think there's, do you think there's an over focus on sort of the tournament facility, the tournament mindset? It's a little bit, it's a good business, get people to show up, pay money, but you don't have to worry about as much about things like training, things like team operations, the logistics of managing a team and developing a player. Do you think we've skewed too much in the tournament direction versus the training direction?

Well, doesn't the market always correct that? So we'll find out if we skew too much. You know, I'm also well aware of some mega facilities in Arizona and other places that have gone belly up and have been empty. I don't believe totally. And if you build it, it will come all right. I think in certain areas that's the case, depending on the population, the demand and the rest. But these businesses will, will have to be worked okay. And as saturation continues to happen, the strongest will survive. Those that execute the best will survive. As to your question regarding the tournament business, I understand it completely. It's a much easier path to success and I don't mean that they're not doing good work and investing and working hard, but there's more work in what we do and it's less sexy as far as getting in, getting it up quickly and having big scale right away. I think where the pendulum is going to swing back again is the following. My belief is that the parents, the players, and I believe eventually these college coaches, all of which these kids want to play for, are going to start to realize that all of this hopping around is sending a bad message. It's creating bad habits for these kids. And if I'm a college coach and I see that some kid has played for seven different teams in his career from 14 to 18, I'm going to be saying to myself, how long are you going to stay in this program if that's been your history? And so what we're rolling out in 2026 is we've created 29 educational modules for the parents. And from everything as it applies to how do you identify burnout, how do you identify injuries in your player, how do you help them be self directed and self motivated? How do you navigate the college journey? How do you just navigate the insanity of youth sports at this point in time? So we're excited about helping the parents as well because let's face it, in the end, they are the impetus behind a lot of this. I have seen an awful lot of these kids out there that you can tell they're dragging that bat bag onto the field as if they were going out to fight an army somewhere. And I'm not sure they're having the fun that they intended to have with it. And I don't think it's the parents fault directly, but I think the environment creates that and the parents want the best for their kid. And sometimes this is the net result of what happens. I hope I'm answering your question. I don't have any disdain for the groups that are doing the big tournaments. I think they're great venues for these kids to experience and play. But I do know this about this sport. If all you do is play on a team and you have coaches, understandably, that can't give individual attention to 15 players in the sport of baseball or softball, you are just ingraining bad muscle memory. And the older the kids get, especially after 13, it's very hard to turn that back around and reconstruct those things, even with the greatest technology in the world.

You talked about the kid dragging his bag onto the field. The thing I always look for, my telltale sign for me is I'll look at a kid and if he's looking at his dad between every single pitch when he's at the plate, I always take that as a bad sign. It could be a ball, it could be a strike. Always a strike. If he swings, throw it right. But even if it's a ball, always looking for some sort of offense, reassurance, approval, knows he's going to get scalded for chasing a pitch out of the zone. And I, I see it, you know, my kids are younger, but I see it at 7 and 8 in rec leagues. I'm like, that's a, that's a bad start. To your point about bouncing around from team to team topic, we've covered a bunch. We've seen USA Basketball in particular as an example is really looking towards the European model of development. I think a lot of this has come from recent Olympics where the USA Team USA has really taken all they can handle from these teams. The French Serbian, I think Luka Doncic has a foundation that focuses on this. They've really struggled against these guys who've played together for 12, 15 years. Part of these academy system, where they've started young, they've had consistent and quality coaching. Coaching standards very similar to the 29, you know, guide points. You know, you guys are looking at. Have you seen anything? So it's. I know basketball is focusing on this. Have you seen anything from USA Baseball or Major League Baseball to indicate that they're thinking a bit more about consistent and quality coaching? Because frankly, the culture of all youth sports, basketball in particular, but certainly baseball strip culture, it's very cool. Kids love it, it's fun. But lots of social media, lots of bouncing around to other teams, not that focus on coaching. Are you seeing anything from the top down in baseball where they're beginning to kind of realize this and maybe want to put together a playbook for everyone to follow?

I wish I could tell you. I. I have something concrete to tell you, so I don't want to speak at a turn because I'm just not educated on it. I'm sure they're looking at it. They're too smart not to. In the end, it's paramount for their organizations to make sure that these young people stay involved in the game. Right. There are statistics that show in order to be a Major League baseball fan, you don't have to have played much baseball, but as long as you play Little League, you're going to follow it and you have a greater propensity. So I'm sure they're looking into it. I know that they have the RBI program, programs and those things for the inner city, but I can't really comment on it, to be honest with you. I hope so.

Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of it comes back to the quality of play, too. You know, again, the NBA is probably a really good example. We had a lot of me first kind of AAU players who come up and they have all the skills, and then they, they. They struggle in the team concept. And I think five of the last six NBA MVPs had been international players. Right. And that was a, you know, really got USA Basketball looking at that talk. The facilities themselves, there's been a lot of innovation, right. In terms of things like, you know, as a trackman and the interactive. I forget, you know, I forget what they're called, but well, beyond just radar guns these days. Talk about some of the tech that you guys have in the Facilities that you're maybe looking to add that your customers want, and some of those experiential, if any, offerings that you will kind of look to bring into the fold. I. I talked to a guy a couple months ago. He was building a soccer training complex out in Colorado, and they're putting a bar in for parents, right? And they have all these fancy training things, but it's like, hey, like, we have good food and beer. You're going to spend a lot of time here watching your kid talk about what you guys are doing, where you'd like to go, what you're looking for, what you're looking at.

You know, obviously we have the pitching machines, the hit tracks, the flight scope, or things that we are incorporating now. I think what's been interesting for me on the journey is of the umpteen businesses we've spoken to, even with the five and the pipeline, I can't tell you how many of those businesses have the technologies you referred to sitting there with dust on them not being used. And so, like any great tool, unless it's incorporated effectively into the human aspect of teaching, all right, then it is another shiny object that's bought and sits on a shelf. And I was flabbergasted that I would say, say 90% of the businesses that we looked at had made the investment with, well intended, with good intentions to use that. Yet there's dust on the keyboard or when I ask how often is that used? Well, the kids will come in maybe on a Saturday, and they like to play with it. So it's almost gamified more than it is incorporated, which is why I believe it's so important that you can add that to a great instructor. But it will not, never supplant instruction. And I think sometimes as well, these kids can get so caught up in my exit velocity and spin rate and the rest of these things, yet they can't do the basics of the game or he's got a great spin rate, but he can't find the plate. And he doesn't understand why he can't find the plate because the mechanics are a big problem off the mound. So we intend to have it. We intend to use it in our development plans for points of measurement. So every player that engages in our lesson packages gets an initial development plan off the skill eval. Then the parents get updated development on different aspects of the pitching, hitting, catching, fielding, whatever they're coming for to work on with us or all of that. And then that dovetails very well into some measurement along the way. Because people want to see progress. I appreciate that. But not all progress is measured, okay, by the exit velocity. Because the fact is a 12 year old is how much can you improve the exit velocity unless he gets bigger and gets stronger, which will happen with time. Some kids pop, some don't. Some don't pop till they're 20 in college. So we try to be very careful. And what I have a little concern about is now we're ranking 10 year olds national, we're ranking 11 year olds nationally. And when I have parents come in and tell me, well, you know, my son's ranked in the top hundred of all 11 year olds in the country, I have to refrain from saying how I really feel. And it's just a shame because there's a high likelihood that that parent and that child or player may be very disappointed down the road. So that's our intent, to use it discreetly. I don't want to go too overboard with it. I do believe a good coach that knows how to improve what these technologies show and can see it with his own eyes is just as effective as some technology that shows it to the kid. So what we're trying to work on is helping our coaches diagnose exactly what it is that technology finds on its own. And if you can see it with your own eyes, technology can help to give the player a visual of what he can't see. But if that technology, if that coach doesn't know how to look at that technology and then what are the drills to correct that issue, then the technology doesn't become very useful.

We spoke yesterday and you talked a little bit about kind of the distribution of players. So there's a, very, obviously there's a very small sliver of really A plus talents, you know, who have prospects to go on. And obviously the longer, further down the funnel you go, the, the more, the more players you get. And I think somewhere there's a, there's a line somewhere in youth and amateur sports between competitive and serious players who have hopes or goals of progressing to college and beyond. And then there's a lot of just recreational players. I assume from a business standpoint you guys need a lot of the recreational players too, to show up, get a little bit better, use your batting cages, families come, things like that. What is, how do you think about addressing both of those? Right? I mean, there's so much in training, you guys can help someone get to the college and pro level, but you also maybe just are helping 7 and 8 year olds get a little bit better so they can have more fun?

