How to Build a Youth Sports Club Parents Trust

[0:00] Welcome to this new series of podcast that we are starting. I'm Devansh. I'm the founder of Waresport. I don't want to mention too much about myself. You guys can go look up what Waresport is, blah blah blah. I don't care about that for the next 30 40 minutes. Who I care about is Ben who is with me. And uh I'm I'm going to let Ben introduce himself so that he does justice to the amazing work that he's been doing. And over to you, Ben. Uh, thank you, Devansh. So, uh, it's an honor to be, uh, talking to you. Anybody who wants to learn more about the Virginia Basketball Academy is someone I would love to talk to. And when you reached out, uh, I was eager to share, you know, what we're about, what our mission is, what our philosophy is, um, about me. Um, my [clears throat] background really came, uh, when I was a college athlete. I was just a a walk-on at a division one school and loved the game of basketball. Got into uh education at the elementary school level and then joined my former coach at the University of Virginia as a graduate assistant uh Pete Gillan and he sort of relit my fire for not just the game of basketball but what coaching really meant um what he had meant to my life and how he had impacted me. uh yes when it came to basketball but more importantly what he had done to shape my character uh and who I was and how I approached life and then he opened the door to uh high level division one coaching uh which I pursued through um through my my tenure at the University of Virginia as a graduate assistant then moved on to James Madison University for four years uh there as a full-time assistant and then on to um Clemson university. Uh, and um, all three of those stops had a major impact on me. All the while in the summertime I was coming back and in my hometown of Charlottesville I was running in essence a pro bono summer basketball camp for serious basketball players who wanted something different than say the university run camps that you know we affectionately call Mickey Mouse camps. Nothing nothing against Mickey Mouse, but uh we we just thought that serious quality skill development, character development was uh was missing. And I still believe 30 years later that there's a huge vacuum in both of those areas. And so we are very intentional about addressing that daily.

[2:44] Great to know that uh Ben and seems like in your life you had a coach who sort of showed you the path that you walked on and now whatever you learned from your coach you're trying to be that coach for others. So I guess starting high level like what do you think is the importance of a good coach in your life? Uh especially at a young age in your formative years when you're starting off uh so what's the importance and again what have you learned from your coach now that you're passing it on to your students? Yes. So the first thing that I learned from my I would say most influential coach which I I would say is Pete Gillan and the other coaches that I worked for and have been around is that the great coaches concentrate on the character of the person first uh and use the sport itself uh in particular basketball which is a team sport to uh develop the character of the individual.

[3:49] Um, not only is basketball a team sport sport, but I would qualify it and characterize it as a skill sport. So, in order to be good at it, which is true about most sports, you know, you're going to have to practice. You're going to have to be consistent. You're going to have to sacrifice. You're going to have to uh think about what's best for the team. You're going to have to uh get along with others. You know, you're going to have to dedicate yourself. if there's a weakness on how to turn that into a strength and if there's a strength how to make the most of that and then how to take those skills and apply them not only to the oncourt game performance but how that then is woven into the team itself. So my influential coaches did that for me. Um, and to answer your question about the importance of a quality coach at the youth level, I don't think there's a way to apt a aptly or accurately measure or or put a price on what that may mean.

[4:50] In some ways, that person could be even more influential than a parent, if you will. So like say for for instance you know a parent obviously is the most influential adult in any child's [clears throat] life but eventually that parent has to entrust a portion of the rearing of that child to others whether it be a a teacher or a pastor or a mentor or or a family member. And if if a player let's just if a person if a young person wants to be a player on a team then they are giving emotional investment into something they enjoy doing. There's no better way to create a captive audience. Yeah. Uh than to do that. In other words, when I was an elementary school teacher, motivating my kids was a difficult chore.

