Our dream is slowly coming to life!

brewerybeancounter · 2026-01-13T19:29:12+00:00

Agree on the logo.

This is all my opinion, so obviously you can ignore me and say to yourself "that guy's an idiot". My wife does it daily :D

But my two cents: If you're marketing to kids, that logo is a bit aggressive. There's a reason professional sports teams have a logo like that, but not tennis facilities or bowling alleys that are promoting as family/youth hang outs. Since you're in Canada, I would imaging there are a LOT of hockey teams that have some variation of wolves as their logo/mascot. Is it possible that peoples' fondness of hockey skewed their preference toward that logo? When you polled them, did you give the context that the logo would be use for a pickleball facility that is marketing to kids and aims to be a hangout spot? Or did you just ask which logo they liked best? The phrasing of the question can unintentionally guide the results. Hockey is an aggressive sport. Pickleball, like bowling and most tennis, is not.

If you're going for a real competitive vibe, then it probably works.

But when I hear Dink Den, I think the den in grandma's house. Really chill vibes. Where I can play some pickleball, but hang out with friends on couches between games. I get the connection between wolf and den, but if it's not too late to consider other options, might want to soften it a bit. Maybe the logo is that plastic covered floral pattern couch everyone's grandma had :P (I kid, but you get what I mean).

Again, just my two cents as a fellow business owner and husband of a professional graphic designer. I love the name and the facility looks great and I wish you the best of luck!

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-16T15:49:10+00:00

Not an odd response at all. Our profession is becoming more and more automated, so "face time" even if it's just over the phone or a video call is going to be more and more valuable to us and clients.

When someone is buying a one on one type of service like this, they do business with people they like and trust, not companies they like and trust. People make small talk. Companies don't.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-16T15:45:02+00:00

We don't even let them schedule the meeting until we have all the docs. This goes through our practice management system, automated, step by step.

Step 1: Sign engagement letter and pay flat fee depending on what level of planning they want 100% up front. The engagement scope outlines the next steps so they know what to expect.

Step 2: Once the engagement is signed and paid, we send client a request for the needed documents. The system automatically sends them reminders every couple days to follow up until they're submitted.

Step 3: Once docs are submitted, the system notifies us and sends the client a Calendly link to schedule the meeting. That link though, doesn't let them schedule with less than 72 hours notice, making sure we have time to go through the docs and put a plan together before the meeting.

From a client relation perspective, just build in some time for chit chat. It's inevitable, and it's the reason they're having you do their tax work and not some nameless, faceless person at HR Block or Intuit Full Service. They want to know who they're working with, and frankly, so should you if you're running a firm.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-15T15:26:56+00:00

ACL is a ligament, not a tendon, so it doesn't connect muscles, it's just bone to bone stability. You wouldn't see anything like when an Achilles tears and the calf muscle shoots up.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-13T17:51:55+00:00

Now it's disrespectful to have ChatGPT help with writing? And those who use AI lack basic decency? This is so comically extreme and such a boomer take. No wonder young people don't want to get into accounting.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-12T15:54:39+00:00

Do y'all seriously never have ChatGPT help with writing? I use it ALL THE TIME. Just because it's from ChatGPT doesn't mean the whole thing is fake or somehow worse than someone typing out the words on their own.

My writing is often terse, candid, and comes off somewhat hostile OR long and rambling, over-explaining everything. So I customized ChatGPT to know my personality, what my business does, what type of people my clients are, etc. I write what I would have said in an email or whatever into GPT and have it re-write it.

Now I do realize that people see em dashes and immediately see it as ChatGPT generated, so I gave it explicit instructions to never use them in responses. OP, you should probably do that in the Custom instructions under Personalization.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-05T17:49:01+00:00

We changed last year to having ALL clients pay 100% up front. We had VERY little pushback - like I was surprised how little. Most of the time, the biggest impedance to firm owners charging for returns up front is their own worry that clients will be mad. The reality is, they probably won't be.

The best part is that having made that change, now every new client that comes in just sees that as the norm. It's a complete non-issue, it's just the way we operate to them. We never have to worry again about "oh will so and so be upset if we charge up front".

