Dustin Heise 0:00

Awesome. So good to get some time today, Jess. So stoked to just finally get to connect here. Today's guest is Jess Nickel, co-founder and CEO of Nickel Sports, where she's building a new generation of multi-racket sports clubs designed to bring people together through play from growing a junior squash program into Thriving Club Network. Jess is redefining what community-centered sport looks like. Thanks so much for taking some time today. This is awesome.

Jess Winstanley 0:24

Thanks, Justin. Great to meet you.

Dustin Heise 0:26

I know you're also a surfer. That's awesome.

Jess Winstanley 0:28

Yeah, I love it. I'm I'm like an obsessed mediocre surfer.

Dustin Heise 0:32

That's great. And it's okay because we love it and we just get out there to get in the water. And you know what? My whole life will be about mediocre surfing, but that's okay. I just love being out there. And now my daughter's found the love of it, so I have a reason to get out there more and more too. I love it. Nichols, you know, been about court sport, but it's so much more than that. It's about building healthier, more connected communities. When did you realize that, you know, sport can be such a broader vehicle for bringing people together?

Jess Winstanley 1:00

Probably COVID, but I would back up before then, in the sense of my husband and I, he's a former world number one for five years squash player. My mother ran professional, the major professional circuit tournaments in North America. And that's how I got really deep into the world of squash. And we started initially, we moved from the UK to the US 13 years ago, and we started a weekend kids program. And that was really an exceptional experience because first and foremost, squash is a niche sport. And when a kid finds squash, generally they've been through, you know, the team sports and whatever else, they haven't really found their thing. And they find squash, and it's very particular, and it transforms their experience in life and it gets them active. It brings them into a new community, and you see this sense of purpose come alive within a child. And like that is just about the most beautiful thing that you can experience in the world. So that was a really, really big moment, I think, for both of us. But then subsequent to that, it was COVID, in which we all experienced obviously such a separated and more lonely lifestyle. And that's when we built our New York City club through COVID, which is insane, to build an indoor rack and sports club in COVID. And I think though that that was a big, a big driver behind the purpose that we had in that period of time to keep going and to keep building this club and to make it happen because we needed it too. So I just think, yeah, that, you know, the more of the digital age and less getting on our feet and exercising and hanging out with other people, that was a big driver for us.

Dustin Heise 2:43

You guys chose an incredible moment in time to open up that club, especially during COVID. And then, you know, again, and also some of the pre-chat, just knowing how resilient and how driven you guys are. And do you mind just sharing, like in that moment during COVID, like how on earth did you keep the push for the resiliency and determination to make that come to life? Like, what are some of those, you know, key pieces that you kept having to reflect back on to keep grounding the ability to keep moving forward and make it such a success?

Jess Winstanley 3:12

It's so funny because like, you know, I I've been asked that question before, and I think, of course, like it took an enormous amount of resilience and drive and all of these things. But I I think I'm I'm tested all the time. But I, you know, when I thought that one moment was the hardest, something else happens, and that's the hardest moment. And then, you know, frankly, it hasn't gotten any easier over time. And I still have these in COVID is huge. I know that that's a really large benchmark, but frankly, that, you know, that hasn't been the most stressful moment over time just because it continues. And so to answer your question, first and foremost, I'm in it with my partner.

Dustin Heise 3:51

Yeah.

Jess Winstanley 3:52

My husband is my co-founder. We both have very different roles within the business. I'm the CEO and he's what we call our CRO, our chief rackets officer. And so he manages basically our whole player journey and then also our coaches that execute on that player journey. And I do all like, I think the less interesting stuff, like all of our financials and our growth path and so on and so forth. But um, having a partner in it, whether it's your, you know, your life partner, whether it's a co-founder, whatever it looks like, I think is huge. Being in it with someone, being in it with someone who knows the stress, the wins, the losses, the ups, the downs, and everything in between, that's probably the biggest reason why I'm still here today doing what we're doing and continuing to do more.