[5:41] Yeah. When I when I started an afterchool basketball team, this was in in inner city Houston, Texas. [clears throat] I suddenly had their attention because they wanted to play. They wanted to participate in the games. Yeah. So, interestingly enough, the VABA, the Virginia Basketball Academy philosophy was born not only from my experience as a coach, but also as a teacher in inner city Houston when I realized the power of a coach and the power of team sports in influencing impacting the character of of young people. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I've just been listening to you. uh very insightful. you you know obviously as you were speaking you mentioned how oftent times uh I guess I'm rephrasing you uh but oftent times like more than the actual skill it's that character of not giving up supporting your team members because in the tough times that's what you know lifts you up again and again skill might come and go but the character remains so I guess are there you know any specific examples of when someone is down and about. So in your experience, I'm sure you must have had teams or individuals that felt really really bad after a loss.

[7:09] What do you teach them or how do you teach them to I guess overcome that loss, get up again, go fight and go win that thing next time? Yeah, great great question. And the answer to the question about how to handle a difficult loss or a disappointment uh is typically addressed way before the game result occurred. If the coach is going to try and figure out how to handle that situation after the fact, it's probably too late. the lessons that you can teach as a coach after a disappointment, whether it be a heartbreaking loss or the end to a season in a tournament or whatever the case may be. Um, if a coach is trying to address that for the first time, in other words, he or she is is thinking, okay, what do I say now? then I would say that coach probably missed the boat uh proverbial boat in that it did not lay the definition at the outset of the season about what success is. So, we differentiate within the Virginia Basketball Academy between winning, the term winning in our culture today means outscoring your opponent, right?

[8:31] If that is your definition as a coach, you are going to have a more difficult time dealing with that eventual inevitable uh life circumstance, which is disappointment. when things don't turn out the way you want them to. Yeah. Uh so what we focus on and what we train our coaches on through uh we actually have a three and a half hour coaching ethics seminar. You're welcome to join us Devansh if you'd like to [laughter] uh midway through October is we focus on the steps a coach needs to take to prepare themselves first personally on how to then prepare their team. A coach cannot adequately and uh correctly prepare their team if they themselves are not prepared. What I personally a coach needs to define success for him or herself.

[9:31] We have our definition. So we train our coaches on what that definition is and then we do our very best to train and prepare our coaches on how to pitch meaning sell because a coach is a salesperson. Yeah. Right. That definition to the players and also the most important influential adults in the players lives at the youth level, the parents. Mhm. The reason why people buy in to that code, we call it a code of ethics, is because they realize that everyone benefits. Mhm. So they almost have to put their own personal motives under the greater good, which is impossible by the way for a parent to do. I learned that personally through my experience as a dad watching my kids play sports.

[10:27] Early in my career as the director at VA, I was always telling parents, put the team ahead of your kid. It's impossible to do that. The player, the parent is always going to put their kid ahead of the team. But what I do tell them is we're going to be telling your kids on how your play your your children how to do that. Just don't sabotage that. Just don't get in the way of that process. So defining success having a good definition and I can talk more about how we do that. Yeah. Is key to the to the to the success of the team and invariably the coach's ability to lead the team so that they make the most of the ups and downs that occur in the life of of a team and in athletics in general.

[11:14] Yeah. I'm sorry for the longwinded answers but no no no that's there there's a lot of good points that you mentioned. The first one is I feel like uh you guys have shifted the definition of success from outcome based to process based. I guess that's my number one key takeaway. Like as long as the process is good and you didn't say it, but I'm assuming oftentimes when the process is good, you you're going to get the outcomes. But if your goal is the outcomes, the process people might do different things, self-sabotaging things, and you might in the long term not succeed or get the outcomes. So I I love that whole processbased uh thing. That's also what I try to you know embide in my team at barport uh that how can we you know keep getting better keep working on ourselves outcomes going to follow. The other thing that you mentioned is that I want you to expand a bit more on is you used this phrase coaches are salesmen.

[12:20] Can you can you expand on that? uh because a lot you can do all the process work everything when the kids are there but how do you sell your program or how do coaches sell themselves or the program to new athletes who want to join who join what's your process like at VA today to do that great question so the reason why I say that coaches and leaders in general are sales people is because the success of their team requires ers buy in. Everyone has to buy in to what we're doing so that everyone's headed in the same direction. Yeah. Um and so if you have one or two players, I'm sure you know this running your team there from a business standpoint and I do as well that aren't bought in fully. It's noticeable.

