Adam Geisler With Youth Athletes United

Intro: [00:00:07] Welcome to Franchise Marketing Radio. Brought to you by SeoSamba comprehensive high performing marketing solutions for mature and emerging franchise brands. To supercharge your franchise marketing, go to seosamba.com. That’s seosamba.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a fun one. Today on the show, we have Adam Geisler and he’s with Youth Athletes United. Welcome, Adam.

Adam Geisler: [00:00:43] Thank you, Lee. Thanks for having us.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Youth Athletes United. How are you serving folks?

Adam Geisler: [00:00:51] Yeah. So, listen, we we saw an opportunity to create what we believe is one of the largest youth franchise, youth sports franchise platforms in the industry. And the biggest opportunity that we saw is getting kids active, getting kids moving. And I think there’s a lot of people in our space who are starting to see this opportunity. It’s not just about an opportunity. It’s opportunity to have impact. And so what we really said is we want to create this experience of my first sport experience for kids, for parents, and really have an impact for them as they’re coming up through life. And that’s from an activity standpoint. And that’s really what we focus here, focus on here at Youth Athletes, United is being the first sport experience where every kid is an athlete. And we want to we want these kids to have fun while learning the fundamentals of sport. And so we focus on a lot of those first sport experiences soccer, multi sport, baseball, tennis and golf, and those types of experiences where we can really have a profound impact on them both their their physical education, as well as their mental acuity and their life skills.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:06] So for a lot of kids, there’s a lot of leagues and stuff for individual sports as yours kind of all encompassing that you’re kind of sport agnostic and then you’re serving a variety of sports.

Adam Geisler: [00:02:18] Well, no, it’s a really listen, a really great question. So we kind of serve both. So for people that want to have and try every sport, which is what we encourage for kids and for parents, we have amazing athletes and jump bunch. Those two brands, they’re their first sport experience and we teach a different sport every single week. So those become really important gauges for kids to try different things and find paths. Then we have sports specific curriculum. So the brand called super soccer stars called Little Rookies Baseball, and a brand called PGA Tennis and Golf Athletics, where we teach sports specific skills. All of the programs that we have are curriculum based, so they’re as little as 30 minutes to 60 minutes of fun engaging content where we’re teaching them muscle groups, food groups, and then we really get into those sports specific skills.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:07] Now, for a lot of parents, they want their kid to have as much training as possible, to be as good as they want to be or that, you know, to kind of maximize their potential. Is that for this type of parent and child or is this more for the parent that just wants the kid to have an active lifestyle, enjoy sports, you know, not be the professional athlete.

Adam Geisler: [00:03:31] So the answer is both. And that’s really what we’re very focused on. And it’s one of the reasons we’ll talk about in a few minutes of why we’ve brought these professional athlete endorsers is because the success path is actually one in the same. Whether you want to be an elite athlete or you just want to have a lifestyle. The success point is the same. And so there’s this great, great book called Sports Gene, and the principle being is intentional play versus unintentional play. So what we really want to focus on is this unintentional play. They don’t know the kid doesn’t know what they want yet because they haven’t been exposed to enough. So it’s not our decision as parents to say, I want you to be a professional baseball player or professional soccer player. It’s I want you to be a good person. I want you to be a healthy person. And I want to expose you to different things and take you down a journey where ultimately that kid can make that decision. And what we really want and we want to be able to encourage and want to have a big influence on is we don’t want that child or parent to really make that intentional decision to about six or seven years old. And this sports team really talks about this whole pathway and the pathway to lead athletes is let them figure out on their own that journey because it’s not just about where their skills are, but it’s also about where their desires are.

Adam Geisler: [00:04:48] You want that child or that parent to make that decision come to come to them on their own if they’re forced into it. We’ve heard all the stories, and we do know that there are going to be those exceptions in those one offs where it does happen at the age of 18 months. They’re swinging that golf club and we’re seeing the Tiger Woods and everybody says, well, I want to emulate that. If you want to emulate that, emulate that. This is the path. Get your kids trying multiple sports. And we really want to pride ourselves on as that first sport experience. There’s a big opportunity and responsibility that opportunities to have a big impact. But if it’s not fun, it’s not engaging. There’s times where that child or parent may opt out of that sport and they’re done. You know, we’d hate to lose a great professional soccer player if the soccer class isn’t good or if the golf classes and tennis classes good. So that’s a big responsibility on opportunity. But the answer to your question, it’s for all those parents. And the goal is let kids have fun. Let them. Learn their passion. Let them find their passion, that sport. Then at that point in time, we can take them up into that sport specific and that more intentional play with soccer, golf and tennis. But we want them to enjoy everything at first.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:58] Now, in Europe, that’s more common than here. I think that training of young people is more a generalist approach rather than a sports specific approach. Does this require a lot of education for you with the parent to explain that, look, you’re not wasting time by having them be a generous and play these sports. You’re actually helping them. That’s going to you know, they’re going to get a lot better. Maybe they’re going to get more passionate about it and they won’t burn out like some of these young people are.