Dustin Heise 4:39

I'll admit that, you know, the only reason I can still be standing here today is thanks to my wife and my partner in this whole thing too, supporting my ability to keep going forward. It's always a grind, and you set a new bar of what it actually takes, and then you see what the potential is, and then you continue to push that way. You grew up in racket clubs and and you know, now you've built your own. You know, what lessons from your early years have shaped the way you lead? And you you've spoken about just the family legacy, even of seeing and and having some of this modeled, maybe. But do you mind just sharing a little bit about that?

Jess Winstanley 5:11

We're super family friendly. We're very intentionally family family friendly. And I think what I grew up with with my club, the Granite Club in Toronto, was just I had such a sense of belonging. And my husband, who grew up in his own club in the northeast of Scotland and Aberdeen, had the same feeling, a sense of belonging, a sense of feeling welcome in a place where I was welcome as, you know, a six-year-old kid. And my parents, who were very, very active squash players in our club, were equally welcome. And having that feeling was huge for us. And at the time, when we built our New York City Club, we had built a couple, two others previously in partnership with other folks. And then our New York City Club, which we opened five years ago, that was our first independent club. Our big goal was to create that feeling, to create a place where those that stepped in, no matter what their age, background, so on and so forth, they felt welcome. That was really important for us. Because around us at the time, in particular in New York City, it was largely private clubs. That was really the only place where you could play squash. And um, kids, you know, aren't overly welcome in those environments. And um, so again, we wanted a place where everybody felt, felt good.

Dustin Heise 6:28

Love that. Guessing that you're gonna be able to double-click on that a bit more with the, you know, the brand of nickel sport and like ensuring that that feeling is synonymous with what you guys are building. But you've expanded from squash into pickleball and and pedel now. And, you know, what have those sports taught you about making these more accessible and more people? And and and now both of those sports are so complementary to, of course, squash and the racket sport family, but we're talking about a massive movement right now, and and how are you guys capitalizing on that and and you know, and that in inclusive ability to bring so many more people into this sport?

Jess Winstanley 7:04

Oh man, I mean, they have been so awesome for racket sports. They're so much more accessible and fun than squash. I mean, squash is like, have you played before?

Dustin Heise 7:13

No, I haven't. No, I haven't. That's which is pathetic because I've had so much accessing anyways.

Jess Winstanley 7:20

It's not pathetic at all. It is such a hard sport. Like you play once and like your butt hurts so bad that like you're you're gonna struggle to sit down on a wood chair after that. And and it's really hard to learn, you know. And I think that kids love it. We do multi-racquet camps now that we have our multi-racquet club, and kids try all the three sports, and they tend to love squash the most because that's the only racket sport that you can just hit the crap out of the ball and it doesn't go out. But I think as we get a little bit older, squash is just physically it's it's very hard. And it's also not as social because there's only two people on the court. So pickleball and pedell, first and foremost, pickleball is just this awesome, you know, easy entry to racket sports. It's just so easy to pick up. You can play at, you know, all the gamuts of ages. Um, and then Padell is the step up from pickleball in terms of fitness, technique, progression, so on and so forth. So to compare again the two, I'd say the best part of pickleball and pedell is that they are more accessible than most of the racket sports out there in terms of ease of getting started with it and playing. And then the second thing is that it's inherently more social because you have four people on that court. Love that. But interesting, interestingly, Dustin, I don't know if you know this. We opened with four pickleball courts in our facility in New Jersey. We're now down to one because Pedell is just such a huge hit.

Dustin Heise 8:46

Oh, crazy. Do you mind like I, you know, because some of the results that we're seeing right now and in sport and you know, we're seeing that uh, you know, within social media that, you know, the fastest growing sports, you know, we're talking about both of them right now, you know, with pickleball and then pedal exploding so fast right now. What is it about these sports that we can continue to expect this kind of growth? Do you anticipate this kind of growth? And how do we how do we catch and support this kind of movement and and propel that? Because we want to see everyone participating in sport. It doesn't matter what sport. We want to just see people staying healthy and active for life. And, you know, how do we make sure that people know how to get involved in these? And and and you as a business leader and owner, you know, how do you capitalize on this to connect with that many more people that I know you'll want to support and get a healthy, fulfilled life?