[13:18] There's a tension there with the rest of the team. there's something that's slowing the team down and someone's dragging their feet, if you will, to use the metaphor, and the car doesn't seem to be getting into a smooth fifth gear type of thing. Um, so the way we do that is, especially with parents and coaches, is as I mentioned earlier is there are many facets to that. Number one, let's say that you as a youth coach or even as a high school or college coach are trying ultimately the higher the stakes are, right? There's more writing on the outcome. So, a fifth grade youth coach is in a different environment, say, than a division one, right?

[14:07] Uh, paid coach whose jobs on the line. Regardless, the success formula is pretty much the same. Mhm. What is misunderstood I think by a lot of leaders and coaches is that productivity and results focused leadership turns into what we call transactional leadership. And if that's your approach, it may work in the short term, but it typically doesn't work in the long term. It certainly doesn't work to develop the character of your players. Which if you can convince and sell this to your parents, they're going to buy in. Yeah.

[14:54] Also, because the greatest coach of all time, in my opinion, and the inspiration for VA, coach John Wooden, was the most successful. You want to use winning and losing as the measuring stick for success. coach of all time. I guess there are a few like Pat Summit and others that were that won lots of championships, but one of the greatest winners of all time, if you want to use the worldly definition of what winning is, is John Wooden. And he never talked about winning. He never talked about losing. He never talked about the score. Of course, I guess in certain timeout situations, he would talk about the score, but in other words, he didn't talk about the score as the stated goal for the outcome. what he believed, which is what we believe is process focused coaching and competing, staying in the moment, doing your best when your best is needed. And I'll explain why you do your best. We talk about that a lot within VA is actually the best way to consistently outscore your opponent. M so in other words if I'm trying to make money because I love money it's going to be a very difficult arduous process but if I want to change the world with a product or a service that's going to positively impact the lives of people typically the natural byproduct of that is going to be a successful business.

[16:30] Yeah. and in so doing make a lot of money if that's your that's the natural goal. So VABA is a 501c3 nonprofit so we've thrown that out the window either although we have to run a good business. Um so anyway that that's critically important to being successful. Um and uh that's you know why why we approach things the way we do. Yeah. Uh what do I even say? I think that's a incredible perspective not just for athletes. I feel like you know I can see this getting applied in people who work in the corporate in their personal lives any any aspect of life really uh the battles won in the mind before it's won on the court right uh but I'm great to hear about that Ben can you share I guess a bit more we we've talked obviously about character development the uh importance of it Can you share more about I guess uh VA as a whole?

[17:34] Like how many athletes do you guys currently have? What kind of programs do you offer? And then uh what makes you unique I guess from another basketball club facility down the road? Like what's your differentiator? Yeah. So, we service about 22 to 2400 uh student athletes annually through a variety of different programs. Mhm. Um all of our programs are designed to be a pathway. So, we try to connect each season, if you will. Uh we have a fall program, uh a very involved winter program. Obviously, basketball is a winter sport. Yeah, we have a developmental program in the spring, mostly in the form of what a lot of people would call travel teams or AAOU teams, although our our model's slightly different. And then we run seven to nine weeks of summer basketball camps.

[18:36] But running consistently through all of those seasons and all those programs is our curriculum which is two faceted the character development curriculum and the basketball development curriculum. Um and so that runs uh consistently throughout all of those programs. So what we try to do is sell to our families and our parents the value of participating as consistently as possible uh maybe not on a on a highly intensive time schedule depending on the family and what their interest is of course but in some way shape or form in some facet of each season if they can. Yeah. Obviously for our more, you know, fired up, excited, enthusiastic families, they're participating in a lot of those programs um on a year- round basis. But we try to find a healthy balance for the family. We're trying not to over overchedu the families, although we try to give them the opportunity to make a choice that would benefit the child developmentally. And obviously the more they're involved, we believe at least the more they're involved in our program, the better chance their child has of of of developing. Um, what was the rest of your question? I'm sorry.

