Ben Johns: The Path To Greatness And Keys To Pickleball Success | E84
38:10 Share

I'd say preparation is definitely one of the keys. I mean, I feel like there's been a number of quotes like, "The more prepared I am, the luckier I seem to be." Something like that. But preparation is definitely almost everything to me. Sometimes you are really amazing and you should think something of yourself, but I think other people will naturally think good of you if you are, you know, more humble about it. I'm not about false humbleness. You know, you can acknowledge things, but you don't need to talk yourself up. You don't need to...

you know, push yourself up and have other people admire you for that. They'll admire you for the accomplishments and the things.

You're listening to part two of my incredible conversation with Ben Johns, the number one pickleball player in the world and the greatest player of all time. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Without further ado, here's part two of my incredible conversation with Ben Johns. When you see all these tennis players win major tournaments...

Invariably what they do is they get down on the ground. They look up in the stands. I think some players even go on their back. They're overwhelmed with emotion. What was your emotion when you won your first tournament and when you won your first Grand Slam? That's a good question. 2017 US Open. I wouldn't even say that I didn't have big expectations going into the tournament. I was just there to play and have fun and of course do as best as I could.

I was kind of a complete dark horse. Nobody really knew me. I didn't, like I said, I wasn't expecting to win by any means. I was expecting to have, you know, a decent showing basically. And I remember winning that and I was like, it wasn't because I,

I had always dreamed of winning a pickleball tournament. Like I obviously hadn't, cause I only found pickleball a year before, but it was just so incredible. Like the day and how I had played and just all the series of events that led up to me winning. And I was like, this feels like a dream. This is crazy. Like, Whoa, like I couldn't stop smiling. I remember that. Um, and really no matter what sport you're playing, um, or, or what your goals are kind of the elation of winning, uh, for the first time you can't, you

you can't ever get that feeling the same again. It's, it was really just incredible. Um,

even though, you know, it was just pickleball on its first year. And, you know, there were some videos on, on iPhones and live streams and there was no real TV coverage. And, uh, there was one championship court that could hold, you know, a couple hundred people, but that even that was really cool to me because pickleball, that was the biggest that had ever been up to that point. And as, as small as that is compared to other sports for pickleball, it was, it was really crazy. Um, so yeah, I definitely remember being like, oh, this, it just feels like, uh, not reality. Um,

Have you ever been overcome by emotion and cried from either winning or losing a tournament? And what's your professional high in your career and what's your professional low in your career? Yeah, no, I've never cried over pickleball either on a high or low. I guess I'm just not that emotional of a person. But yeah, high, I would have to say there's a lot of great moments in pickleball, especially winning with partners. Winning my first US Open with a good friend of mine that I kind of

Learned a ton from in pickleball, Kyle Yates. That was huge. Winning my first title with my brother when he came over from tennis to pickleball, that was really huge. But I'd still have to go with that first U.S. Open win, the singles title being kind of the highest high ever.

lowest low I think was probably maybe coming back the following year and it was after it was my freshman year of college I wasn't able to play I probably had a freshman 10 on I didn't feel like a great player I probably didn't look like a great player and my results suffered as part of that and I felt like it's hard it's just hard to give yourself all to a sport when you're diffused by and distracted by spending a ton of time on school which was very important to me as well

When we invest in a company, we look for a lot of different things. I think what we look at most is the founder or founding team. One of the things that we look for is a competitive advantage. Do they have a moat? Is there a patent? Is there some intellectual property protection? But another one is first mover advantage. That means a company is out there before anybody else and already has a big lead. And we wonder, are other companies going to catch up?

In your case, you had an early mover advantage of being the best pickleball player at a much smaller pool of players. Can you talk to us about that?

being the lead today and being the lead from the beginning? And is there a lot more pressure from you right now where you have a lot more people coming into the sport, especially pro tennis players who think they're going to take over and who have been playing a very long period of time and winning lots of tournaments on the pro tennis tour? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a lot of parts to that, but I'd say the part maybe I enjoy most professionally about basketball is how experimental it is, meaning that because it's not a soft sport, because it's a new sport,

Everyone kind of has to figure out how to become a better player gradually. There's nobody telling you how to do it. And one of the things I excel at most is learning new things. And that's really what pickleball is. It's learning new skills and learning from the players around you rather than being told how to do something and then just kind of repetition doing it like how most sports are. So that's one of the biggest things. As for new players coming in, I mean, I welcome that because...

