Building Your Tennis Brand

In this episode I discuss what a brand is and what it means for tennis coaches. Brand and marketing has long been a side interest for me and I cover common misconceptions and brand perceptions.

Coaches need to spend time building their brand.

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Cheers

Rick

Transcript

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The art of tennis. The art of tennis. Coaches, welcome to the Art of Tennis. This is episode 10. This is going to be talking about what is a brand and how that can relate to your tennis coaching business. So my own background. Some American pioneers, such as Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham. I guess I've I've studied it quite a lot on my own. Marketing and then what also is brand. Now, brand is different than marketing. And I ended up working as a bit of a side hustle, I guess, when I wasn't coaching tennis. I spent some time in business development at an ad agency and did that a couple for a couple of years. And they worked on everything from a company coming in with no no brand. And then they look at all the the values of the business, the the target market of the business, the visual identity, which is logo and other web design, and then how it how it unfolds in the in the world. So I've had a bit to do with that and sat in different brainstorming sessions, and it's really quite enjoyable to me because a brand is is really about what people how they perceive they perceive a company, right? So you've got you've got a logo. A lot of people think a brand is a logo, right? It's just the M for McDonald's is the brand, but it's not. Nike, the tick is not just the tick. It's what is the tick, what feelings does the tick bring up? Okay. So for Nike, you you look at the tick, and it does, it brings up fitness, activity, achievement. Um, if we look at maybe Rafael Nadal's bull logo, uh, for me, that's gonna bring up tenacity, grit, um, hard work, things like that. So it's it's far more than just the squiggly picture of the logo. Uh, I know people who are you know full-time in the brand and and marketing world, and and they can't stand it when people think that a brand is just a just a logo. It's far more than that. Um, but effectively, it's the whole massive group of thoughts and feelings that you get when you think about a company or think about that brand. So every thought you get encompasses what the brand is. So really it's it's pretty important, Brad, that you know who you are, who you're targeting, and you know what what your niche is. Um quite often there's a really good book by Simon Sinek called Start With Why. And his theory is that you need to start with the why to really attract people who are most interested in what you do. So, for example, if we're if we go back to tennis now, um we might have tennis. Uh you might you as a coach, you might believe that tennis is teaches life lessons. Um, you might believe tennis is a great social sport. You might might see it more as just the best ultimate fitness activity to do. You might love the competitive side, you might just really be only interested in tennis as a as a high-achieving pathway, competitive pathway. You might really love the nitty-gritty of the technique in tennis and love teaching that and really get obsessed over that side. Um, so you need to, as a coach, you need to start with what your why is. Well, why why do you coach tennis and what is maybe a little bit unique about why you coach tennis? Because if you're, for example, if you're a double specialist coach, all right, now there's not many of them, you know, to be fair, running a club, it's very difficult to be a double specialist, but let's just do it for a thought experiment. So if you're a double specialist coach and you you are going to attract people who are going to want your expertise in that area. Now, maybe the guy down the road he coaches everything, but he's not a double specialist, he doesn't go under that niche. So he might be uh he or she might coach singles, juniors, adults, um, cardio tennis, everything else, but they're also happen to be really good at coaching doubles. But you compare that to someone who is, you know, um uh a double specialist academy. So for that thought experiment, they're gonna attract more people who are going to believe they know they are expert in that little space. All right, so that that's a nice way to sort of put in that niche or um that unique, you know, what they call a unique selling proposition. Um a brand a brand needs to hit hit the emotion. So people make their decisions normally emotionally, okay. Even the most logical type, they will often make a buying decision uh emotionally, with it with their heart. Now, what happens is we we we get a gut instinct that we want to do it, and so we we we sort of decide emotionally, but then we justify it uh with our logic. Okay, so we'll we'll make the decision, oh um, yeah, this is definitely the right one. This for me, oh, because their their costs are just right for me, or whatever else. Um, or this is this is suitable for me, um because the others don't have that level of detail. So it's it's normally an emotional response first. Um that's why good advertising hits people emotionally. So they look at it and they feel an emotional response to it. It's it's it's not it's not logic. Okay, it's it might be justified with logic, but it starts with emotion. So what are your coaching values, right? So let's say as a coach, you you might be you might be more on the playful side, it might be just a just happy, happy, fun time you can have by doing tennis lessons. And if that's the case, then you should really lean into that, and then you're gonna attract people who are gonna resonate with that philosophy or that value. Um, maybe you're more drill sergeant type, and you you know it's a little bit little bit hard, bit of a tough cat. Um, and you know, you're throwing push-ups in for mistakes, and you know, if that's