Hey, this is Shaun with the award-winning GoTennis! Podcast.
Check us out at LetsGoTennis.com and we invite you to learn more about the award by
following the link in the show notes.
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We would love to earn your five-star reviews.
And now let's get into our recent conversation with Andre Smith, who is founder of Bankhead
Pickleball Club, the first black-owned Pickleball Club.
We discuss community engagement, cultural representation, and health benefits of racket
sports.
Andre emphasizes the importance of accessibility and inclusivity in sports, particularly
for underserved communities.
Have a listen and let us know what you think.
Let's go ahead and jump in and let's say Andre Smith, who are you and why do we care?
Yeah, hey, how's it going?
Most people, a lot of people, call me Dré.
So we can start with that.
Who am I, why don't you care?
Andre Smith, it is a lot of things to a lot of different people.
Particularly to this business here, I come from the arts, from music to originally,
and then the fine arts as a curator and art advisor.
Graduated Madden and CUMLOT from NYU Tish and Art and Public Policy.
Shortly after that, I found myself working in academia, college professor for two years
at University of Illinois, Chicago, where I taught marketing and innovation.
When it comes to the racket sports, as I was just kind of sharing and connected with
Bobby, you know, because we've got Bronx, ties, and common.
For me, one on the 80s baby, born 86, my name is Andre.
Kind of easy to imagine where that inspiration came from, right, Agacy, with my dad.
I grew up playing tennis in Southern Westchester, you know, in the Bronx, not Vernon, New
or Shell.
It was something I was introduced to early in my life.
I think the roots took hold, but the seed didn't really sprout until adulthood.
And it was around 2020.
I was living in San Francisco, and there were tennis courts that I would pass, taking my
younger daughter, Chloe, to school in the filmore.
And I would see the courts and they were really locked off, you know, you have to know the
grounds keeper didn't know the time to be there and it was a bit of a hassle.
So access kind of was something I had been thinking about with public access to rack
exports is something I've been thinking about from about five years ago.
And then back in April, I went to a business conference in Miami.
And I heard about Pickleball through a neighbor, Ryan, and it was on my mind a little bit.
And it wasn't until I went to this conference and I tried to get, you know, a set of Pickleball
paddles and a ball that was from this vendor and they only wanted to give me one.
And again, access came up.
And I had kind of felt back in love with tennis going to March this evening at the past few
summers.
So I think just the ball of wax time, they hit late April, early May.
And there's an opportunity here and Bankhead just seemed like a really light bulb moment
for me when I thought about, you know, not just we need a club, we need our own Pickleball
club, right?
And it's not just anywhere in the city.
We need it as a place that is core and central to our lifestyle, our way of living, but open
to everybody.
And Bankhead felt like the perfect fit.
So Bankhead Pickleball club is open for business as a brand.
And we'll talk about that briefly in a second.
But we open for business and the spring work as a pop-up model over the summer and decided
to move forward with 1000 square feet of brick and mortar pop-up concept early in the fall.
Okay.
Very cool.
So you have a indoor facility.
Now is it indoor?
Is it covered?
Sometimes we get that mixed up.
Yeah.
So what you see behind me here is 14,000 square feet of indoor real estate.
So for this, we have three indoor courts, regulation dimensions.
We have one core dimension for road tennis, far from some of that Caribbean tradition that
Bobbie and I were talking about a little earlier.
We have Mila State for practice simulators for tennis and Pickleball.
And we are really excited about bringing Pedel Ping Phong inside of here.
Now for outside, we have real estate for two courts.
And ultimately we do want to have one with Del Quart on the property.
As far as back to the inside, we have a juice bar that's going to serve cold brew, cold
press juice and matcha.
And we have the stage and real estate for events and off sides and things like that.
So basically you just ruined my next question of why are you unique because that all pretty
much sounds fairly unique even though, hey, we know we know there are racquet sports facilities
all over, but this one sounds fantastic.
And I guess along.
Yeah.
Okay.
So there's the other thing.
Bankhead location, just off the belt line.
How could you pick a better spot?
Now what about it?
You've got just cell memberships.
I say just like everybody else, but you can be having memberships, people come in, play
Pickleball, everybody does that.
But you've also, you're targeting after school, you've got a culture angle that you're
working on here.
Talk about that.
Yeah.
So as you've just seen, briefly over here to my side, I guess what really makes us unique
is not just.
And when people see or hear or read or come back to us saying, you know, you're the first
black on Pickleball club.
You know, how is that true?
