We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nick Boyers. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nick below.

Nick, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I grew up in Ohio and moved to Georgia in 2008. A few years after moving I decided to start a cornhole league as a way to meet new people. I grew up playing sports and wanted to continue to stay competitive without having to spend extensive time training. The league started with 8 teams at the Suwanee Town Center and slowly grew one season after another. After a few years, it grew to what it is today – 30+ locations with over 10,000 people that have played in a Peach State league. Growth started slowly at first, but as we became more established it began growing rapidly. In our early days, there were very few other cornhole options, so the idea was new and intriguing to others as well. Cornhole is great because it doesn’t require a certain athletic ability, body type, or physical stamina to play. Anyone can play! We have 10 year olds that compete against 75 year olds and everyone has a great time!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Nick Boyers and I’m the founder/owner at Peach State Cornhole. You previously did an interview with one of our employees, Matt Vann. Matt asked me to fill this one out for him. We provide social cornhole leagues throughout the state of Georgia for people interested in building new friendships, playing cornhole, and finding some time to unwind on a weeknight.

Our league is set apart from others due to the size, scope, and services we provide. We have over 1,500 players that join our leagues each season all across the state of Georgia. Our leagues span from Savannah to Dalton. We are often told we run the smoothest and most efficient tournaments across the state. We have built and trained a team that prioritizes fun and relationships over cornhole. This creates an atmosphere that’s attractive for players and sponsors.

Our company motto is connecting people through friendly competition. We emphasize the connect over compete. Many of our players have formed lifelong friendships through people they’ve met at one of our cornhole leagues. This is why we do what we do.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

During COVID we were forced to cancel our spring league. Coming back in the summer was challenging because of the concern for safety. Like other businesses we had to pivot and make difficult decisions that would surely impact our brand, attendance, and perception. Without our leagues, the business did not make any profit, so we felt it was important to get our leagues back up and running as soon as we could do it safely. The first thing we did was to try and minimize physical contact. Before COVID, players were required to use our bags. During the pandemic, we allowed players to begin using their own bags to minimize any potential touch points. This proved to be a welcome change and resulted in being permanent. Players now prefer bringing their own bags and the majority of our players bring their customized bags. Additionally, we reduced touch points with the ways we had players report scores and had hand sanitizer stations at leagues. We worked hard at establishing quarantine and isolation guidance for league members and followed up with phone calls to check on league members if they became ill.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

We believe our most valuable resource are human resources – the people that work for Peach State make it all possible. In our early days when we had a few locations that were relatively close together, we would have regular meetings with our league managers where we could talk about culture, share a meal, and of course play cornhole. This allowed us to talk as a team about what was working well and what wasn’t. These meetings were a big part of our early success. As we continued to expand it became harder to hold these meetings due to the distance between locations. Some of our locations were five our six hours apart making face to face meetings difficult. We’ve hired some additional people to help training new managers, conduct regular check-ins and serve as a point of contact if there are any questions or concerns.

At Peach State Cornhole, we categorize employees into two groups – league managers and those who support league managers. Our organization works to remove barriers for our league managers because they are ultimately the reason for our success or failure. We provide resources and equipment to set them up for success. Some locations have unique challenges so we’ve supported managers by purchasing golf cart trailers for golf cart communities, lighting, and top of the line equipment. We try to remove all barriers for league managers so they can focus on our mission – connecting people through friendly competition. Our league managers are the face of the organization and we want them to actively engage with league members instead of focusing on logistics and details. We have a team that handles communication, marketing, sponsorships, website management, scheduling, tournaments, and other logistics. There’s rarely a scenario where a league manager is told no by our Peach State team. Our team’s job is to make our managers successful by removing barriers.

Contact Info:

• Website: peachstatecornhole.com
• Instagram: @peachstatecornhole
• Facebook: @peachstatecornhole
• Twitter: @peachstcornhole

Image Credits
Jennie Louise Photography Annie Agarwal Photography