I'm never better than when I'm being pushed. And that is what's happening. You know, there's more players coming in and more better, highly skilled players coming in. When you have more depth and more of that than one, when I'm being pushed, I'm just much more engaged. And that makes me my best self, which I enjoy the most. So even when this, there was this, you know, split happening with majorly pickleball on the PPA tour, I was like,

one, I want players all together because it's best for all of them. But two, I was like, this would suck for me too. Like I want to compete against everybody. I don't want things easier. I want things harder so that that makes me better because that's really what I enjoy most is being the best player I can be. That's what I want in Pickleball. And whether that's being...

The best, meaning number one or not, that's an ultimate goal always, of course. But really, I just want to be the best player that I can personally be. And the drive of new players coming in and being good, that's the best thing I can have. That's driving me. And besides that...

You know, I think that just kind of anything else that you can have driving you is a great thing. So, yeah, that's what I enjoy and that's what I want. Pressure is a privilege, I think, is the saying that comes to mind. So I'll take all the pressure and I'll turn it into something that I enjoy.

At some point, you won 108 matches in a row over three years. You didn't lose. What are you thinking every time you're going out? Is the pressure just building and building because every single person that's talking about it has been going to win 200 games in a row? And when's a guy going to go down on his first game? That's his dominance. Is anyone ever going to break that record?

I really didn't think about it that much until the number had gotten quite high. I don't think anyone was even actively counting. There weren't that many stats in pickleball. People had to go back and count. They're like, oh, he lost. It's been years since he lost. Let's count up and see how many it was. Nobody was even keeping an active count until I did lose. To me, it felt like

It's always more like the pressure is on other people, right? They have to adapt to me. Like I'm the favorite and sure I have pressure to win because I'm expected to win. But if we both just play our games, I know I'm going to win because I'm better. So they have to change. They have to be better in order to beat me. So that's kind of how I always viewed it. And I wouldn't really put any pressure on numbers because to me at the end of the day, it's always like the only pressure you have is to win the tournament that you're in.

Um, it doesn't really build. It's more just like I'm out there to win every time. And, uh, that's always going to be the same. It's the pressure on myself. Basically. Most great pickleball players. And even a lot of good pickleball players, people I play with have some kind of tennis background. Can you be a great pickleball player? If you haven't played tennis and as more tennis players come to the sport, are they eventually going to dominate the sport?

Uh, yeah, what I'd say is you can certainly be very good and you can even be great without a tennis background, or at least without a significant tennis background. But what I would say is tennis makes it much easier to be good quickly, uh,

And by that, I just mean that the skill transfer, I'm not going to say at the highest level, you have to have it. But it is without a doubt going to be the quickest transfer into a very high level. But another thing to consider is all the players that we see are, you know, former tennis players, because we don't really have a great sample size of other backgrounds. Like there's very few high level table tennis players. There's very few high level badminton players where I can give you hundreds of high level tennis players that,

tried and some were succeeding and some failed. So when you have a bigger number trying something, of course, the ones that are going to come out ahead are usually those people. So there's that. But at the same time, I'd say, yeah, tennis definitely lends a ton of advantages as to whether they'll come in and dominate the sport, so to speak. The only way you dominate the sport is

Which, I mean, if you take 1,000 pro tennis players tomorrow and say, let's all come to pick a ball, who do you think the best player is going to be? Of course it's going to be a tennis player because you just put 1,000 of them in there. Does it automatically kind of have like a takeover effect? Not really. I mean, I've seen a lot of high-level tennis players come in and do well very quickly. And I've seen a lot horribly fail and just quit the sport immediately because they hate it.

Um, it just doesn't transfer perfectly for everybody. Um, and I keep prefacing with, if there's going to be something that's extremely good, it should be a pro tennis player, but it's just, it's far less automatic than you might think. You look at the other pro sports, especially football, baseball, even golf, where eventually there's a senior tour and you're not as good as the younger players. You're very young today, 24 years old, 25 years old. Um,

how long can you be this good? Um, you know, I don't really know. I guess I would like to find out the answer to that. Uh, you know, people will always be pushing me and at some point I'll probably be dethroned, so to speak. Um, and I welcome that I'll, I'll defend as long as I can and I'll enjoy the time that I do have as far as what that number may be. I don't really know. It depends on a lot of things, but, uh, honestly, you know, I love pickleball and, um,

I love playing it, but I wouldn't say I would necessarily will be in pickleball until I'm, you know, say 35 or whatever, uh, still trying to defend my, my, my title, so to speak. Of course, I don't think it will be that long, but you know, if I'm 28, 29 years old and I'm number four in the world, you know, that'd be an okay retirement for me. Like really what I care about is being number one and you know,

If I'm not, then I don't know if I would enjoy it as much. I think I'd still enjoy trying to be the best player that I am. But, you know, I really enjoy trying to pursue the top as well.