How is that unique?
Where's the data on that?
The data says that there is no, there are players in the mix like Blackout Pickleball, Black
Girls Pickle 2, Black Pickle Alliance.
And they do really amazing things as affinity groups, as meetups, as operators that bring
what they can do culturally to a space.
Spankhand Pickleball Club is a brick and mortar concept, first of all.
So we're franchiseable.
That's number one.
A looking to franchise in key cities and on college, universities and campuses coming
soon.
More details about that later.
But we also are a lifestyle content engine.
When you think about the Black Effect in Pickleball, you've got bookends, you've got Tyra, Hurricane
Black, and you've got Donald Young, Jr.
There's a lot of space between those two exemplars in the sport.
There's a lot of space for people that come purely from Pickleball, possibly not coming
from tennis previously, or people coming from the delt, people coming from Pickleball
to the delt.
The physics are very different, so let's not under index on that.
But the excitement and opportunities there, and I think that's something special when
I think about identity representation for black and brown boys and girls, black and
brown folks who are always kids at art, or getting older and looking for ways to stay fit
and stay young.
So for Bankhead, it's a lot more than, let's go international and do tours, but let's bring
a local accent to a global language.
Let's speak Bankhead to bracket sports.
There's a way to celebrate.
There's a way to speak.
There's an interest in the music and the vibes that inform how to play.
That's part of what makes this really unique.
Or is that, and then to what you would say earlier, we also have the youth academy, where
we prioritize underserved kids and families in the Atlanta metro area.
So what makes this unique is really our Geeklow system, honestly.
And I think that's what makes this different from some of the other operators I alluded earlier.
So I'm sure Bobby's first question.
Are you going to have music playing while everybody's there?
You've got to have the culture.
There's music, right?
Yeah, yeah, for us, because at the Bankhead Pickleball, we are membership-based, you know,
proud, will pay movement as our business model.
We definitely want to be as inviting and welcoming to all parties, those groups and stakeholders.
What I like to think of with Bankhead is, with Bankhead Pickleball, is it is a unique and
interesting and future-facing way to export a unique piece of Atlanta to the world, right?
And in doing so, it's more seeking you will find more than, you know, sign instantly at
the door.
So, yes, for our hours of operation, when we fully come online, out of the cold open and
move into our grand opening phase, we will definitely have a house trap or a house
trap.
But what makes us, again, goes back to what makes you unique in the ecosystem, right?
Is you're not just going to eventually find one single channel or track of playlists for
Bankhead Pickleball on Spotify or whatever your favorite music streaming source might be,
right?
You're going to find it for channels and flavors of what we offer.
So we're definitely excited about the, basically called the Silent Disco component to gameplay.
So your track, your core, your time, your core, your partners, your track, your practice
session, your music, right?
So, again, coming to this as someone who comes from strategy, having one of the words
and the advertising space, previously with the Martin agency and with Masterclass respectively,
curating and personalizing with intention is something that I think, again, we could
do really uniquely here, opposite other operators that prioritize more real estate and more courts,
opposite and more unique and intimate experience for your time with us at the club.
Unique and intimate.
Bobby, you think that works?
I think it's got to, I think it's a great way to take it.
Yeah.
And Sean, let me be clear.
That was going to be my second question.
My first question was because he brought up in his, you know, where he's from, you serve
in Coca Pepsi because you mentioned Mount Vernon.
So you have, you know, you've crossed paths with the competitors.
Are you serving Coca Pepsi?
You know, I went to Morehouse College, you know, and I think even before Morehouse, I was
really impressed with the vanilla coke as a, as a, a pivot or premium product that Coca
Cola introduced.
I think that came out when I was around school when I say maybe chewing your euro high school
from dating myself a little bit, forgive me.
But I have always, I think, been a fan of Coca Cola and peanuts, right?
Pepsi and salad.
So I think it's probably going to, probably going to stay Coca Cola, keep it at land in that
way.
Yeah.
I can't say I've ever really been impressed with like Pepsi work.
If I'm being honest, I think it's the ad guy in me.
Pepsi, I think Pepsi is a great reference point for how to do things better.
I think their leadership has shown, you know, how to be, I think Pepsi is cool for maybe
how they take accountability, you know, for when they get things wrong with leadership.
I think at the end of the day, I want to be a proof of concept, a proof case for how to
get it right, rather than like any type of business seminar reference.
I think that's what I think it's going to be.
I think it's going to be a great reference point for what you can learn from, right?