That's a great question. You know, I don't think we're as good at bragging about what we've done that we need to be. And I'll start there. We have placed 1600 players in college and have had 100, 150 drafted players that come through our program. That's pretty big for the mid Atlantic part of this country. Right? Because a lot of that is the Southeast, South, Central and the West. Okay. But one of the changes we had to make here, and sometimes it was, I think it was embedded in the name inadvertently when you hear All Star are, is getting our organization to Understand if only 1/2 of 1% of these players will ever get paid to play. Alright, what are we doing? Why are we doing this then? Because quite candidly, most of those players, and knowing they haven't been one myself, okay, I knew who I was versus everybody else I was playing against. That was obvious at a very young age. So if that's the case and only 4 to 5% will ever play in college, then we're not going to be doing anything to change that. There are also less professional teams, meaning major league affiliates, than there were just six years ago. There's not as many minor league teams per organization. There's less places to play. And therefore that's why you see a proliferation of independent teams with rosters that are huge and players that just keep hanging on. And I respect that they are chasing their dream, but are they really just pushing off their future? And so one of the things we had to change here as a culture is the following. If a young person wants to play with us, I don't care what their talent is, we are going to work with them and we will put a team together that they can play on. So even if they play in little league and they are not the best 8 year old, if that parent wants for them the experience of a higher level team, a traveling team, better coaching, more discipline and repetition, then we're going to afford that. That was a cultural change here. There was also the cultural change that we had instructors that only wanted to work with the good kids. Well, we had to help them understand if that's all you want to work with, then that kid's already pretty good. We want people that want to teach these younger kids, kids not only how to be better, but what it takes to get better. And it's no different what it takes to get better in baseball or softball than what it takes to get better when you get your job. If you don't stay committed to what that work is that you're doing and you believe that college prepared you for it, you're going to be lost. You have to keep learning and keep educating yourself and developing yourself. So the way we've navigated through it is we have our teams that are for the college aspirational players at freshman, sophomore and junior level. They rise from the bottom of what we have and they come in from outside organizations and we know they have the aspiration and the current physical capability to show well. And we'll drive that. The other 85 youth teams will have certainly a group of, of teams that let's just say, for the lack of a better word, are elite at their age group. And then we'll have the next level of teams where they want to play travel ball, they want to get better, but they want the experience and what that teaches you to play on a team beyond just Little League. And so that's how we approach it. Now. Do we have to deal with the parents that feel those players that are on the entry level should have been here and these guys should have been there? It just comes with the territory. But if you communicate clearly and you stay true to the mission, we have found that the parents understand the importance of sticking with it. Team continuity. And to your point earlier, I think the NCAA is a perfect example in basketball. Why is it that the mid majors and the teams that have seniors that have been playing for four years and we have one right in our backyard here, because Jay Wright's a friend and what they've done at Villanova, it's a perfect example.

So I'm a. So you may not have known this some Villanova grad. My first year as a student at Villanova was, was Jay's first year as coach. And you know I would if you could keep trying to convince them to come back, but no, what. It's, it's funny what they've built. It's. It's one of the few examples in college they stood out. Not always the most talented team, but always there in the end.

Yeah. It's surprising as they played as a unit and one as a unit how those individuals seem so much more talented now that they're in the NBA.

Yes, yes.

But they gave up that part in part to be a team.

Well, this, this actually dovetails into my next question. Really well because again, using basketball because I just think it's such a good example for this sort of, kind of the, the me first culture verse, whatever. And you know, with, with nil and now payments to players and the ability for players in college to basically be free agents every year. You're not seeing that continuity even at Villanova. They've struggled, they've had guys and they bounce. And you know, I've said even, even if Jay was still around at a school like Villanova, I'm not sure if you have guys stick around for four years because they sit the bench the first year or two because they got to learn how to play defense and now they're just gonna, gonna leave. But to that point we, we featured a survey of parents. One of these organizations may have been project Play put out a couple of months ago. And they surveyed a few thousand parents and a shocking percentage, maybe not shocking to you, 50 plus percent believed of parents surveyed and I don't know what the mix was, believed that their kid, you know, was good enough to potentially be pro, right, in whatever Sport. And like 73 to 80% believed their kid was going to go on to play in college. And you just laid out the numbers. It's half of, you know, half, half of percentages for pro, single digit percentages at best for college. So there's a huge delta there between parental expectations and reality. Have you seen yet that get exacerbated further with nil and payments to players? We just did a feature and we just commented on it. Today you're going to have billions of dollars, a billion, three, $4 billion labor market for college athletics. A lot of that will go to basketball and football, but some baseball schools, of course. To me that says parents are going to believe even more and perhaps rightfully that their child's prospects of getting paid to play sports at a younger age are higher. And they are. You got a higher percentage chance now. You can make six figures for at least a few years playing sports. Have you seen that in your business yet? Do you expect to see it where parents of kids who maybe aren't pro prospects but maybe D1 prospects double down on, you know, baseball from a younger age? And you know, I think we could probably agree it might not be the best for an 11 year old kid to start thinking about, you know, can he get paid to play at Tennessee? But have you seen it yet? Talk about that a little bit.