So, um, there's really no, uh, no concrete plan as to how long I'll be in pickleball or how long I want to, you know, try to defend my, my position. Um, cause I do like doing a variety of things and this is certainly a pickleball is, you know, you're training like a real sport. So you're playing pickleball every day. You're training for it. You're recovering for it. You're eating for it. You're traveling for it. Like it's, it's your whole life. Right. Um,

Um, so I wouldn't even necessarily say that I will get to see how long I can defend my position. I might just be like, all right, I've had my time with pickleball and, uh, and you know, I'm done now. So you guys can have at it. We've talked about a little before that pickleball is a lot easier to play than tennis. It's, you can get good getting very quickly. You can get good very quickly. What's the ideal age to play? And can you start when you're 30 years old and become the number one player in the world?

Uh, you know, I don't think we actually know the answer to that, uh, yet, but of course, just like any sport, I'd say the earlier you start is probably the better just cause you have more time to pursue excellence, uh, basically. So there's something for you, your, your podcast in search of excellence, pursue excellence. Uh, but yeah, I think younger is always, uh, it's always better. Um,

but not necessarily essential. And I'd say the more time that goes on, the more kind of depth pickleball has, the more important it's going to be to spend more time in pickleball. Right now, it's easy to transfer in a year or two from tennis because there's not that many good players. But when there's hundreds of good players of top pro players, it's going to be harder to break in, right? So you're going to need more time naturally.

Let's talk about prize money in pickleball. And we'll start at the beginning. The first national pickleball championship took place in 2009 at a 55 and over community, nearly 50 miles northwest of Phoenix, and drew 400 players and offered a whopping $7,000 in prizes.

Today, professional players in the pro singles and doubles divisions, Quinn up to 25,000 as a top prize. The average pro pickleball player makes around $50,000 a year if they're lucky. And in addition to tournament winnings, players also make money from sponsorships and appearances. Your number one in all time earnings reportedly won $500,000 in tournaments. And in 2019, you're

You signed a three-year sponsorship deal with Franklin Sports at a whopping $70,000 per year. When we look at tennis, Novak Djokovic has made $165 million in tournaments. Roger Federer, $130 million. Rafael Nadal, $125 million. Serena Williams, $93 million. Andy Murray, $63 million.

Will we ever see pickleball tournament purses of $10 million or more or pickleball players flying around on private jets making $5, $10, or $20 million a year?

Will they ever be getting tens of millions in prize money? I don't really know the answer to that. It certainly could be, but I think it would definitely take a while. And a lot of good things would happen to happen for pickleball, such as it being a spectator sport similar to tennis, you know, as much viewership as tennis or even above that. And I'm not sure that it's there. It could be, but I'm not sure about that.

As for kind of the money, I think there's definitely potential for a lot of players to be making at least seven figures. They currently already are, at least a few of them. So yeah, just because of how the growth in pickleball is there, I think the pay for pro players is there. And if anything, I'd say pay for pro players is there.

as inflated because the development of pro players naturally lags behind all the other growth aspects of pickleball. So pro players get to reap the benefits of, hey, you know, I've only been playing a sport a year or two and I'm already one of the best players.

Because there's not that many other good players compared to other sports. And they're getting paid according to the growth in pickleball, which like I keep saying is ahead of the growth of pro players. So naturally you're going to get paid according to that, which is quite a bit compared to the work you're putting in or the time you're putting in rather.

So, yeah, I think pickleball players can certainly get paid a good amount and a very solid amount for how quickly you can be good. Do I ever think it will be along the lines of how big tennis is? That's a large number to pursue, but you can certainly see them making $5, $10, $20 million a year sometime down the road.