Learn from me, learn from me, measuring nine times and getting it right by federal one time,
rather than cutting instantly and hoping I can get nine edits with fixed set.
I don't want to date myself, but I live through Coca Cola changing brands and Pepsi almost killing
Michael Jackson.
So that's how old I am.
Dude, I was just talking about Michael Jackson, I'm not Pepsi, I'm an apology just the other
day.
That's crazy.
I mean, that it's sad.
I mean, that's not that started is pain killing addiction.
So I mean, it's well, you know, spinning it back to pickle balls spinning back for a while
trying to do it.
Yeah, we'll lay off there for a second.
What I try to remind people, people that look like me and even people that don't look like
me, right?
When they're like, you know, why you why pickle ball?
Why bank?
What I say is pickle ball is great for the cardio, right?
It's bad for the cortisol and that's good for people like you and me.
And what I mean by that, you know, beyond the obvious is what one cortisol is not so obvious
to people.
There are a lot of people who don't know, you know, the things back to Michael Jackson,
right?
And pain management, right?
There are a lot of people who are unaware, right?
We're unimploring about what's actually hurting or pain, they're more, you know, keeping
them in a place of discomfort, staying in a place of discomfort leads to being content
with suffering, right?
And a great way to alleviate that, right?
It's fine.
It's a healthy habit, right?
And I definitely don't fault people who praise pickle balls being addictive.
Certainly is, right?
Trusting oneself, you know, building a whole business out of this, you know, banquet pickle
ball club is an APX project, right?
So coming back to, you know, brand purpose and strategy, right?
But it's definitely bigger than that as I mentioned because there's a whole bridge over
to public health and the bridge way for that is identity and representation.
So there might be some people that come across a caravan or a humana sponsored pickle ball
torn in mid singles or doubles, what have you, right?
And they see people getting out the suppression, having a great time and getting healthy and
being like, ah, right, digging in the kitchen.
And I want some of that, right?
Because that looks like, you know, a lot better than maybe pounding some beers, right?
But they can't see themself there, right?
So they default to where they see themselves, right?
And I've always been to believe through that you grow in places that aren't comfortable,
right?
So for me, you know, it comes back to why I say, you know, it's good for the cardio, right?
Good for your health, right?
Bad for the cortisol, right?
Which is double negative, right?
It's just positive, right?
And it's good for you and me.
And I don't know if Michael Jackson would have been a pickle ball monster, right?
He probably, you know, he probably would have been digging up people, right?
Probably would have been great lots.
Because I think that, you know, it's funny that you mentioned about the Jackson.
The reason why I thought of him and Pepsi was I was watching the Vince state will show on Netflix.
I'm so happy seeing him too, it was out.
I love Vince.
If you don't know who's, you know, I feel like who's been state was that kind of the point.
So for those of you know, LOL.
But what his mother said to him in a car rental locations, the whole scene set up and she
reminds him like, Hey, people want to see you be your mate, right?
Don't be your mate, baby, be Michael, right?
Like don't fall short, you know, don't succumb to, you know, outside pressures, you know,
kind of follow your true North, you know, follow your star, you know, follow your purpose.
And I think that there is a lot of room in real estate for young people to unlock, you know,
some healthy purpose in themselves, right?
With a sport like pickle ball.
I think I was outshamed, but I was saying to Sean is that I want people to reframe the
opportunity and stop seeing pickle balls a challenge or a problem and see pickle ball as a gateway
or an on ramp to racket sports.
And frankly, just healthy livingals were all, you know, so what Michael Jackson be a pickle
ball monster?
I don't know.
But Michael Jackson was an advocate of a lot of healthy things and smart business.
And you know, you sports being, you know, $40 billion a year annually globally.
Sounds like smart business to me.
Georgia, you know, being rackets or mecca and at least in North America, it just seems
like smart business overall.
So Bobby, we can play Michael Jackson's songs while we play Pickleball.
Well, everything's just an homage at that point.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
And the range of what would Bobby listen to.
I think we're actually going to have an event called beat it.
And it's going to be a Michael Jackson tribute day here at the club.
So you guys are invited.
I'm in.
That sounds fantastic.
So what else you can do events?
Do you have anything coming up, you know, kind of that next step in this conversation, which
is you have your facility at the bank head, first black owned pickle ball club doing what
you do.
You've got a great cultural focus where it isn't just making money on pickle ball people.
You're also trying to bring in the kid, the after school programs.
You're trying to reach everybody, create accessibility and affordability and all that.
What do you have coming up?
