Courtesy of Jon Neeter
In 2010, Jon Neeter and his business partner took over a tennis center in Santa Monica, California.
They leased the real estate — a single tennis court with an attached 330-square-foot pro shop — and bought the business.
The business at the time amounted to "basically a ball machine, two ball carts, four ball tubes, and no client list whatsoever," Neeter, a former collegiate tennis player and coach, told Business Insider. They negotiated the price down to $40,000, he said, and borrowed private money to purchase it.
Between 2010 and 2019, Neeter ran a lean, profitable operation. His main revenue streams were group clinics and classes, since he could have multiple clients on-court at the same time. He also offered private lessons and started doing retail in 2015.
"We were always cash positive, even if it wasn't by that much," he said, noting that revenue is directly impacted by things outside of his control, like inclement weather. Since he only has one outdoor court, "a bad rainy year could really mess things up."
The second half of 2019 was a particularly challenging time for the small business owner. An intense rainstorm in southern California not only closed the court but it destroyed the pro shop's roof. The combination of losing business and funding a new roof made it "the most challenging, stressful year of my life," said Neeter.
After reopening the shop in the fall of 2019, "all of a sudden it was like, okay, now we can breathe," said Neeter. "And then, 2020."
For months after the coronavirus pandemic hit, zero revenue came in. His business only survived because he took an Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL), he said: "Otherwise, it wouldn't have worked."
Tennis did become more popular in the aftermath of Covid with it being a socially distanced sport, he said. But it took time to rebuild, especially because group classes, which were his bread and butter, couldn't resume right away: "We were running in the red for a while."
Flash forward to 2023, Neeter doubled the revenue of his strongest year. BI viewed his profit and loss statements from the past five years to verify his tremendous revenue growth. In 2023, the business did $2.1 million in sales between retail and on-court services like lessons and clinics.
The game changer? Pickleball, a different racket sport that is played on a smaller court with a smaller paddle and a wiffleball.
Neeter changed his entire business to capitalize on the pickleball surge in America, converted his single court into four pickleball courts, and expanded his pro shop from 330 square feet to nearly 2,000. After running a tennis-pickleball hybrid shop for about nine months, he officially rebranded to the Santa Monica Pickleball Center in August 2023. He still offers tennis lessons offsite at public parks but pickleball is his main revenue driver.
The business has experienced "a rebirth at a time when I thought it was a death," said Neeter. He shared three strategies and philosophies that have kept him in business for over a decade and helped him hit seven-figure revenue numbers.
The pickleball pivot wasn't Neeter's first major business change.
In the early days he ran a high-performance tennis academy catered towards top-ranked junior players called Court Strength. Although it worked for a while, it ultimately "was too niche to sustain long term," he said.
Around 2015, he decided to shift to all-around programming and community-driven tennis. He changed the company name to the Santa Monica Tennis Center and started offering more clinics for juniors and adults at all levels.
Between 2015 and 2019, "the business became really efficient," he said. "There were days where the court would be busy from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. at night, and if there was a half-hour to an hour empty, it was a bad day."
Courtesy of Jon Neeter
The next major pivot happened post-Covid, as pickleball was starting to take off in the States.
Having run a tennis center for over a decade, bringing a different racket sport to his shop and court was risky. He and other tennis-facility owners were faced with a tough decision, he said: "Do you alienate your customer base for the unknown? That's a tricky decision because you have a sure thing and now you're going to take this risk on potential?"
Neeter decided after seeing first-hand just how big pickleball was getting. A friend told him to meet him at Santa Monica's Memorial Park, which had become a pickleball mecca in Southern California. "There were like 200 people on four tennis courts," he recalled. "I couldn't find him on these four tennis courts. I'd never seen anything like it and was like, 'Okay, I get it. This is a big thing.'"
Once he decided to pivot, he went all-in. His goal was to "build the best pickleball shop in the country," he said.
Objectively, it was a risky call, he added, "but at the same time, I didn't think it was that much of a risk. Because I just kind of resolved myself to: It's going to work. We're going to make it work because it has to work."
Like most entrepreneurs and small business owners, Neeter worked tirelessly in the early stages of the business: "It was a lot of 10-, 11-hour days," he said.
To give yourself some time back as an entrepreneur, you have to hire good staff, which is exactly what Neeter did. By 2015, "everything was on cruise control," he said. "It got to the point where I didn't have to do too much, I had really good people working the desk, we always had great staff, and that made my life very easy."
As for retaining great staff, it helped that he was able to offer flexible, part-time hours, especially in Los Angeles, where "everybody's got three different side hustles," he said. "'Tennis pro' is a great position for an aspiring actor or an aspiring writer, where they can have a schedule that is flexible and make good money for little windows and then do their other things."
Neeter also created a work environment with "a special vibe," he added. "It's a cool place and the clients are great, so staff members often stay longer than they probably should."
One of the challenges of running a service-based small business is that "people get attached to the service providers themselves," said Neeter. Clients, for example, develop relationships with their coaches but coaches come and go.
"We did have occasions, especially early on, when a coach would leave and it was like the world was ending," he said. "So what I tried to do over time was make it more about the business and about the services that we offer."
Courtesy of Jon Neeter
Rather than put the focus on the specific coach, he put the focus on the product: classes and lessons.
"Even if one of the staff members goes on vacation, your class is still there. Your lesson is still there. You'll still play Tuesday nights at 8:30 p.m., or whatever it is, no matter what. Communicating that point to the clientele is important."
Then, it becomes a matter of executing: Whatever your service is, provide it at a very high level.
"People will pay if you're good," said Neeter.