Adam Geisler: [00:06:28] Yeah, there’s definitely going to take some education and listen, the brands that that that we’ve kind of put into this platform have been around for 20 plus years. So they have buy in from the parents, they have authenticity and they’ve really been tried and tested. But I think the other piece that’s really interesting to your point is we’ve brought on a few athlete endorsers. And the reason and the rationale is exactly what you’re talking about. It’s about that education. So we’ve brought on some really interesting athlete endorsers Leylah Fernandez, Trinity Rodman, Danny Geiss, Ben Graef all with different levels of success in their professional careers. But the thread between all of them is they all played multiple sports, they all had different journeys that led them to ultimately what their success point is. And by them continuing to tell their stories about how they found the sport that was important to them, and they all took similar paths to what we present. That’s the education that we want to give back to the parents. And there’s two really cool stories, if I can. One is Trinity Robin, who’s now really one of the most sought after and up and coming rising female soccer players in the country. She actually took our amazing acting classes at the age of three. And so the principal of the fact that she was exposed to so many different sports at a young age and then ultimately found that soccer was where she felt the most at home. And with her skills and her prowess, she found that after I played basketball and baseball and these other sports, this is what felt like home to me and this is something I wanted to spend my time on. And she’d had really good experiences and coaches up to that point led her to continue down that path.

Adam Geisler: [00:08:06] Leylah Fernandez much the same thing. Her father was actually a professional soccer player and so he actually didn’t want her to be a soccer player. He wanted her to take her own path. And she started out with soccer and she was really, really good at it. And then he kept exposing her to other sports to one day he went to Canadian Tire and said, Listen to sporting a store in Canada. And he said, Listen, I just want a sport where my daughter can swing something with a ball like this big. And the guy’s like, Yeah, well, have you ever heard of tennis? She’s like, No, but just give give me whatever you have. And so they found a tennis racket and tennis ball, and she swung it and she said, This is home for me. This is what I love. And that’s how she found her pathway. And we found that with Danny Guice, who is a professional golfer. His father is one of our franchisees for TGA and Danny played he actually loved basketball is his favorite sport for a while and then he found that golf was really passionate, wasn’t even until high school and that’s where he’s focused all the kind of time and attention. So having those types of stories, I think really for the parents that do believe or they see enough potential in their kids that professional or collegiate is the aspiration. We want to give them that path that this can lead you down there. And then for everyone else, we want to make sure that every parent is getting their kids involved in youth sports because we need to create and promote healthy, active lifestyles at a very young age.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:26] Now, let’s talk about the franchise aspect of this is tell me about that ideal franchisee. What does that person look like? Are they a former athlete or are they, you know, a parent with a child? Like what does a franchisee look like?

Adam Geisler: [00:09:43] Yeah, listen, we have some amazing franchisees in our system. And I would say one of the tie that binds almost every single one of these franchisees, whether it’s amazing athletes, whether it’s super soccer stars, where the PGA or whether it’s Jump Bunch is, they care about kids and they’ve had some sort of experience. Sometimes it’s their own kids are going through sports and they say, you know what, I love sports so much. I want to be a part of it and I want to impact more kids. A lot of times they’ve been educators, whether it’s physical educators or they’ve been enrichment educators. And they say, I know that sports and education can really empower and pack more kids. So I want to do that for a living. And that’s got to be the fundamental root of every franchisee. If they’re willing to get out there and coach and have an impact on kids, every single one of those franchisees will be successful. And that seems to be the profile of what we’ve really built over time. They really got to be passionate about kids and being willing to impact kids.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:36] But they don’t have to be like coaches or former players to have that kind of knowledge because you have a curricular. That’s going to do the training and teaching and coaching part.