[19:49] Yeah, the [laughter] you're you're good. Uh, the rest of the question was how I guess if people were ch parents were choosing between you and this other club down the road, what's your biggest differentiator? Why do they come to you versus them? Yeah. So, the first thing I always start with when people ask us about what makes you different is I I start with our mission. Our mission statement is very simple. It's building character and shaping lives through the game of basketball. It's 10 words. That's our mission. To paraphrase, basketball is a tool. It's through basketball that we strive to build character and shape the lives of our families and our student athletes.

[20:38] We think we're different. We think we're unique because that's a banner. That's not a a tagline stuffed at the bottom of a web page that we got to kind of like, oh yeah, that's what we're about. Like literally, that's how we make all of our decisions. Uh many, many years ago, one of our coaches said, "You should start an adult league." You know, and we thought to ourselves, "Okay, that sounds cool. We could have some of our dads and parents and moms play in this adult league." and we realized how much building of character and shaping of lives are we going to be doing in an adult league. So we nixed that idea. Um no that that's really the the rudder if you will. It's [clears throat] the sale. It's the wind and the sales of our of our of our business and and our organization. The other thing I would say that makes us different is the approach we have stems from someone in myself who's kind of been to maybe not the mountaintop per se, but I've I've coached at a rather high division one college level.

[21:48] A lot of these youth organizations don't necessarily have what I would call a credible authority on how to get from A to B to B. They're saying do this, do that. I'll help you to go there and I'll help you go there. And typically there's a lot of shiny objects out there and there's a lot of really like, you know, flashy social media highlights. And parents can get sucked into that very easily and they'll sometimes say, "Oh, well, VA's done what it can do for my kid and they're really flourishing and every basketball program is the same. Let me jump over here to this group." And what happens is that that player plateaus. Um, it almost would be Devon like let's say you're investing your money into uh a high return type of situation or a consistent return and and and [clears throat] your money is compounding, right? and it's going great and you're getting you're you're you're investing and you're getting a nice return on your investment and the dividends are good and then you suddenly decide I'm cashing out and you withdraw the difference uh the money that you've been been multiplying over many years and you're like I'm good I'm I'm kind of doing well enough that money is not going to any more reap it's not going to multiply right it's not going and that's really what we're trying to do is we're trying to build we're trying to layer. We're trying to consistently develop the character and skill of our players and and our families, you know, have to buy into that for it to happen.

[23:28] Amazing. And yeah, just going off of uh I guess what we were talking before we started recording. You were mentioning there's this uh gentleman who came out of your basketball program who's now doing well. If you want to share about him because again, yeah, uh from what you told me, you mentioned he's some businessman. I don't know what business he's doing, but obviously as I was saying earlier, the character stays through no matter where you go in your life. And that's the character you're building in the people that you know uh have touched you at some point in their lives. Yes. So, one area that we have done a very poor job in and we're working on this. Most of our problems to be honest, problems, challenges, let's call them challenges, Devansh have h have to do with scale, right? when when when you're helping to service to 2400 families, it's a challenge in scale like how do you manage your time and how do you how do you do that really really well?

[24:27] Yeah. Um so this is an omission if you will on our website. Okay. Mhm. And that is that we do talk about the alumni, the VA alumni that have gone on to basketball prowess. And there there's a long list, but what we don't do, which we should do, and we're working on doing, is reaching out to our alumni who have not just made it on the court, but really those who have made it in life. Mhm. Uh it's a little harder to quantify, but the individual you refer to is our board vice president, and he now run runs one of the largest um fencing company. They they do much more than this, but one of the largest fencing companies in the Midwest. I think they service seven states. And he's expanded the business.

[25:18] Uh 100 fencing. Fencing, not the sport, right? fencing as in the no not the store like fencing like putting fences physical fences and um the reason he is such an ardent supporter of VA and serves on our board of directors is because he credits his success in life as a father as a husband and as a businessman to uh his time with uh with VA and there are hundreds countless of alumni that would say the same thing. So, what we have to do a better job of is is reaching out to those people, getting hard hard data, if you will, on where they are, what they're doing, and probably get some uh some testimonials um that that that would attest to how VA impacted their life in a positive way.

