We caught up with the brilliant and insightful JaColby Zackery a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi JaColby , thanks for joining us today. If you’re open to it, can you talk to us about the best (or worst) investment you’ve made. What’s the backstory and the relevant context behind why you made the investment

The Best/Worst investment I have made would have to be opening my own gym up during the pandemic. Although the pandemic did slow up my business on the after school program side business was great on the open gym, training and tournament side. After remodeling the place and prepping for my grand opening on my son birthday I was informed by the county that I would need to install an sprinkler system since I am dealing with education by becoming a private school. I asked the owner to let me out of my lease but they promised they would get the system installed for me which was in November. The new year come around no sprinkler system, spring comes around still no sprinkler system so I started to prepare for the worst but was also able to have a sold out summer camp despite the current situation. A good friend of mines now who was the fire captain stopped by to issue me a notice about being open to the public without the sprinkler system but after explaining the situation and showing proof he informed I was most likely being scammed by the owners to drain me of all my money and than force me out to where I could not fight in court and that’s exactly what happen. I went from becoming the first own black private school in Henry county to having to close down completely. This 80K investment just went down the drain and ruin my life for at least 2 years trying to shake the hurt off. Now I am the head basketball coach at the middle school and my sports program is one of Georgia best programs but I still feel like I would be doing soo much more with my own gym . I was open 7 days a week and kids stayed in my building,

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have been playing sports all my life and I was actually one of those kids who walked around the neighborhood with an all working on my skills and was the only kid allowed to play with the big boys. My senior year a lost my grandmother who raised me and I truly did not feel like life was working in favor, I had no scholarship offers so I thought which led me to not doing my best but one of my coaches stole a box of letter from the head coach and I had over 50 Letters from the university of Clemson asking me to come to camp and visit so I could attend there after high school. Although this was a happy moment it was also a sad moment because I had missed out of the experience by not knowing which would have changed my whole outlook on my senior year, we had the best team in the state that year but I still felt empty but if I would have known about the offers from Clemson I would have given my all to make sure I was ready just to honor my grandmother. I started my own company ELITE D1 SPORTZ ACADEMY where we provide after school care and basketball training all in one price, I wanted kids to have the experience I missed out on because as good as I was I never played travel basketball or knew anything about it, so now I travel with students all over the USA playing against some of best talent in the country.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We manufacture sports gear for our players and customer in order to have revenue to pay for the trips. We are currently dealing with a company out in Pakistan and I have learned a lot about the business of making clothes.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I had to unlearn the years of education received by the public school system which is the most difficult process because you are going against yourself to better yourself with the full story

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Coachzack_1912