This episode of In Search of Excellence is brought to you by Sandy.com. S-A-N-D-E-E.com. We're a Yelp for beaches and have created the world's most comprehensive beach resource by cataloging more than 100 categories of information for every beach in the world. More than 100,000 beaches in 212 countries. Sandy.com.

Sandy.com provides beach goers around the world with detailed, comprehensive, and easy-to-use information to help them plan their perfect beach getaway at home and abroad and to make sure you're never disappointed by a beach visit again. Plan the perfect beach trip today by visiting sandy.com. That's www.sandee.com. The link is in our show notes. Stay sandy, my friends.

I had Jimmy Pitaro, CEO of ESPN on my podcast a few months ago, and I asked him about Pickleball. And are we going to see big deals on ESPN? And he said that

He didn't know today about big deals, but it's something certainly on their radar screen. And obviously you need the big TV contracts for the purses and for people to make money. Also in tennis and these other sports, they have 20,000 seat stadiums and football, sometimes 80,000. So it is a bit of a different game economically, different revenue sources driving those big purses. Yeah, for sure. Pickleball definitely has a lot going for outside of the typical model of generating revenue.

I think big TV contracts are definitely huge, but I also think sponsors have a huge role in tournaments because you have such an engaged fan base that certainly helps you get higher numbers from sponsors.

higher dollar figures from smaller numbers of people just because they're so engaged. So your engagement is off the charts, which obviously drives up the dollars in both TV and in sponsors. Let's talk about your incredible mixed doubles partner, Annalee Waters. She is a phenomenon. Tell us how you guys met and give us a little bit of insight

Insight about her. Yeah. So I think I'm, let's see, eight years older than Annalise. So when I met her, I think she was 11 and I was 19. Kind of in, I think we met in a fashion of which she was kind of trying to get better. And I wouldn't say I really gave her lessons, but I gave her some instruction in the beginning. And then after she was 11, I think she won her first nationals just a year later at 12. So she was, you know, getting to be one of the best players at like 12 years old and onwards. Yeah.

Um, at the time I was playing with Simone Jardim, who was the best player at that time. Um, and she was extremely dominant. She, she kind of won everything for years. Um, and sadly we had to end our partnership when she got injured and was out for a while. So, you know, I've been playing with her for a couple of years and winning with her. So I was very used to that, but she was like, Hey, I'm going to be out for a while. You need to go find somebody else. Um,

So I was like, oh, this is new to me. Like, I got to go find a new partner, which I haven't had to do for a while because I've only been playing with Simone. But Anna Lee, I played her that year and I'd struggled playing against her a little bit. And usually kind of how I gauge other players and partnerships is, you know, how much of a struggle is it to play against them? And she was actually very, very tough and extremely good in a multitude of ways. So obviously I was a little bit

to be like playing with a 15 year old. I was like, that'll be new. I went from playing with Simone, who was I think 42 at the time that we were playing together. And obviously Annalie at 15 was crazy different. But, you know, I respected her game. I liked her as a person. She was mentally very sound on the court and obviously extremely skilled. So I felt like our partnership could definitely be good.

And eventually asked her to, and she was all in on it. And from there now, she's been absolutely incredible to play with. She was extremely talented and has developed into a remarkable player that is extremely dominant. I think a lot of people out there don't realize the impact and difficulty of travel every week on the pro golf tour, especially

Players play on Thursday to Sunday. They get to a tournament on Wednesday where they have to play a pro-am and they do it every single week living in hotel rooms. Is it like that in pickleball as well? Yeah, it's definitely like that. We're traveling probably...

tournaments alone, like 25 weeks a year. And there's events outside that that you travel for. So I'm probably traveling in total at least 35 weeks out of the year, which obviously is pretty crazy for any lifestyle. Tell us about your diet and training and if those are both important to be a successful pickleball player. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I'm not going to say that diet and training are, you know, more important than being a good player, right? Being, you know, talented and skilled and all that. But just like any sport, you can be really talented and you can make yourself even a little bit better, get that extra edge with your recovery and your diet and your training and all that. So, yeah, I do think training is definitely important, you know, kind of how you train. So, you know, I'm putting in two to three hours every day on court and stuff.