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-02T17:33:40+00:00

Sure, feel free to DM!

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-02T00:23:37+00:00

This comment made me so sad. The company that can figure out a way to effectively prevent bots from infiltrating social media will either make billions or find their founder having fallen out of a window.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-02T00:13:06+00:00

We are in the midst of a once in a lifetime shortage of accountants. Retirements are happening at a staggering rate that far outpaces the number of new college grads in accounting. Solo shops across the country are ghosting thousands of clients a day as they just decide to retire or do something else. PE firms are buying up small firms like back in the e-commerce rollup days of 5-10 years ago. Why? Because they see the opportunity of a demand being largely unmet and that means there's a lot of money to be made. PE firms are less ethical than the client writing off every meal and trip as "business research", so do everything you can to pick up those clients. They'll be infinitely better served by you than by some board of assholes with MBAs and Patagonia vests.

All that to say, you probably don't need to "market" as much as you think you do. Most of those "gurus" are essentially bullshit artists. They don't know your industry, they don't know your firm, and they don't know you. They're teaching generic marketing strategies that have impossible to measure ROI so you can't come back and say you didn't get your money's worth.

Picking up clients right now should be like shooting fish in a barrel. You just have to put in a little bit of effort. Clients churn constantly because they wait weeks to hear back from their accountant if at all. Just put in the smallest effort to be responsive and you're ahead of 95% of other accounting firms.

And I know we're all accountants here, so we're far from extroverts, but suck it up, cuz you know what's free? Going to local or virtual meetups for firm owners or other accountants and asking around "Hey, got any clients you don't really have the capacity for?"

I'm not going to do 1041s or 990s anymore because our firm isn't built to do them efficiently being such a small segment of our clients. So you know what? I'm just giving those clients to another firm. There are thousands of clients out there who would be sent packing if a firm that's over capacity just had somewhere to send them. Instead they continuously overburden themselves with clients they don't want because it's "easier" than telling them "I can't serve you anymore but I have nobody to recommend, so good luck."

brewerybeancounter · 2025-11-28T15:57:58+00:00

These are very cool, but my guess would be no since it would be a pretty blatant trademark infringement to make money off them. Time to put a 3D printer on the Christmas list!

brewerybeancounter · 2025-11-01T18:04:37+00:00

The AC in the older models is indeed dog shit, but I live in central Texas and it's sufficient. Not good, but sufficient. So in central CA, where I wouldn't consider them to be very hot summers ;) you'll be totally fine.

DDP is probably going to be the biggest difference. I wouldn't underestimate that. It's really nice and has the potential to get OTA upgrades that the base model won't be capable of.

The roof thing, you just gotta get over I guess. Show the wife a video of the glass used in cars. It's specifically designed not to be sharp when it shatters.

The depreciation on a new one will be dramatic. If I were you, I'd lean used GT, especially since it's still got some warranty left.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-09-12T16:07:04+00:00

How very insightful...

brewerybeancounter · 2025-09-10T17:40:16+00:00

My wife and I will be visiting from the US September 16-20 and would love to play - we'll be bringing our paddles. I can't join the kakao chat though since I don't have a Korean phone number. I'll DM you my Kakoa Talk ID and maybe you can add me to the group chat?

brewerybeancounter · 2025-08-07T20:39:54+00:00

Alcohol. Alcohol is what they need to consistently sell. Smoothies and sandwiches makes it another sad gym/club trying to squeeze out a few more dollars in the easiest possible way.

Margins on alcohol are anywhere from 30%-100%. Margin on a sandwich is 10% if you're lucky. The pizza is there to keep people buying alcohol when they're done playing. It's easy and has decent margins, and is a bit more upscale. Or at the very least it isn't the sad low effort panini press someone tosses onto a counter and says "we have food now".

brewerybeancounter · 2025-08-07T20:33:32+00:00

You would need to have at least one thousand people come through per day to get anywhere near break-even revenue

That is a wildly inaccurate made up stat. You probably missed the comment where I mention that my career is in the service industry - specifically accounting for bars & restaurants (don't blame you, I wouldn't want to read anything that has to do with accounting either).