[26:10] Maybe you need to start a podcast, too. [laughter] We Yeah, maybe. So we could bring our alumni on and and you know when you reached out to to me about doing this podcast it was something in fact this gentleman who's uh in lives in Wisconsin now uh is wanting to start his own podcast as well. I mean everybody, you know, and and but it's it's a good way to talk about in long form and then obviously edit out the highlights about um you know what what what it is that we do and it's very difficult to do sometimes um right just you know scrolling through a website or or looking at you know Facebook post or something. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Thank thank you uh for that context Ben. I guess uh while you were answering my question, you mentioned uh one thing which is why what I do exists which is when clubs it might be easier to manage a club when it's 20 people maybe 40 people 100 gets a little tough 200 you're at 2400 that's where we come in right the whole uh again doesn't matter I know you're using some software uh but similar to that software We our goal is how do we use technology to lift off the work that is done off the field behind the laptop screens so that coaches other directors get time on the field as much as they want and one way that we are doing it is through employing AI in a right way. A lot of club directors that I speak to uh depending on their age get afraid of AI.

[27:48] they get very confused what AI is and what not. But we are trying to add AI in the most beneficial way like front office agent that picks up the calls of the parents answers it based on prefet answers stuff like that. So essentially how how can I give you I guess you know AI employees that are not on a payroll that you can speak to whenever you want. They don't get tired. So that's I guess a big part of the innovation we are doing at Waresport. Uh and that leads me to ask you the next question which is if you were say a board member on V board I got you in today. I was like Ben you tell you are the head of product and why I say that is nobody knows better requirements than a person in your position at such a scale. If I was like Ben there is no constraint of money there is no constraint of time whatever software you're using or where sport is what do you think in general in the industry how do we take it from where it is to 10x like what are those missing elements missing features that you think if this was there my life would be so much easier uh there would be no compromises and I would you know be able to spend more time so I guess it's a very broad question open-ended but again No money constraint, no time constraint. You have sports everything and you're like Devance D. This is what we need to build. What would you say?

[29:24] Wow. You got you kind of got up got me outside my my wheelhouse. That is a great question. Um and and and so I understand this is sort of the problem, if you will, that your your company's trying to solve for for sports groups, for athletic comp like organizations like ours. Is that is that in essence what sport is is is trying to tackle? Correct. So where's correct? So where sport has uh scheduling, communication, website builder, uh tryyouts management, uh inapp messaging, a lot of the stuff that you know other competitors like sports and in league apps have. Uh we have similar features. we've gone more in depth and again we have a little more I guess technical forward mindset with AI and some of these uh things right I mean communications huge uh we do try I I don't want to say we try to stay away from AI but we really want the personal touch um and um but we do we have allowed AI to help um somewhat with communication in particular particular email which is pretty basic I know um scheduling. Yeah.

[30:39] So sorry to interrupt you. So when you say you're using AI in communication so is it does it mean you go to chat GPT or something draft the email come back to whatever software. Okay. Is that a little Hey, I am I am definitely not the person to ask how h how how we do that. Mo some of my staff has asked me if it's okay to use some of it and I and our strict policy on that is be sure to read the email that I I don't know is it Gemini is it Gemini on Google is that what it is I don't know what Google like you're reading that email put your own personal touch to it uh if it helps you a little bit with efficiency on drafting emails the last thing we would ever want would be for a parent to go oh you know this isn't Ben this isn't and whoever, you know, responding to this email that I I get emails from parents that make me go, "Wait, did they draft this or not?" But yeah, you you touched on some things like scheduling, um team communications.