And then I'm working out, of course, at least like five days a week, you know, hour in the gym. Then there's every time. And then what you're really eating at any time, your diet is definitely going to be important as well. For me, you know, that's the encore training. The working out is...

a variety of stuff, a lot of weightlifting, uh, plyometrics, uh, recoveries, a ton of stretching, foam rolling, massage, uh, full plunge therapy. There's, there's lots of stuff you do. And then diet wise, I'd say pretty typical kind of, you know, general healthy stuff, you know, your proteins, your healthy carbs, try to stay away from sugar, fried foods and all that. So it's, it's pretty self-explanatory on the diet part. Do you have a trainer?

So yeah, so I have a physical trainer, a physical therapist. I do not have a nutritionist. I kind of just figured out what my body needs. You've talked about happiness and something called flow state. And you've said what keeps you going and that it's part of the pursuit.

Hugh, tell us the impact and significance it's had on your career. Yeah. So flow state is a common term talked about in sports. It's essentially where your body is kind of in a state where it knows what to do and you don't have to be thinking about it anymore. And it's the most remarkable feeling. The ultimate flow state is where everything is just seeming to happening in slow motion and everything is going correctly and you just...

you feel like your body's doing what it's supposed to do before you even have to think about it or anything like that. And it's kind of, I think what all athletes naturally pursue and, and want that feeling. And it's, it's like,

It's just the perfect feeling. You're always pursuing that because it's so perfect. So that's the ultimate flow state and you're always trying to get there, right? But yeah, the basic premise of it is try to be functioning like your body knows what to do without your mind having to think about it. And if you can approach any state resembling that, then you're probably doing pretty well. How important is it? You can certainly play and do well without it, but I'd say you should probably be pursuing it and trying to get it.

One of the elements of my success is something that I call extreme preparation, which means if someone prepares one hour for a meeting, I'm 10, sometimes 20. I want to be the most prepared person who's ever stepped into a room. Has extreme preparation been a part of your success? And if so, can you give a couple of examples?

Yeah, I'd say preparation is definitely one of the keys. I mean, I feel like there's been a number of quotes like the more prepared I am, the luckier I seem to be, something like that. But preparation is definitely almost everything to me.

The biggest example is just practice. If you're practicing, if you know you're going to be doing everything well, the amount of confidence you can go into any match or any tournament with is just so much larger. The preparation you put in on the court is going to be the number one thing, an indicator to how well you're actually going to do. It's confidence and it's really preparation on that front is everything.

Next, I mean, your body, really how you're recovering. Like even I can tell after traveling how much stretching I do and how much of that kind of recovery work I do after that and before I play a tournament directly impacts how well I perform and how good I feel.

So that's another preparation thing. And then kind of diet, like what you're eating the night before. I count that down to preparation, how you warm up. That's preparation at really almost everything you do before a tournament should be in mind of how am I preparing to be my best self come game day. And if you do that well, I usually think you're going to perform pretty well. And if you don't do it well, you're not going to perform well. It's very hard to overcome bad preparation and,

Um, so good preparation is, is almost everything to me. Honestly, you're known to be an extremely humble guy. How important is humility to our success? Yeah. You know, um, I feel like that was just emphasized by my parents always. So I really just get that from them. Um,

I do think it's definitely important to not get too much of an ego in something. Egos are bound to trip you up. They're going to cause you to fail and nobody wants that. So don't let that get in the way. And also, I don't think people like huge egos. Sometimes it's warranted. Sometimes you are really amazing and you should think something of yourself, but...

But I think other people will naturally think good of you if you are more humble about it. I'm not about false humbleness. You can acknowledge things, but you don't need to talk yourself up. You don't need to push yourself up and have other people admire you for that. They'll admire you for the accomplishments and the things you do. You don't need to put it out there.

So that's kind of always been my attitude on it. And I definitely think it is a good thing for success. But, you know, I'm not going to tell anybody else how to live. If you do better with talking yourself up and that's how you perform well, then you go ahead and do that. But, yeah, I'm not going to do that. People are recognizing you more when you're in airports. What's that like? Yeah.

Yeah, I think yesterday traveling here to Atlanta, it was three people, which doesn't seem like a crazy number, but it's always funny to me just because they'll say random stuff like, good luck this weekend or, hey, I'm a fan. I watch your stuff. And it's been kind of gradual, but it's still definitely a weird feeling to be like, this person knows me and I don't know them at all. I mean, it's cool, but it's also strange still. What's the most outrageous thing

someone has come up to and said, and is it like to the point now where you're a good looking guy, you're single, are you getting proposition a lot? Are women waiting for you to come off the court and introducing themselves to you? Heck no, no, no, no. It's not that big yet.