What is going on in your world that you might want to talk about that says, hey, what do you
want to share with our audience specifically?
Yeah.
Thank you.
That's a great question.
So as you might imagine, particularly in Atlanta, across the country, you made your
own world for sure in the South, you for sure and Georgia, for the county Atlanta in particular,
everything from new year to, you know, observing Martin Luther King Day all the way through
four of board day, really a super charge window for the city, right?
If you've been brought in that, Juneteenth is also a big cultural calendar opportunity,
right?
And the city, you know, and larger.
If this year being when, you know, FIFA World Cup comes to Atlanta, beginning in June,
it's definitely a super charge window that we're excited about being part of.
So more to share as we rise, we answered the new year, but what we're really excited about
as an ecosystem, as a business, as a lifestyle brand, right?
Is black futures.
And what I mean by black futures is, you know, one thing I, you know, I think that the USDA does
really well, particularly the US Open, is I love that they had a history product tie-in
with Marvel and the fantastic foreign out the Gibson, right?
They released like a limited number of common books around the experience that the US
Open.
I love that they're playing a black history in the style to, you know, and honoring her
like a sandhurt or an imprint.
And it does like Arthur Asch, you know, in some ways, even Serena Williams, you know, fast
forward, you know, back to black futures, right?
The future of support looks like Taylor Townsend and Coco Gough, you know, like we'll take
you to the name of this.
Oh, they're, you know, 1965, 2025, right?
It's not the biggest window of time, right?
So there's not a lot of black history per se to speak of when it comes to thick of all,
but the future is very bright.
In fact, it's almost like white hot.
And that's something we're really excited about in Bankhead.
So again, being off the belt line, you know, in five minutes from the Bankhead artist
station at this current, you know, brick and mortar pop-up concept location here.
I'm first of, you know, many iterations to come until we find something or build something
even right with the right strategically aligned partners, right?
This is how building out the brick and mortar vision of it.
And for us, this is going to be a hub for black futures and rackets courts.
So this is the, you know, again, back to how I was saying about, you know, exporting this
unique piece of Atlanta, you know, culture, right?
And in heritage, you know, beyond, you know, FIFA World Cup.
I really like to think of Bankhead, you know, as you might talk about Marvel again, right,
Fantastic Four.
I'd like to make a bankhead the way you might think of Ragnarok if you're into Thor or Wakanda
if you're, you know, if you know Black Panther, right?
It's bigger than a geolocation, right?
A pin, right?
It's like a friendship, right?
You know, in Los Angeles, right?
Or it's like red style in Brooklyn, right?
It means something beyond just that thing, right?
It's a way of life, it's a way of being able to be speaking, we have celebrating, right?
We have carrying heritage and history and legacy.
And that really matters.
For us, looking at the future of racketsport, right, with Bankhead Pickleball, you know,
we could do uniquely as a piece of that is what we're really excited about.
And that's what we're building our programming, you know, through Q2 of next year around.
We love it.
And we are excited to talk about it, excited to be a part of it whenever we can.
I'm looking forward to seeing the facility itself in person.
Bobby, you got anything else before for Dre before we hit him with King of Pickleball?
I want to hit the King of Pickleball.
We can jump right in.
So, Dre, I'm just so used to calling you Andre because that's just how you were in my phone
for so long.
I don't know that I could make the switch.
So I apologize if I'm back and forth on that one.
It's so easy.
You're just losing letters, you know.
It's not, it's not, it's not for me because to me, you're Andre, you always will be.
I'm not the one that's old that you're not wrong.
Okay.
So when I say dear Andre in the letters.
Yeah.
All right, but Dre, you're right.
Hey, you're right.
Hey, Dre, when you text me, you know, so you got that part going for you.
Just got to, you know, bring the rest of it over.
But I've been practicing.
Yeah.
And I've been practicing too.
This is kind of like, they say Samarro, like, you know, what do you want your neon
signs to be, right?
RIP, vice-land TV when it was good.
But I did do some homework on the, you know, the closing question, right?
If I were the King of Pickleball, right?
And it goes, if I were the King of Pickleball, what would I want, right?
Or what would be my first order of business?
If I as the founder and chief strategy officer of Bankhead Pickleball Club were a King of Pickle
Ball all around the globe, I'd want to first order business as I sat on the, you know,
the throne of sorts or paddles in this case, right?
Or carbon.
Maybe on the carbon throne, I would want to prioritize private and public partnerships.
I'd want to do this with two reasons.