your thing, that's your thing, and own it, and then you're gonna attract people who are probably more on the competitive front, who are gonna want to be pushed, um, and you know, they they're going to be attracted to that style of coaching, whether that's a junior or an adult. So you need to think about um what your coaching values are. So, for me, I mean, running Scarborough Tennis Academy, which I have done for 19 years, um, our values are really growing people through tennis, growing players through tennis, growing humans through the sport of tennis. Now, when I say growing, it's not just growing, it's it's growing from a personal growth point of view. So, you know, because tennis, when you're learning and you're going through the competition and the highs and lows of winning and losing, and improving, and working on your game, and going back, that's a real it's a real personal growth journey that you go on to do that. So for me, that's how we we lean in on that. Um, now that then attracts quite a few different people, it can attract people interested in trying it out and and playing tennis once a week. It also attracts those who are looking for that longer journey who understand that that growth that they get from the sport is is really important. So that's kind of how we play it. Um, but like I said earlier, get get your get your niche right, right? Get your niche, get your niche right and and lean, lean into it a little bit. So if you're a personal, you know, some coaches will they'll want to have it as uh Sally's tennis, you know, tennis with Sally. Okay, so if you if you're tennis with Sally, um maybe Sally's a local legend, you know, she might live in a you know in a large town in in Australia or in the States or in the UK or in Europe, and people know Sally because Sally's won a bunch of um tennis tournaments and she's helped out some people, but Sally decides to start her tennis coaching. Now, she might be tennis with Sally, and that's a personal brand. Now, this is great if you're I guess taking the sole trader type position on this, where people are gonna go if they get Sally. All right, and Sally, maybe Sally can charge quite a premium because people like going with Sally, but here's the issue with with Sally's situation is that she can't scale. So Sally is gonna struggle to then expand to more group classes, expand her coaching academy. Because when Sally introduces uh uh Mark and and and Leroy uh as her assistants, people tennis with Sally is is a little bit it's a bit distorted now because it's not Sally anymore, it's tennis with Leroy, but the brand is still tennis with Sally. So you've got to be really careful with that. So the personal brand, it can be a really good way to get get cracking, to get to get started. Um but it's you know it's it's less less of a good way for a long-term business to be able to scale. Um when else would you would you build a personal brand? Now, if I was uh Andy Roddick, okay, who you know, Andy Roddick is uh obviously a former um Grand Slam champion, um number one in the world, I'm sure Andy got to number one. But Andy Roddick's had a pretty massive brand name. So for Andy Roddick, it's probably not a smart idea for Andy Roddick to try to call himself All-Star Tennis, because people are gonna see all-star tennis and think, okay, well, this is fine, sounds like just another tennis coaching program or academy. Um, he's gonna use his name because he has a he's a celebrity, he's a famous tennis name. So if you're Andy Roddick, you're going to call you're going to call it the Andy Roddick Tennis Academy. If you're not Andy Roddick and you're not famous, then if you're going to do the personal brand thing, then you either A, that's your end goal, and you just want to keep it fairly small. Maybe you've got 50 clients and you you look after them all with your tennis with Sally. Um or I guess or B if you if you're going with a personal brand B you need to be you need to be prepared to morph into a bigger brand. So you might get going with that just to get your first stage of uh you know first little bit of scale to maybe 50 clients, and then you're going to need to to rebrand into something else once you get to that level. The business brand is a way that you can you can create a something that's much bigger than you. Okay, so you might be a really good coach, but you decide that you want to create a brand where there's lots of really good coaches, and you have the ability to scale by having it as a brand name. Now, that brand name we could think of examples, go onto ChatGPT and go give me some names for tennis academies, and in three seconds you'll get a hundred. Now that used to be a bit different, you used to have to do a lot of brainstorming to find names, um, look at you know metaphors on names and play plays on words and things like that. Um, AIs are making that really quite easy. So you get your brand name. I'll use all-star tennis because I've mentioned it. I actually used to have that for a brief time as my business name. I don't love it, I don't hate it, but let's use it. All-star tennis. Um, but the difference is all-star tennis, we might build that brand as the place where everyone knows you're going to get a highly qualified coach who is an expert in their little area. So all-star tennis, we could build to five coaches um who are who are all considered to be professionals and impressive, um, impressive coaches. And so then you've you've built the the perception of all-star tennis is this professional school. What's I guess what you've got to be what you've got to be careful of is you've you've got to be careful not to build yourself if you're running a business as a as a tennis coach, not to just build yourself a job. Alright, I talked about it um I talked about it earlier, uh earlier episode about you know the difference between business ownership and and uh sorry um the difference between self-employed, the S of uh Robert Kiyosaki's book, the the S versus the B, the business