[31:44] Mhm. Um you know ascertaining maybe areas within say the organization on maybe family retention. Mhm. Uh we we've dabbled a little bit in AI with that like how many of our families are participating in how many of our programs? Why why would a family participate in this program but maybe not this program? Why would one child? So we do try to use AI for some data centered but it's outside of the platform right not inside yet. It's exactly right. It's outside of the platform. Yeah. If you so if you got that inside the platform that would save you time. Sure. Yeah. If that was more of an autogenerated type of thing where um Yes. So that I think that would be very helpful for sure. Um, you know, I think as a as as a leader within the organization who believes in its mission, um, for for me personally, even professionally, if a family isn't participating and and of course, I'm the most biased uh, of them all. believe in what we do and I don't believe it with just like because I believe it because I believe in what it can do for the the youth the ch the child for that family.

[33:18] Um so it's a passionate belief that that's rooted in in in I think good motives. Um it it hurts my heart if I feel like a a family has chosen another program. U it doesn't happen that often. I mean If you want to look at the market share in our area, I would say we're probably in the 90 95%. Oh wow. Uh yeah, it there are other programs, but um it is huge. But like whatever percentage is not participating in our program, I don't I don't bemoone the fact that a parent chooses another program. I more bemoone the fact that the child won't gain the benefits that I believe they would have otherwise gained. So what we do try to look at when it comes to answering a question as far as AI is well why why would they choose another program?

[34:10] Okay. So maybe maybe we can find that out by communicating with that family and saying you know Mikey played last year but he's not playing this year. What's going on? And they might give us a reason and we say, "Well, can we address that reason or or maybe maybe overcome that objection so that uh they can take part as long as we don't compromise on the mission, right? We get that often times where there there's there's a mission that we have to, you know, put above everything else. No, that's that's great. A long-winded answer. I'm sorry. No, no. I I ask you great questions. I've been I've been taking notes. [laughter] I because again I genuinely the way I've built Waresport is you know it's like I've sat on hundreds of these zoom calls and everything that we've built has come from someone in your spot like I haven't built anything that I thought was great.

[35:10] Everything that we've built is the people that we're serving you guys. You guys tell us what you need. There's no point of making something that nobody's going to use, right? For example, communication. We have I don't know again I don't want to compare. We have SMS, email and WhatsApp as three one-way stream of announcements plus inapp messaging. So we've realized communicate two things I feel like communication and payment collection. That's the backbone of any sports club. If you can't collect that disrupts the cash flow, staff me everything. communication if you can't communicate internally or externally that breaks. So I guess our focus has been you know how do we elevate the standard of communication. I don't think anybody for that matter has a WhatsApp integration. In fact we even have a discord integration. So we offer four one way and things. So but you you saying it just I guess reinforces it that you know we're in the right direction. And then I wrote personal touch to AI that you just said. It's a great point. I'm definitely going to add this in our product. uh I'll give you credit when we do this but we so we already have an AI component inside the platform so when you want to draft [snorts] an email or SMS you can use it to either enhance your message or write a new one but I guess what you said and I love it we can add some place for staff members to leave I guess their human points like hey we often use these words or I use semicolons so we added I guess some way for you to input how you generally message in your daily life. We can still use AI while giving it a personal touch. So, I love love that idea, Ben. Uh and then family participation, retention.

[37:02] Yeah. Yeah. Um all those are important and and you talk about the collection piece. I think we uh we we do a pretty good job of that. I mean, um, the social media piece, you know, is something, uh, you haven't brought up yet, but it's an area that, um, we've been remissing simply because in my personal life, I try I'm not a big, you know, I've really, and I know this sounds kind of odd, uh, Devansh, but I've really tried to move to the background of the organization as best I can. Mhm. And I think that has in some ways been a been a bad decision on my part. Uh I I try I I want VABA to be about VA and about the mission and certainly not about me, but I think every company, every organization needs to have a spokesperson. It needs to have face a face. And uh my desire in the last few years as I've advanced in age uh divide [laughter] has been to try to take a step back when it comes to that. But really the way I've recalibrated that whole thing is if I can be in the spokesperson credible authority role and the operations of the organization stay out of my purview that's a better use of of of of my time and and experience.