Jess Winstanley 9:34

You know, I can't really speak to the pickleball market very well, mostly because it didn't work very well for us. We still will maintain that one court, which has been great. Um, but I do think a lot of my peers that are in pickleball and have been successful in pickleball, they have a different type of business. We are a very dedicated members club. So the way that we've built our club is that financially, it is not worthwhile to join multiple clubs and play at a number of clubs. You join nickel, you play at nickel. And a lot of pickleballers love a different experience where they can, you know, float around. They're so good at creating their own communities. They don't need a club to create a community for them. They have their people and so on and so forth. Pidel, on the other hand, is um it's in a really interesting growth path in the US in particular. It's massive in Europe. You know, you go, I was in France two summers ago, and I went to a tennis club in the south of France that I heard might have Padel. I couldn't even find it online that it had Padel. Went there. They had converted 14 out of their 20 tennis courts to Padell courts, and you couldn't get a Padell court until like, I don't know, 9 p.m. that night. And so it's it's really massive in Europe, and it just started hitting the US shores a few years ago and is now really gaining momentum and getting out there and press and you now see some big investments starting to happen and so on and so forth. So I think that Padell has the the biggest room and and area to grow in racket sports in this country, and I think the next few years are going to be really fascinating.

Dustin Heise 11:12

In our earlier part of the chat, we were talking about really leaning into the culture of that inclusivity. You know, how do you make sure that we maintain that and that you guys as a brand can continue to make sure that it's inclusive? And how does Padel enable that? Or is it already naturally kind of built into the spirit of the sport and and do people all feel that belonging like you'd experienced growing up in the in the rocket sport environment?

Jess Winstanley 11:36

You know, first and foremost, I think it's it's interesting to figure out first what the definition of inclusivity is, because inclusivity also means financial inclusivity, and you're not going to find financially inclusive places to play Padell all over the country. Um, they do exist. Like we are, in terms of the world of Padell, we are an extremely affordable place to play, but it's still expensive. So it's $79 a month to be a member, and then on top of that, you pay $22 per person per hour to play Padell. And so it still has an expense to it.

Dustin Heise 12:11

It still has a cost, sure.

Jess Winstanley 12:13

Yep. And then, but again, we're sort of at the base, and then it goes up from there. So it depends where you're playing. In terms of inclusivity and and this sport out there, right now there's so many people that are either looking to or opening clubs or expanding their own brand of clubs. And so that's the biggest thing is just getting a club open, you know, within a reasonable distance from where you are. And we're still not there yet. You know, there's still few and far between Padel clubs, unless you're in a major city. But in terms of what we do for inclusivity, I mean, I think that all the good clubs are doing this. You have to have a very, very clear player journey from the first moment that they reach out and they express interest in getting on a court. They have no idea how to start. They don't necessarily have anyone that they can play with. So you have to create all of those things for them. And, you know, we have like a path that we take them on from their first reach out to getting them on court and then to getting them to play, which means with other people. And then from play, they go to compete. Compete is our leagues, it's tournaments, it's so on and so forth. So we have a very clear player journey. Not everyone stays in it until they get to compete, but that's our goal is to take them on that path. Because until then, you know, you're still in this journey where as an adult in particular, you're not yet experiencing play.

Dustin Heise 13:36

And I think that that's a huge- I love where you're going with this, by the way.

Jess Winstanley 13:40

Yeah, like we lose that as adults. Kids, it's like natural.