Adam Geisler: [00:10:47] Excellent question. So it’s actually almost quite the opposite. You know, it’s sometimes harder for people at that elite level. Doesn’t mean they can’t. But but at that elite level, sometimes they have challenges relating to the younger kids. Now, our business, the real sweet spot of that business is 2 to 6. That’s where a lot of that impact is. So being able to relate to a kid at 2 to 6 is very different than being a really good professional coach who can get high school athletes or really talented younger individuals into sports. So some coaches, we do have plenty of plenty of franchisees who are at that level and have that experience and can relate. But you don’t have to because we’re teaching a life skills and it’s more about how can you relate to a kid? We can teach you soccer, baseball, those other pieces. You don’t have to have that sport experience necessarily.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:30] So what does a day look like for a franchisee?

Adam Geisler: [00:11:33] Yeah, I mean, it depends on the franchisee. And that’s what’s really nice about our system. On amazing athletes, we have these wonderful franchisees that the majority of their day is packed five days a week from about 9 to 12. And sometimes if they have after school businesses as well, but they’re going into preschools and they’re impacting kids and they’re raising kids in from different classes and different programs. They’re running about 30 minutes. It’s 30 minute sessions back to back to back for 2 to 3 hours, anywhere between 4 to 5 times a week. And as they’re growing, they’re really managing a team of 4 to 5 coaches that are doing that within the preschool channel. And that’s the amazing athletes business on the PGA. It’s much the same, but it tends to happen more after school and weekends. We’re running tennis and golf classes at schools and gymnasiums. So we’re going we’re going where the kids are, and we’re running an enrichment program where we’re teaching the fundamentals of tennis and golf, not on a tennis court or a golf course, which can be really intimidating. We want to get you there and we’ll run plenty of classes there.

Adam Geisler: [00:12:33] But those franchisees are running it at schools or hiring coaches to run this at schools. And then on the weekends they’re running those programs on court or on course where they’re able to really enrich these lives and teach them the game of golf and tennis. It’s really, really exciting. And then soccer is much the same is it can run all of those gamuts it can be during the it can be in the morning, it can be after school and it can be on the weekend or impacting these kids and these parents with their first sport experience of soccer. And it’s there’s so much excitement, so much opportunity. And we’re also finding that many of those franchisees, as we’ve been doing this for about three and a half years, they’re taking on multiple brands. So almost 30% of our system are franchisees who have either amazing athletes, soccer stars, PGA or Jump Bunch, and they have multiple brands because they feel that as long as they can impact kids throughout the day, they want to continue to use these different brands and curriculums to do it.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:27] So when they find out about your your company and then they interact with you, is it typically they have a point of entry with one of the brands and then over time they’re adding brands. Are the brands kind of like modules to one overarching umbrella or is it you’re buying an individual franchise in each brand is is its own franchise?

Adam Geisler: [00:13:48] It’s a really good question. So our theory is is no different than than any other business, I think, is you’ve got to come in with focus. So any franchisee that comes in first, they tend to come in with one point of view of they’re very into either impacting kids or specific sport, and we try to lead them down that path. But we do have other brands that we can promote, promote to them if if that territory was sold out as an example. But philosophically, if somebody is into multi sport, they’re coming through amazing athletes, we want them to start with amazing athletes for the first 1 to 2 years and then know that they have an opportunity once they start to build that business. We have other other opportunities, franchise products for them to get into, whether that’s tennis, golf, baseball or soccer. And so that’s kind of the path that we’d want them to be in. Same thing if they come in as a golf expert and they really want to we want them to start in golf, then if they’re really strong, we want to take them over to tennis or we can take them over to soccer or multi sport, but we want them to get really focused, build out their core competency in one area, but know that they have opportunities to build into other brands and build their business and have a real lifestyle business that they feel really good about impacting kids that can generate real revenue and profit for themselves.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:59] Now, is the franchisee typically kind of all in on youth athletes united or is this a complementary brand in a bigger portfolio that might include, you know, other, you know, just complementary brands that they are already a part of. So they’re already kind of in the franchise mindset and working in franchising, and they’re just adding this to a portfolio that they already have in the local market.

