There’s no brand without a community

If you don’t ask for more, how can you expect to grow. Learn to work for free, but not forever. You’ll be surprised what can be achieved just by asking.

These are the core lessons from the month just gone. Before I started planning for this month’s journal it felt like a slow month, it felt as though we hadn’t achieved much — but then I remembered what PCKLD is and what the foundation of this brand is. Community. And community is definitely what we created this month.

We wanted to get our name out there, directly to our intended audience, consistently. We knew what we wanted to do, but we didn’t have the courts to do it on.

Our local courts had a problem. They tried getting the attention of the younger pickleball community. The issue was it just doesn’t exist on the Sunshine Coast. Not yet.

We knew how to get their attention and so we set our pitch. We’ll bring the younger players but we would like our name on the event. A small ask — but how can you expect to grow if your name is hidden.

We’ve had the same mindset from the beginning: build community and the money will come. So that’s exactly what we have been doing. Printed the flyers, announced the event and sold out our first two Sunday Socials — but we wanted more, we wanted bigger.

Our competitors were hosting the same style event in the two hour slot before ours. They’ve been running the same event for months: four courts capped at 20 players. The following weekend we sold out again — but this time 6 courts and 30 players. As of writing this our 4th weekend has sold out. All we did was ask. Then we put in the work, for free, but people are now recognising us as a pickleball community.

Partnerships & leverage

Next, obtain relationships and partnerships to leverage growth. This has been the main goal towards the back end of this month. Our social session has gained enough traction and now only requires minimal marketing to fill remaining spots.

The next goal was to work with brands that align with our vision. Again, you’ll be surprised what can be achieved just by asking. After setting our pitch and sending a few emails we had responses within two days. Switch Nutrition offered to give us 80 hydration bottles for two Sunday socials and HUSTL Pickleball is keen to collaborate together. Don’t be afraid to ask and don’t worry — they’ll tell you if you’re asking for too much.

Last month our trade mark application for PCKLD got rejected (an adverse examination report to be exact). When we came up with our brand name we knew there wasn’t another operating entity that could conflict our application in Australia. This made us question the result.

Turns out there was another brand in the US called PCKL. After some digging we discovered this business appeared to be no longer operating in the US. So like any normal human would do, Zak found their IP representative (a.k.a lawyer) for Australia and sent an email — and we were right. The business was no longer operating in the US… more to come.

A massive realisation from this month. Shit always hits the fan when you don’t expect it to. Coordinating over 20 humans is hard. Plan for the plan to fail.

This goal isn’t as simple as we thought. Regardless, we’re still pushing for traction. Towards the end of the month we have been in contact with a local university who we’re hoping to partner with on this operation. We’ll keep you in the loop.

Lesson from this month? Confidence. Builds. Everything.