[38:27] uh and that that requires more capital in the sense of creating some transformational partners that want to come in and support the mission and support the organization so that we can expand our capacity when it comes to staffing. Yeah. Because if we can do that and that's really the biggest thing that slows us down is staffing. Can we find a people who believe in our mission, b people who are willing to work hard because of the mission, and cain and keep good people, put them on salary, give them good benefits, reward them for for for helping to advance the mission, then I can take a bigger step back in being the credible authority, the spokesperson, the visionary for the for the for the organization. And that in the long run is going to help us impact more people. Absolutely.

[39:17] No, I love it. I I was just checking time. Uh we It's almost going to be an hour soon. I It doesn't feel like Wow. It's going to be an hour and five 10 minutes. I time time went by so quickly. But uh I feel like there's so much I still have in my mind that I want to if if your time is is open, I can I can stay as long as necessary. Um I'm thinking if we should do like a second part uh okay where I get because I feel like a lot of the time we spent today was talking about the character. I think uh from my conversation with you you have a great business side Ben like you you are I I think you understand how an organization runs on a structural level. You understand how a business runs. So, I guess I'd love to maybe find another time where we just talk about the business side of running a basketball club, go deep in it because I feel like that would be so helpful for someone starting from scratch and we almost lay out a blueprint of you do X, Y, and Z to get to A or B and C, you know. So, I think I would love it would maybe we can even have a whiteboard something. Maybe we can come up with a guide. I I feel like there's so many so many things we can do.

[40:37] Yeah. I mean, the other thing we didn't really talk about too much that I think differentiates uh us from other groups, which I'll mention, you know, sort of as we close, is is is the teaching aspect and the and the the curriculum based approach that we have. um very very specific detailed uh you could call them dos and don'ts but almost tenants that uh we believe is good basketball and good coaching and good teaching. Um, basketball is a free flowing type of sport and you want to encourage kids to to to to be creative and to to to to use their their skills and their and concepts and knowledge to play. [clears throat] Uh, but teaching that takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of detail and a lot of repetition and there are a million shortcuts. Stanch a million which we won't take. So um and that's kind of how you we believe that that approach is also consistent with the character development piece because nothing worth having comes easily or quickly.

[41:56] So for the parent that's looking for a shortcut uh there's a dime a dozen programs out there. But if a parent's really looking uh or a coach is looking for something deeper uh and more meaningful, it's going to take time. It's going to take repetition. It's going to take buyin. It's going to take consistency. It's going to take good coaching and good teaching. So anyway, those are those are the things we're we have to do. Amazing. Again, uh Ben, I guess before we close out, if people want to know more about you guys, uh you have a website. I'll put it in the description of the video. uh they can go check out you guys and uh absolutely you're what all other social media channels are you guys present on where if people wanted to hear me okay can you hear me yeah okay I think my Wi-Fi may be resetting so I apologize um so our social media presence is below average [laughter] if we did I can tell you you're way better than a lot of other clubs.

[43:00] No, no, no, no. That I I don't want to. But your benchmark is I'm I'm sure your benchmark is [laughter] be the best in the class. What I want to do is do our social media as good as we do some of the other things because it's the best way for people to learn about us. It's the best way to for people to see what we're doing. So rather than rather than denigrate social media in general, I I need to embrace it so that more people can learn about what it is that we do. Our website is just playvaba.org playvaba.org. Uh and you know, you can search on Instagram and Facebook the Virginia Basketball Academy or PlayVaba. And uh it's pretty pretty should be I hope it's easy to find from there. Yeah, I'll also put it in the description so that if anybody uh watching the video wants to go straight up. But again uh thank you Ben when I as I'm closing out I do want to say it feels incomplete. I feel like I loved speaking to you. I personally learned so much that I'm going to take away share share with my own team and uh we're due for another session and uh you've talked about character building. I want to say you have a solid character. Uh just speaking to you is you know really empowering and I uh I'm very grateful that I got to speak with you and thank you for that means a lot. That means a lot to me. the fact any if you're interested and it means something to you then then you know this is a hopefully a long-standing relationship and I have a lot of admiration for what you're trying to accomplish through your business and and uh I appreciate you taking an hour of your your