I don't, I don't think I've seen it to a concerning degree. I think maybe we hear it in commentary and sometimes when we hear it from the parent, it's almost apologetically asking is that possible? Or they kind of throw it out as a trial balloon because I think that there's still a grounded part of their mentality that says, boy, I might be stepping over the line here. It's interesting that you mention it because it may be the same thing, but I read a summary article from Metropolitan Life and they had done this very survey, and you're right about the numbers. It was staggering. 70 plus percent professional. 80.

That's where it was from. Yeah, yeah.

And I believe that's where it was. And I shared it with our team here, saying that our challenge is not only making our players better, our challenge is the businesses that are out there. And I believe there are, there are in every industry that are lighting this fuse with this false narrative as a money grab to get these parents to drive down this road of delusion by making these promises. And ultimately they're disappointed about it. We're still trying to get better at everything we do. We have our ticks. That'll always be the case. But it's amazing to me how teams or groups of players on teams have left us and come back a year or two later saying, boy, we made a big mistake. We chased this shiny object. Somebody promised us this okay, and they didn't give the commitment you gave. It was not even a partially fulfilled promise. And all it really was was to get us to spend the $3,000. I haven't seen it to that degree. There's no doubt in my mind it's coming. And again, as I said earlier in your broadcast here, our job is to control our sandbox, to try to make a difference in the people we engage with. And what we have found is we can take sometimes the most energized parents that have fallen into this trap, and once we explain it to them, the sense of relief that they have that it's okay not to chase this and to drive it, because everybody on the cul de sac is doing it. And it's just okay to let your son or daughter be who they are and let it happen naturally. But most importantly, understand this. There's a very high likelihood they're going to be working for a living and it's not going to be playing a sport. And so finally, what I will tell you is we tell them, you need to make your plan B, Plan A. You've got the order.

Mistakenly, as we wrap here, I'd like to ask guests who are some companies or people that you admire in the call it youth and amateur sports space.

Currently, or as I was growing up, yeah, currently.

But, you know, take anything.

Well, you know, I think I'm a product of some really strong but caring coaching. As I grew up, I played for Mike Shepard who was senior the coach of Seton Hall University. But I played on his young allegiant team. Ex Marine. We got away with nothing, we didn't fool around, but we all became very, very good players and respected him. My coach in college who retired as the coach, Princeton Tom o'. Connell. He's in the College hall of Fame. Same way, dedicated to the game, playing it right, representing it right. Respecting the game and respecting others meant a lot today in youth sports. I'm just getting to know people. To be frank with you Kyle, it would be unfair for me to not call out people that should be called out. There's some great business people out there, whether it's Josh Harris and Dave Blitzer and doing what they're doing, I think is well intended. But it's so large that I don't think oftentimes the common person can understand their business acumen and the things that they do. As you know, they just picked up the WNBA team and so God bless them. But for me, I think if anything it's some of the people we have working here, some of the acquisitions that we've made or the ones that we have in the pipeline that we really admire the, the job that they've done. For me to go further than that would be unfair. I've really been so focused on fixing what we're doing and enjoying that I'm just now starting to get out there and understand who else is in the game.

Last one for you. We have a lot of facility owners, operators in our audience and again in our survey, a majority of them self selected that they were either seeking funding, some seeking acquisition. So might be helpful to just at a high level, what does that process look like? You know, I, I, you know, I sold a business, it could be, it could be a headache, everybody knows that. But maybe talk to facility owners, you know what that process looks like from their standpoint and from your standpoint, you know, how, how much time and effort goes into it. On your guys end, what do you look for? What are the, you know, red flags or things you maybe uncover in diligence that like, you know, that's not something we want right now.

Okay. We try to make the process as painless as possible. Okay. So we have it down pat internally that we have the whole roadmap, what we call the roadmap to settlement. So what is it on the seller side that they're responsible for along this journey to settlement and what is it on our side, and we connect the different pieces with them so that we can get the financial information, the personnel information, the leases, all those things that are necessary to ultimately then come up with a business enterprise value. We try to give them the best value we can by normalizing the P and L and all the things entrepreneurs take from a business that they're entitled to, but have to be added back in order to enhance the profit picture, which is what we pay on. Like all businesses are multiples of the ebitda. You know, we look for, typically the last two or three years of financial. What we find is the type of information we get could be all over the place, which I do respect from small business people. But we have people here that can recreate it with them and for them. We find that people that didn't think they wanted to sell but were intrigued by a potential partnership or what we have to offer. By the time they understand what life is like after the sale, if it happens, their perspective has changed on selling. And these are guys that this is their baby. They built it so they want it in good hands. And I think they're more as interested in the legacy of what continues as it is in the money that they may receive. The final piece, I'll tell you, is this. My ego is not big enough to have to have All Star on everything. So when we make these acquisitions, we keep the name of the business, because as far as I'm concerned, if you're Kyle Scott's training center, all right, then all the goodwill revolves around Kyle and his name in that community. And so therefore, we don't take that brand away. We just put resources and steroids behind it. We might do some slight co branding, but we don't want to scare the employees and we don't want to scare the customers themselves. So we take a Procter and Gamble approach, which is keep the brands, take over the back office, relieve them of all the business part of the business, and let them get back to doing what I think they loved from the beginning, which is training players.