Reason one, I wanted to democratize access to the support, like I was kind of teasing at
it earlier.
Pickleball is not the problem.
Pickleball is really the gateway, right?
It is a low barrier to penchery.
Easily easy to access for a multi-generation game.
It opens up your mind and appetite and flexibility for all types of rackets and sports.
I'd want to follow, you know, smart models, right, for how to do this because I don't think
it helps anything that we add pickleball lines to proper tennis courts.
It takes tension to get attention, but not all tension is good, right?
That's what a smart King realizes.
He got some attention, right, but we need to move that attention to a dedicated space, right,
to alleviate that attention, you know, for unity at Come You, right?
That's how we get to the commerce, right?
There's more money to be made finding smarter ways to pair the sports, rather than trying
to make a sandwich out of them.
Okay, so question.
To democratize access.
Are we just saying we need free or cheaper?
Is that all that that means or is there something more complex about it?
So this goes back to private public partnerships, right?
There are tears to smart, scalable business works into your models, right?
There should be open, free to play.
There should be more premiums added on for those who want to pay for an elevated experience,
right?
And then there should be league level, champion level, big visibility, stadium level that is
open for all to find, you know, find a level or price that they are comfortable with supporting
or participating out.
I think that's smart business.
I say this because, you know, where we are located in Benke, we share a real estate with,
you know, Village Skate Park, you know, other business concepts out here like at Bonfire
ATL or Atlanta Indie Market, you know, shutter space if you will, Atlanta Forest projects,
right?
Keith Parts, we have neighbors, right?
So we have to think in the community way, how can we make it fair for our neighbors, but
still protect the value that we need to drive for our goals, our interests, right?
And I think that, of course, all business thinks that way.
I think it gets, it can get challenging and when it gets challenging, sometimes people
get a little short-sighted and that's where the tension builds up, right?
Example, all of these lawsuits that happen in these suburbs or these, you know, community
village complexes or these retirement complexes, right?
These aren't necessary.
They just have to find a different way, you know, to make it a community work.
I don't think striking things that are appealing or appealing or even, you know, the things that
make the deal, you know, that lock a deal down, right?
There are some people that are exclusively, you know, currently, when you think about the
wellness tourism industry, right?
Again, billions of dollars, you know, flowing around, right?
There are people who exclusively will commit to a property over another property that
might have more space or, you know, more premium amenities, but this property has a pickable
court on the property.
That's attractive, right?
That appeal shouldn't be turned into a negative, right, unnecessarily, right?
I think, again, part of it is, don't force the sandwich, right, when there is enough to spread
things around.
Makes me think of a stone soup.
So the little traveler that comes in and everybody doesn't have enough to make their own meal,
but if we all come together, we can make a soup out of this rock.
I don't know.
Maybe I've just been reading too many kids' stories, which you have on a topic.
No.
It's stories are the things that make the hobby special, you know.
That's why I was again glad we were able to work through our cold open, get towards our
grand opening.
You guys are definitely welcome guests.
You know, we feel like we're part of the GoTest family.
The work that you guys do in order of that way and coming is great.
Our interest in partnership is getting more of that traffic downtown as well.
A lot of it comes down to, you know, not just who all is going to be there, but where can
we be?
And as far as who all is going to be here at Bankhead, everyone's welcome.
As far as where you're going to be, you're definitely welcome here.
I don't know if we're going to play handball anytime soon, but we're going to be very, very
big or ball.
You know, we're defiant me.
And I definitely, definitely want something, you know, it's always good to feel, you know,
I don't get homesick because I'm really, you know, I'm by coastal between San Francisco
and Atlanta.
You know, I spend most of my year here in Atlanta.
But I don't get homesick for New York to often because I have to fly up there for family.
And when I do, I always conveniently, you know, come across someone from the Bronx.
And today just happened to be that day and just happened to be you, man.
Making this pop-task episode even more special, you fixed my homesick.
So I appreciate it.
I thank you.
And I'll tell you what, I love the concept of what you guys accomplished, what you talked
about because it brings me back to when I started to play tennis.
The club that I played at on Long Island at this point, they broke it down the same way
you know, there was a time they'd let us come in for free, the kids, you know, and we were
allowed to stay to a certain point, still not paying.
And you know, we became part of the club and it was a big cultural change and it's supreme,
you know, they tried to go thinking they were going to go to another level and they lost
all the kids because they took away that culture, you know, that part of it.
And I'm a big believer in, you know, more people, more energy, more success.
Well, there you have it.
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