Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Delaney.
Michael, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
TennisClub.com was born after CEO & Founder, Brian Brouda, moved from New York to South Florida and started to look for tennis courts and local players to hit with. Despite the many private clubs and public courts in the area, he still found it difficult to connect with local players. Being a software engineer by trade, he decided to work on a website in his spare time that would do just that; connect players looking for players within a few miles from each other.
I met Brian when I joined a tennis league in Boca Raton. Over the years our friendship developed and one day he showed me his experimental online tennis portal. I was blown away by what I saw. Brian had developed a location based google map that displayed all clubs, parks, courts and players within a 10 mile radius form my house. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Brian had actually created an entire software platform capable of administering all functions required to run a tennis center.
We decided to dedicate full-time to the development of this tennis club management software and take it to market. And take it to market we did. We rented a booth and showcased our products in front of an audience of tennis owners and managers at an industry event in Orlando. Call it luck or salesmanship, but we landed the most coveted and prestigious private club owner of them all. Working with this client built our confidence, improved our product line and gave us the credibility to pursue new clients.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
No start up is easy. We found out quickly. Business plan, marketing plan, financial plan, this plan, that plan, no matter how well prepared you think you are, reality bites. The truth is that selling your idea is really selling yourself. Your ability to connect with your target client and convince them that you product or service is better than your competition is not that simple. It takes patience, perseverance and tact to build a client base. In the beginning we thought price would close the deal. It doesn’t. We thought high tech would wow the client. It didn’t. Eventually we learned that it’s building relationships that close the deal. It takes time. And it takes work. Clients want to do business with people they can trust. Cheap merchandise or off the shelf software they can order online.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with TennisClub.com – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Tennisclub.com is a software solution provider for tennis centers, a brokerage service for independent tennis instructors and a web tennis portal for individual consumers. Our vision is to bring supply and demand together by providing clubs and instructors with a suite of technological solutions that promote their tennis offerings to a public that is looking to engage and participate in more tennis activities.
We are most proud of being in a position to help promote the lifelong sport of tennis. We are avid players and passionate for the sport. It’s our passion to deliver products to the tennis community that are easy to use and engage members that set us apart from the competition.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Our long-term goal is to roll out products to all target markets in North America in a controlled and systematic manner in order to reach over 15,000 tennis facilities.
Contact Info:
- Website: TennisClub.com
- Phone: 800-315-4851
- Email: delaney@tennisclub.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1251719131512156&ref=br_rs
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/search?q=tennisclub.com&src=typd
- Other: http://www.tennisclub.com/
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