Dustin Heise 13:43

Within the club, can you stay on both paths throughout an entire player journey? Yeah. Can you stay on just participate the whole time? And if you then want to migrate into compete, yeah, you can dip into compete, but oh, maybe compete's not for me. I want to come back to just the participate journey because it's, you know, don't enjoy that pressure or whatever it is, you know, but like all good. Is that a is that a possibility?

Jess Winstanley 14:03

Absolutely. You can do whatever you want. Like you can sign up for a clinic and just do two clinics a week for like, you know, the rest of your life. At the same time, we're going to encourage you out of that because uh again, I come back to it. Also, it depends on the market that you're at. Where we are, we're in New Jersey on the east coast of New Jersey, and women in particular are really used to taking classes. And I am trying to break that habit of just expecting to show up and you have a coach tell you what to do, and you go through your 60-minute, 90-minute class, whatever it is. And I again coming back to that sense of play, yes, there's going to be so much enjoyment in that clinic. You're challenging yourself, you know, you're competing within the clinic, you're learning, you're progressing, you're hanging out with other people. It's great. At the same time, I really am passionate about bringing in play to an adult's life in particular, which you will only get if you are taking that risk and that chance of going into a match with other people that you don't necessarily know really well. You're competing in a league, you're competing on a team, and so on and so forth, and just bringing play back into our adult life, which we don't get a lot of opportunities to do.

Dustin Heise 15:16

Oh, that's right. We uh as a fam, we play a lot of bump. It's pretty intensive. Wait, what? I don't even know what bump is. I need to learn bump. It's a great game. I mean, offline, I'm gonna teach you about this right after this call because it's so good. It's such a fun game. My daughters are huge into basketball, so you know that's been a huge piece, but that's been you know the biggest play element of healthy and our day-to-day for real. Because, you know, like yourself, like you're you we're driving the business here at Canada Snowboard day in, day out. And how do we make sure that similarly the athlete pathway, but also the participant journey, as we can see where they want to come in and out of that, very, very similar. For nickel sport, like how do you see the next phase of your you know business journey and you know, making sure that you can drive more people into the participate and then into the compete? Do you want to speak a little bit about some of the the new and next chapters of of nickel sport and how you're making that come to life? Because I know that listeners are always looking at business leaders who are also in sport and how you're being ongoingly ambitious with new acquisitions and growth and the pathway ahead. So maybe just share a little bit about you know what's next and how you guys are taking it to the next place. Because this is the pushing yourselves, but from a business context in sport.

Jess Winstanley 16:30

Yeah. So the business side of it is that we have been very intentional with our work on our standardized operating systems over the past few years. And we were able to test it in multiple club experiences that we had, followed by opening up our own club. And we worked with a couple of consultants to really nail it down before we opened up our multi-sport club in New Jersey 16 months ago. So the reason why I share this is because we were very intentional about saying, hey, we're not just doing one, we're not just doing two. We're going to nail this down so that we can have as much standardized ease. Because at the end of the day, that is what creates ease, is having everything be standardized and clear operating systems, and everybody knows what they're doing. So that was set up again very intentionally. We needed help. We needed consultants. I cannot recommend consultants enough to everybody out there. And then uh subsequent to that, we have had a lot of doors open to us because we've been operating clubs for so long. And so we just signed, we opened up an outdoor club this past summer that is Paddle only, Padel only.

Dustin Heise 17:37

Awesome.

Jess Winstanley 17:37

We just signed our fourth club lease a couple mornings ago, and that's going to be uh within the area where we are currently. Our model is to do a a regional expansion before we then go to another area. Regional expansion has a flagship followed by two to three outposts, and those outposts may not have all the sports. So the outpost, the next club that we're opening in an area called Ocean Township, New Jersey, that's Padell only, um, as well as Wellness. And then subsequent to that, East Brunswick, which is uh west of us, and that as well will be Padell only. So certain markets will speak to pickleball as well, certain markets will speak to squash as well. Badminton is also very much on our radar, but again, it really depends on the market, and we're pretty clear with regards to the demographic that we seek, and then working with seasoned real estate folks who who are really highlighting areas to us. And then, you know, we built we've built an incredible network over time, and we lean on that network in order to understand further opportunities.