No, no propositions, nothing too crazy and pickleball. Certainly there's always an attitude of some admiration for excellence. I guess if you're, if you're good at a sport, then usually you're going to have more people admiring you in whatever fashion that may be. But yeah, I wouldn't say it's like a normal sport and that type of craziness. It's, it's pretty normal still.

There are tens of millions of fans in every professional sport. And there are tons of fans who would pay an incredible amount of money to spend any amount of time with their idol or the best players in their game. At Pickleball, you've made it possible to play with you. Tell us about your trips. And also, what would you charge a fan or somebody who wanted to spend an entire day with you and play Pickleball with you for that day?

Yeah, Pickleball Getaways was something myself and DecoBar started at another pro player. We started in 2018. And basically the whole premise of it is all-inclusive pickleball vacations with instruction. So you go on vacation, it's one price. You get to play pickleball every day with instruction from pros. Sometimes I'm there. I was there on every trip in the first couple of years. Now I'm probably on 20% of them or so.

But yeah, it's all inclusive vacation, pickleball every day, play every day, instruct every day. And really what we realized is people, because they're so addicted to pickleball, they don't want to go on a vacation without it. So we basically just bundled those two things together and we provided high quality professional instruction with it. And people seem to like those things bundled. These days I'm having less and less time to do special events, exhibitions, teaching, any of that stuff, just because I'm so busy playing.

but you can still find me on a few pickable getaways trips every year. How much do these trips cost? And what would you charge for one day to spend a day with you of someone who wanted to pay whatever it costs? Uh,

Yeah, so the trips usually are between 60 and 80 people, some are as low as 32. And typically for the entire vacation, they'll cost somewhere between $2,500 and $4,000 or $5,000 per person, depending on if we're going to Europe or not. That's usually the high cost and the low cost, like Mexico for $2,500 for like a week. How much would I charge like an individual person for a day now? Yeah.

between 40 and 50,000 now generally. Yeah. And how would they go about contacting you if someone wanted to do that? Yeah, that's hard to reach you. By the way, big shout out to Reagan Penwell who made this happen. Yes. I love Reagan. She's a good friend. She's an amazing woman. Her husband, Ken is an amazing guy. I appreciate you guys for being fans of my show and for hooking me up with Ben. I'm, I'm really grateful to you. So thanks for that.

I am hard to reach. But yeah, you can generally what people do is they just instant message me on an Instagram and send a request. And my manager usually looks those over and will send it to me if it's if it's worth me looking into. Or you got to know somebody like you knew somebody, Randy, and that got you in the door. So if you know somebody that knows me, that's usually the best way to do it. But Instagram works as well. Okay. And people can reach me if they can't reach me.

And I'm happy to forward on to you, Ben. We may get some requests after. We got another avenue right here. Are you looking for your next great gift to surprise a friend, colleague, or loved one? Bliss Beaches makes the perfect gift. This best-selling bright and beautiful coffee table book by Randall Kaplan features starlight,

stunning drone photography from exotic beach locations around the world. It's the perfect housewarming gift, a great addition to any home or office, and a fun and creative alternative to bringing a bottle of wine to somebody's house for dinner. Bliss Beaches is available for purchase on Amazon, where it has glowing reviews and a five-star rating. Get your next amazing gift and order a copy of Bliss Beaches by clicking the link in our show notes.

You said Elon Musk is kind of your idol. Is he your idol? And who else had big influences on your career in terms of watching people or reading about people you don't know? Yeah, honestly, I was even growing up not really a fan of that many people. I liked and admired certain people, but I didn't really have any idols. I didn't really have role models as far as celebrities or athletes go. I just didn't look up to anyone that much.

Um, my biggest role models has have always been my parents and my, my older brother, I think, um, my older brother in sports, cause he, he played them at a higher level than I did. And I learned a lot from him and my parents and basically every principle and example and, and all of that, they, they impacted me more than anybody else. And I admire them more than anybody else.

But Elon, yes, I do actually like him a lot. And he's probably the only person I'd mentioned where I'd be like, I'd really like to meet him and really admire him. And other people are celebrities or athletes. I'd be like, yeah, I mean, it'd be cool to meet so-and-so, but do I actually particularly care or really want to meet that person? I would be like, yeah, that's who I need to meet today. Probably not. I'd just enjoy it if I did because I always like meeting new people that are interesting and cool people.