So, yeah, I think that's a good place to put a pin in it. Vince, I really appreciate you doing this. You tell our audience how they could find out more about All Star Sports Academy. Plug the website. Anything else you think worthwhile plugging?

Yeah, I mean, if there's interest in what we've been talking about today, then please just reach out to allstar through the website through our phone number. We have people prepared to speak with you if you think this might be a good fit. Or potential interest. I can't thank you enough for having me on. Congratulations on your product and your business and I think you're doing a great service and if I can ever be of help, let me know.

I appreciate it. Thanks for. Thanks for joining.

You got it. Thanks so much.

All right, so that was Vince Russell Magno. One of the things I found interesting there is Vince, like so many experienced operators in youth sports, really views the current climate as very cyclical. And I think we see lots of people on LinkedIn talking about how it's a great time to invest in youth sports. And we see headlines about startups getting funding rounds and you know, all this stuff. And it feels very tech crunchy, like we're celebrating, we're considering the win to be the, the investment itself and not the actual operation. The more smart people I talk to, the more they reiterate the need for, for the human element, the on the ground, the operational capabilities needed to run a successful business, let alone a socially positive business in youth sports. The ability to jump from event to event to event, to showcase to social media, to this to that is great in a lot of ways and it's fun and it gives people exposure. But it definitely comes at the detriment to the development of the athlete in most cases. And I brought this up a little bit in our interview, but again you look no further than what USA Basketball is trying to do with their developmental system along with the NBA. Recognizing that the success of foreigners in the NBA in terms of MVP awards, in terms of the competition Team USA faces in every international tournament with teams and players that have grown up playing together since they were 8, 9, 10, 11 years old in these developmental systems, learning the team concept of sport that hasn't existed in the US in really any sport over the last maybe say for soccer over the last decade as being able to showcase one skills on the AAU circuit in basketball or show someone's exit velo in baseball through a perfect game tournament and over time that chips away at the fundamentals, at the consistency and to Vince's point, the mental aspect of sports, especially a sport like baseball where you are guaranteed to fail most of the time once you reach at any level, but certainly once you reach an advanced level and not learning how to deal with that and how to be consistent in your approach and refine your approach is detrimental to the development of athletes. And love to hear that All Star is focusing on that. And as they expand they're really looking to take their operational, their coaching, know how and bring it to facilities that maybe have some of that in their DNA but don't have the sort of business operation that All Star has. Good stuff from Vince. And so yeah, I think that's probably a good place to leave it. If you enjoyed this interview. If you like buying Sandlot, do me a favor. Wherever you're listening or watching this podcast, if you're on YouTube, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe to our channel, hit the notification bell, Leave a comment. Now, I know every video says that, and I don't expect you to do all those things, but any sort of positive interaction with the video really sends lots of signs to the algorithm. And frankly, this is why I have a newsletter, because I don't like being at the whim of the algorithm. It's a game you're never going to win. You're always just going to keep chasing what the latest algo is. But the more you interact with this video on YouTube, the better it is for the algorithm, the more likely it is to show it to somebody else who works in youth sports or who might be interested in the content. So I would appreciate that on YouTube. If you're listening to the podcast, whether that's Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player of choice, the best thing you could do is first off, hit the subscribe or follow button in your app. But then also leave us a review, preferably a five star review. If there's something you don't like, you want to give us three or four or one stars, that's fine too. And if you can, leave a comment telling us what you liked about the show or what you didn't like, or how we can improve, that's really good too. Again, all of these apps have algorithms and when you interact and follow and subscribe, not only does it help us reach you for the next episode, but it also helps show the episode. Show this podcast to other people who might be interested and it helps grow our audience. So I would really appreciate that if you could and most importantly, if you haven't Already, go to buying sandlot.com Enter your email address, get our free newsletters on the business of youth sports and and if you want to go even further, you can sign up as a premium member and get access to other members and our Deep Dive reports, event discounts and much more. So thanks so much for listening and we'll see you on the next show.