Dustin Heise 18:39

I love the strategy and then how you're making the SOPs real and then in the day-to-day operating and then driving that through actual execution. Did you guys have an initial strategic plan? Do are you still operating by that strategic plan or have you passed the first one, Jess? And now you're into V2 of what the the nickel sports strategy looks like, or where are you at in that life cycle or lifespan?

Jess Winstanley 19:04

Oh, we create it and modify it all the time. So, you know, the initial SOPs that we finished and spent a year on, we finished those three years ago, they're now owned by our COO, and he is modifying them every week. Um and that's a live document that is continuously modified because we're also changing our business all the time. We just added two new sports 15 months ago, and we're not necessarily saying that's it. And so, yes, they get modified all the time. Strategy also doesn't necessarily change in terms of our regional expansion. Did we set out to do a regional expansion when we signed our lease and opened up in New Jersey 15 months ago? No. So that has also come with time and understanding the change in the market and understanding the people that we're serving and what they demand. And last but not least, the relationships that you create, you know, our follow-on opportunities are only because of the relationships that that we have made and then subsequent real estate opportunities that came from those relationships.

Dustin Heise 20:07

Well, I have no doubt by the intention that you guys operate with the sincerity, but also the the energy that you bring, you know, just even in the chat, like you you guys are so on point and where you want to go. You know, if every community had a place like nickel, how do you think sport could change people's lives every day? You know, even beyond competition. They've left the racket court now, and where does it change their lives as well?

Jess Winstanley 20:33

Oh man, I mean, this is like this is one that will like bring me to tears, that type of a question. Because I mean, I just think that racket sports in particular, for me, because of what I've experienced, you know, it's about connection and togetherness and competition and sweat and all of these things. And it just solves loneliness in many ways. And I think that, you know, with this never-ending increase dependency on technology at all ages, it's also, you know, senior citizens and so on and so forth, and you know, the isolation that we can experience in our lives. Loneliness is just huge. And so if everyone could have a, you know, whatever, it's it's not a nickel. It's it's any type of a community center that serves their needs and their wants, where they are getting out there, being active and curing loneliness, this is going to be such a better world out there in all of our lives, which would be so much better.

Dustin Heise 21:30

I'm so with you on what sport's potential is in connectivity and bringing people together, common purpose, and just that that love that people are able to experience through that connection. And sport is uh, you know, better than than any other connector. Kind of just a bit of a wrap-up question, but you know, one that I think, you know, you know, will be really meaningful, especially is how fast you guys are moving. In one year's time, what is one defining moment you hope to look back on and realize that everything's changed on that side of things? In one year's time horizon, we're gonna ask the same question from a more of a five-year time horizon. Where do you feel like you're able to go and what defining moments you'll experience in that time frame?

Jess Winstanley 22:07

So in one year's time, we will have our platform established. Right now, we have two proofs of concept, two clubs that are successful. And my definition of successful is that they operate without my involvement and they're financially stable. And the platform is going to be our regional proof that this is, you know, exactly what we are building and it's a scalable model. I'd say five years from now, um, maybe if we were to one plus five, we're at six, it would be walking into a nickel that I had very little involvement in opening. And I walk in and it feels undeniably nickel. From we have a signature fist pump that we do at the front desk, coaches everyone, and I feel belonging and I feel a sense of inclusivity when I walk into that space, which is really what we're trying to create in every single moment that somebody steps in our door.

Dustin Heise 23:08

That is so good on brand execution and vision. Thank you so much for sharing that. Jess, I look forward to following up this chat in the not so distant future and getting on a Pedel court with you guys. Thanks so much for everything today.

Jess Winstanley 23:22

You're awesome, Dustin. Thanks so much for having me. You take care.