We were lucky to catch up with Susannah Barr recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Susannah, thanks for joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I became self-employed around 5 years ago as a professional player and coach, but in the last two years, we opened our first indoor pickleball facility. Our club has 18 indoor courts, a restaurant, a bar, and 10 pickleball coaches along with numerous other staff to help us be the best facility in the world. Within one year, we a have full membership with a waitlist to get in and are now opening two more facilities and franchising.

To say the least, I am busy! I feel like I really have five jobs and yet all of them are on me. Each one is related to pickleball (professional player, coach, pickleball director, YouTube creator, and franchise program manager), and yet each one requires different parts of me at different times. It’s busy, but it’s fun. And it’s amazing being in control of your own destiny.

Yes, at times, I wonder what it would be like to have a regular job. To be done at a set time each day. But I would miss out on so much! I get to create. I get to interact with people from all different backgrounds and stories. I help people get better at their game. And I get to travel the world playing this sport I love. Everything I am doing now, I love. And it is all for building a future where maybe I won’t be quite so busy, but I’ll be repeating the benefits of all the hard work and seeing pickleball continue to grow and make others happy.

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 got into pickleball in 2018 as a hobby. The sport was just beginning to take off. After about a year of playing casually, I played in my first tournament and was hooked. Within the next year, I got certified as a coach and began coaching pickleball around Boise and the state of Idaho.

This quickly turned intro playing pickleball professionally and coaching as well. I got sponsored by a great paddle company, Selkirk Sports, which allowed me to travel even more to play and coach.

At the end of 2021, I got drafted into the first ever Major League Pickleball league. This skyrocketed my professional playing career where I ended the 2023 year as the number one mixed player on the Association of Pickleball Professionals League and won a Super Final with my Major League Pickleball team, The Chicago Slice. I hold over 50 medals on the APP tour and quite a few international ones as well.

While playing professionally is still my main focus, when home in Boise, Idaho, I was spending my time running events, clinics, and coaching around the valley. Our beautiful town needed more places to play, especially indoors. Through a series of fortunate events, I found a team who had the same dream of me of opening the best indoor pickleball facility ever.

In November of 2023, we opened the doors to The Flying Pickle in Meridian, Idaho. This state-of-the-art facility has 18 courts, a restaurant, bar, pro shop, mezzanine, and more. The co-founders include me (the pickleball guru), Paul Starita, our CEO and business genius, and Nick Petterson, another well-respected pickleball players and technology director. Together we founded the club, but it couldn’t have been done without the great team we brought on board. And it really couldn’t have been done without the support of our pickleball community who embraced the club with open arms.

Our community is what I am most proud of. The Flying Pickle is the home away from home for so many pickleball players in the Treasure Valley. Players come and play, make friends, eat lunch, play leagues, take lessons, drill to get better, and compete in tournaments every day at our club. Our staff know members by name, and we have a core value of treating everyone like an MVP. We are always listening to our members and innovating to make the club and the pickleball experience better for everyone.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my first cofounder, Nick, on the pickleball court. We quickly became friends, drill partners, and even tournament partners, including winning the English Open in 2023.

Nick and I spoke often about the need to open a pickleball facility and dabbled in plans and looking at real estate, but neither of us really knew that much about opening and owning a business.

Then one day, on a Facebook forum, I saw someone make a post and survey about opening a club in Boise. I didn’t know this person, but I recognized quickly the questions seemed legitimate, though pretty off-base from our community of players. I knew I needed to find this person. Asking around through friends of friends, we were able to locate Paul and discern he was legitimate and quality. We met for breakfast and quickly realized we all brought to the table different but important strengths. Paul knew how to get a business started. He had owned businesses before. But he really didn’t know pickleball and what the community would want. That’s where Nick and I came into picture. We were able to guide him in what players were looking for and what would make a club desirable to be a part of. It was the perfect match, and we haven’t looked back. We are all still working in our different strength areas, but as a team, we get along, support each other, and want the business to grow.

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

My main team is my group of quality pickleball coaches. We have grown from 5 coaches to over 10 coaches in a little over a year. All of our coaches are contractors, which is interesting to manage. The challenge is that we have to meet both the needs and wants of our coaches and our players. Some coaches only want to teach a few hours; others want almost full-time. I try to provide plenty of opportunities for coaches to teach clinics to meet more clients, but it is also up to the coaches to build their own brand. I also try to provide variety for our coaches throughout the year to prevent too much burnout. And coaches have the opportunity to create their own programs as well. We are a very symbiotic team.

Despite being contractors and competing for clients, one of my main goals is to have our instructional staff be a team. We communicate in group chats with each other, we help each other out to cover clinics, we encourage our players to take lessons from multiple coaches, and we provide professional development opportunities to help all coaches grow. We also provide incentives for coaches who stay with us long-term including paid trips and raises.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theflyingpickle.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/susannahbarr.pb/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susannahbarr.pb/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theflyingpickleacademy
• Other: https://susannahbarrpickleball.substack.com/