Adam Geisler: [00:15:24] I think. I think over time, you know, listen, we launched we had super soccer stars and amazing athletes for about three years. We recently acquired PGA tennis and golf athletics. We just added another business, little rookies, baseball as well as Jump Bunch. So I think the system overall is still very new. We’re still learning our way through what franchisees what type of franchisees will ultimately come through the system. I think you will find some franchisees that will be in franchising, say, I want to be part of this type of business. I’ve been in retail or services or other things, and this looks really interesting to me and I want to impact kids or we have some franchisees and this is what they will do exclusively is be involved in just youth sports and they’ll have they’ll buy into amazing athletes, then they’ll buy the super soccer stars and they’ll buy me. And ultimately, we’d like to see franchisees that can do all of these brands within single territories or multi unit territories.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:17] Now, you mentioned partnering with these younger athletes. Is that trickling down to leveraging some of that nil? With college athletes now being able to take sponsorship? Are you are you going in that direction as well? Or you’ve just kind of handpicked a handful of folks that represent the spirit of what you’re trying to accomplish?

Adam Geisler: [00:16:39] It’s such a great question, and I think you’re spot on to what’s going on in the market. And so what we have seen is with our athletes and Danny guys I think is a really good example of this. And we’re about to do a launch with Ben Greve next this coming weekend in San Diego on the on the baseball side is having these these local market clinics and kind of the touch and feel with these parents and these kids is is unbelievable. So the example is we use Danny Geiss. We had him do a golf clinic for us out in Long Beach with a franchisee, and he spent four and a half hours in professional golf or spent four and a half hours. These kids talk about what he goes through, teaching the different things, helping them with their swing, with their grip, all these different types of things. They will look up to Danny for the rest of his life. As far as they’re concerned, he is Tiger Woods. He is Phil Mickelson. He is one of these elite golfers. And so that aspirational piece, I think, is really important when you can have that connection. So I think our vision we’ve talked to a few different groups about it is to really look at those collegiate athletes. We’ve got to be smart about it. But finding those collegiate athletes in soccer, golf, tennis, multi sports where they can come in and they can impact kids on a different level because they will look up to them, they will follow them. And we know that aspirational piece. It’s good for the parents and it’s good for them for the kids to see what can I be if I if I put my mind to it, what can I accomplish?

Lee Kantor: [00:18:01] So are you targeting certain regions of the country or is this kind of a the world is your oyster situation where you’ll take a franchisee from anywhere?

Adam Geisler: [00:18:10] It’ll really be about franchise adoption. You have some franchisees that I think will will be able to leverage this and be able to do it really well. And so it’ll be on a case by case basis for the franchisee where it makes the most sense if a franchise in Missouri finds that they can get some good local college athletes in tennis and golf, and that can really help them activate their business and impact their business, let’s do it. If in Detroit it doesn’t make sense, we’re not going to do it. So it’s really on a case by case basis. But I think principally the concept of being able to use these collegiate athletes as as role models and examples and aspirations for these kids and these parents is really important. It’s a big opportunity that now a company like ours is afforded to do, and we’re absolutely going to take advantage of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:52] So what’s next for you? How do you kind of project growth in the coming year or two?

Adam Geisler: [00:18:58] Yeah, listen, I think for us, you know, we really want to see ourselves growing at 50 to 100 units across our system every single year. And that’s agnostic of brand. As long as we’re impacting kids, it doesn’t matter. And so I think we want to get more amazing at these franchisees, super successful franchisees to franchisees. We just launched little rookies baseball. We want to get more jump on franchisees. We want to see our systems grow. And I think as we continue to do that and we find we see all these shared services where franchisees are able to come in, we’re able to remove a lot of the points of failure that a lot of franchisees have coming in, whether that’s admin, whether that’s scale, whether it’s technology resources, whether it’s marketing resources. A lot of things that we can provide that are turnkey. If we can remove a lot of those points of failure and give new franchisees more confidence to grow within the system and bring in new, then we’ll also continue to look at new support verticals. So I think system growth over the next 3 to 5 years with what we have is really important. And I think there’s probably 2 to 3 new sport verticals that we really see ourselves getting into that will really help grow and kind of complete that athlete pathway where ultimately we want a parent to be able to come to Youth Athletes United and say, listen, I want to I want to invest my time and money into you because I trust you as a brand. And I want to be able to take a soccer class, a baseball class, a tennis class, a multisport class. All with you. I know. I trust you. I know you have all my information. I know you’re going to give me a quality experience and my kids are going to be able to go through the athlete pathway. That’s where we want to be a year or two from now.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:33] Well, congratulations on all the success. If somebody wants to learn more about the opportunity, what’s a website?

Adam Geisler: [00:20:39] Yes. Youth Athletes United.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:42] Good stuff. Well, congratulations again. And thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Adam Geisler: [00:20:49] Thanks a lot.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:50] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.