But Elon, because I think he's doing amazing things for the world, certainly altruistically to some extent. And I think human evolution...

civilization, society, all those things progress by great minds that, you know, think way ahead and think in the future. And he's probably the one that's doing that the most right now. Um, so if there's anything that's going to advance humanity as, as a whole, um, it could be any number of people that you don't, that you haven't heard of, but of the ones that you have heard of, Elon's probably up among the top. Do you know if he plays pickleball?

I don't actually know that. I think he's, he's played maybe at least once. Cause I think he sent out a tweet about it once that I saw. Um, but yeah, I don't actually know if he plays. I'm going to try to track that down and see if possible introduction can be made. And if so, all I ask is I'm going to invite myself. If you guys are playing. And even if I'm not playing with you guys, I'd love to watch, uh, someone, someone said to me the other day, if you could have three people on your show, who are your dreams, uh,

It would be Elon, Oprah, and I'm not sure who the third person would be, but those would be my top two right now. So I would love to have him. So what are you doing these days to give back? I think there's a responsibility for athletes and high profile people to set examples for different people. Can you tell us what you're doing and how important is giving back to our community, to our success?

Yeah, I'd say number one thing I can do is, you know, to play pickleball at a high level with good integrity and being a good athlete, a good sport, being a professional. And I think that, you know, sets a good example for anybody watching. So I always try to do that. And that's how I think I can personally give back the most because being a bad example at a high level with, you know, lots of viewers is the wrong thing to do, clearly. So you want to be the best example you can, which is what I strive to do.

I'm sure I never do a perfect job of it, but I always try. And beyond that, I just various kind of, you know, solo events, generally the thing that I can do most easily where it's like, you know, this is for a good cause. If you could show up and say a few words or, you know, hit or do an exhibition or anything like that, then I'm always interested in any kind of event that's good for a good cause that I can contribute to.

Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask some more open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, fill in the blank to excellence. Are you ready to play? Ready. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is... The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is that you are most fulfilled by working hard. My number one professional goal is... My number one professional goal is to be number one as long as I can. My number one personal goal is...

My number one personal goal is to learn new things frequently. My biggest regret is... My biggest regret is that I was not able to dedicate myself to sports from a younger age. The one thing I've dreamed about doing for a long time but haven't done is... The one thing I've dreamed about for doing a long time but I haven't done yet is going to Japan, which I think I will next year.

If you could go back in time, what are the one piece of advice you'd give yourself when you were 15 years old and when you were 21 years old? A piece of advice at 15, I would just tell myself to enjoy that time as much as possible because you're never a kid again. At 21, I'd say I'm essentially the same person I am now, but I would say make better choices with the people you're around.

If you could play pickleball with any three people in the world, who would they be? Elon, obviously. Other people, probably Kevin Hart, number two. I think he'd be really funny. And number three, I will go with Gal Gadot. Who's the third? Gal Gadot. She's an Israeli actress, Wonder Woman.

So I can help with the Kevin Hart thing. I have a charity event called the Imagine Ball this year, which is on November 4th at the Peppermint Club. My friend John Terzian and I started this event nine years ago now. And Kevin Hart is the emcee and honoree this year. If you're in town, I'd love to have you as my guest. You could spend some time with Kevin. Wow, excellent. That's amazing. Thank you. The one question you wish I had asked you is...

I don't have one for that. I think you did a really thorough job. This is the most thorough podcast I've done. I love that. Ben, you're incredible. You've had an incredible career. I'm excited to meet you. Hopefully you'll come up to Gaza next summer. I'm sorry I missed you this summer, but I'm so happy for you, for your career, your success, all the incredible things you're doing for pickleball. I love the sport. All my friends love the sport. And I really appreciate your time for being here today. Thanks for sharing your incredible story with us.

Thanks so much for having me, Randy. Yeah, no, this has definitely been the most prepared I've seen somebody for a podcast, I think. You know, I got sent a microphone and a video camera beforehand. We had a whole pre-test meeting. We had a whole team kind of try to set up the camera and the audio appropriately.

Obviously, you had a ton of really great questions that I think led us in some interesting paths and you did your research beforehand. So I think prepared is definitely the word that comes to mind when thinking of you in this podcast.