owner. So you've got to be careful that you're not stuck with no room to grow, um, and you are not stuck just basically selling your services and your your coaching um with no room to to scale. So I think most club coaches, whether it's country club, uh community club, they really need to look at creating a brand that can scale so that you don't get stuck in the perception of only getting the the main coach. Okay. Um, so how do you create your brand? Um, you need to, as I said, the Simon Signek book, start with why. You need to you need to start and and and write down things like why why do you coach and why is tennis coaching so important to you? If you can sort of write this stuff down, you'll start to uncover um what it what it means to you, okay, and what you know. So, I mean, for example, tennis for me gave me it gave me some confidence because I might have not been succeeding at school and then I was succeeding in tennis. So it sort of maybe helped taught me how to achieve a little bit more, um, and all those life lessons that go with it. I also believe tennis is a global sport. Um, soccer gets called the well game, but tennis is also a global game, and you can travel anywhere and you can get involved with communities when you're a tennis player. So, you know, there are a couple of my whys, but I've got I've got a few different whys, but you should be writing down your why. Um, and then then you need to do things like you know, you can pick some different colors that you want your brand to you know your brand to to look like. So, for example, what's interesting is when I first started Scarborough Tennis Academy, we had a green logo. Now, I didn't actually know about this then, but I do now. We had a green logo. Now, green uh when it comes to a brand represents uh growth and growing. So we had the green logo, which really was perfect for our first say 10 years, um, and then in the more recent years we rebranded and we rebranded to to a navy blue or blue and white. And what blue represents from a brand point of view is more uh a trust, uh, a brand that you can trust. And for us, it works beautifully because we've we've sort of done our time, we've grown, we're sort of like an enthusiastic brand who pushed through and started to get results, and then we settled in to be more of a trusting brand. All right, so that's worked for us, but you got to think about what colors can can work, uh, can work for you. Now, once you've you've got your colors, you could then I mean you can go to Canva and try to design your own logo. I I can't handle it when I see a really bad logo. It's to me, it's disturbing. Um, you know, so be careful not to get clip art like with your logo, um, because again, that visual identity is how they're going to perceive the professionalism of your business. So they see a clip art logo, they're gonna be it's gonna get the eek, right? It's gonna be what what's this all about? These guys um are not the real deal, so get a decent logo. So if you don't design on Canva, you can actually get a fairly cheap logo on uh outsourcing websites like Up Upwork. Uh you you might pay a couple of hundred dollars and get some really good logo options. If you've got a little bit more money and you want to sit with someone in uh in real life, then go to a better graphic designer. Um, spend your one, two thousand dollars. You can spend a lot more than that, by the way, but and get a proper uh you know, brand identity logo and what goes on your, you know, it could be your email signature, your website, all this can be designed up in similar colors, similar design, um, so you have this consistency that people see. So you need to um need to get your need to get your your brand identity right, and you need to be consistent, not just in your colors of your logo on your website versus social media versus this, but you need to be consistent in how you deliver your your coaching services or pro shop services or whatever it might be. You need to be consistent. So, for example, just thinking of the story, um, I know when you go to uh when you go to a lot of coffee shops, let's say um, you know, if we go to Starbucks perhaps or or Dome coffee shops, a lot of coffees they come with a little tiny teddy on the side, right? People love that tiny teddy, it's it's not much cost, but if they took that tiny teddy away, someone would be disappointed. Oh, where's my I like my little tiny teddy that I get. So, you know, it's that consistency that you're getting every time. You know, brand like McDonald's, extremely consistent. Okay, they are highly systemized, and so you know that your Big Mac is your Big Mac. Might be getting a little bit smaller with uh shrinkflation, but your Big Mac is your Big Mac, and the taste is consistent. You sort of know what you're in for. Um, so that's the plan. So as a coach, you should be you should be thinking about your values, thinking about what you want, what what your outcome of this whole the vision of your business, where do you want it to go, who do you want to target? Um, and then you build your you build your brand around that. But always be be talking to people and considering what they think your brand is about. Okay, so they they might teach you, you might not realize that they're like, oh, I just love how um how positive you guys are, and you're just always positive with the kids, etc. And that might be feedback that you didn't realize that you're actually a really uh optimistic, positive uh brand, and that's how you need to be uh doing you need to be doing that consistently. So it's a really wonderful world uh brand and and and the perception that people have. It's it's to me really interesting stuff. Um, but if you really want to just get those fundamentals done, you need to have a think about your values, you need to build a brand identity on top of that, and you need to be consistent. So um that that's it on uh what is a brand. All right, thank you. Cheers. The art of tenant, the art of tenant, art of tenant.