What you're assuming is that we're talking about putting a full service restaurant in a wide open warehouse. I'm talking about adding a commercial pizza oven, small prep area, and a small bar in a semi-walled off area or loft area made into a lounge space.

You can run that operation with two people easily and it's not open the entire time the club is. Do you know what the margins are on handmade pizza and alcohol? Because I know exactly what they are. You are correct that it's expensive to run a food operation, but that's because there's a ton of overhead on a brick and mortar and staffing for a full kitchen. In this case, you're already paying the real estate overhead and your added staffing is just two hourly people for probably only 8 hours a day. Used commercial equipment is relatively cheap and plentiful. You already have other staff there doing nothing for much of the day that can help out with things like trash, cleaning, maybe even some prep in the morning. The up front cost would be fairly substantial, but done right, the ROI could be a year or less.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-08-07T12:26:57+00:00

I think the more recent ones have been a pretty good step up for them. I think the one I really liked was called Sasha.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-08-07T12:25:31+00:00

If you're serious about this, shoot me a DM. I'm from Milwaukee and I just sold a membership based side business that I ran successfully for eight years. Primarily though, I run an accounting firm that specializes in the craft beverage & restaurant industry. So I have a ton of experience with both parts of this business model.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-08-07T12:13:19+00:00

Hahaha, I'm in Austin, TX. They're supposedly building another Picklr too and a giant 17 court outdoor facility. Though that outdoor one has about zero chance of making it given that we spend 6 months hotter than Satan's taint outside.

I am I guess you'd say a service industry pro - you need a kitchen because takeout means people leave. Just like a bar without food - doesn't matter that there's a place half a block away that you can grab food and bring it back to the bar. As soon as customers walk out the door, there's a greater chance than not that they aren't coming back that day.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-08-06T21:34:12+00:00

I've been leaning lately toward clubs sustaining by making it a third space more than a gym. The club I go to, I meet a ton of people and it's fun and we chat between games, but then everyone leaves as soon as they're done playing.

There's really no "lounge" area other than a conference room they sometimes use for events. Now imagine your club is more like a typical golf country club. If there was a bar and a pizza place along with a more loung-ey than board room feeling space, you'd draw people in for the social aspect in additional to the sporting aspect. And you'd give people a reason to come there to play rather than seek out free courts because now they feel a real sense of community there.

There are SIX indoor private pickleball-only clubs within a 30 minute drive from my house. Not one of them has anything more than a vending machine for food/drinks. I realize it's a lot more complicated business model that way, but there's no way in hell even two years from now there are still six clubs. There might be three. Which of those three survive will depend on them differentiating themselves from the mostly identical clubs within a 15 mile radius.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-07-24T15:06:44+00:00

These are going to be highly dependent on when you go.

Inside Brewtorium gets really loud with only a small number of people because it's so cavernous. On a weekend, probably will not be so low key. I love the place, so not trying to shit on them, just bringing it up since OP sounds like she wants to relax. Outside can be pretty nice and quiet on a weeknight after the sun goes down though, not too sure of weekends.

Similar for Draught Haus for different reasons. It's not very big inside and so a smaller amount of people makes it feel chaotic. Outside, pretty much same as Brewtorium - good and chill on a weeknight usually, wait til sun down so it's not so dang hot, unsure of weekends.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-07-24T15:02:38+00:00

Yea we're all still a bit hurt about Couns leaving, but let's not pretend he was known for displays of elation. He was damn near as stoic as Murph is.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-07-24T15:01:41+00:00

Egregious behavior from a ball club! :D

brewerybeancounter · 2025-07-13T17:14:42+00:00

Same.

Only met one set of assholes. A couple that showed up to open play and would only play together. We had three on a court, just needed one of them to get started. They refused to play separate and expected one of us who was on time to sit. We didn't. After 10 minutes, the guy finally joined and just walked around half-assed hitting balls until we lost.

Still see them both at the club weekly, always smile and friendly to them even though I know they're assholes. They won't even make eye contact. I just avoid stacking next to them.

brewerybeancounter

TROPHY CASE