Owning the Battleground: Through the Eyes of the Owner
Hi, I'm Tommy. I'm not only the owner. I'm also the client.
There are a lot of different perspectives in paintball, and most of the time, you just ask your buddy what they might be thinking while they're playing. Was that a squad wipe? How does that rocket launcher shoot? What are you thinking when you're running up on a bunker with just a pistol? What did you see in the snake? Why are you calling it a map? Why aren't you wearing any pants? How do you like to act as a General? How does that new Twister shoot? Seriously, dude, the hell are your pants?
There's one perspective that players seldom is asked about. And frankly, a lot of the times it's one of---if not the most important of anyone's at the field. That point of view is that of the owner.
Ask any team that takes their sponsorship seriously about the field owner, and they'll tell you it matters. A lot. I can tell you from personal experience what it's like to have a field with a terrible owner as a team sponsor. I've been there, and the complete lack of give-a-damn ruined the atmosphere, the events, and eventually the field itself. It can make the game day experience absolutely sub-par, and soon the clientele becomes just as terrible as the field.
Or it can go in the other direction. An awesome owner can not only put out a good field, but also drive positive experiences for players that visit. It helps convert new players to regulars, and responds to the suggestions and ideas that those players bring in. That reflects on game days as well, leading to better experiences, bigger crowds, bigger and better events, and hopefully makes the field sustainable.
This is the part where I introduce you to Tommy Sellers. You may know his team, Brawl, from when a video of them went paintball viral in 2019 for making it rain at the end of a match. You may also know him as the field owner of Southern Maryland Paintball, and for more recently opening a second field, Central Avenue Paintball. I spoke with him about his paintball journey, how he got into owning a field, and what it's like to own and operate a place for other people to have fun.
There's one perspective that players seldom is asked about. And frankly, a lot of the times it's one of---if not the most important of anyone's at the field. That point of view is that of the owner.
Ask any team that takes their sponsorship seriously about the field owner, and they'll tell you it matters. A lot. I can tell you from personal experience what it's like to have a field with a terrible owner as a team sponsor. I've been there, and the complete lack of give-a-damn ruined the atmosphere, the events, and eventually the field itself. It can make the game day experience absolutely sub-par, and soon the clientele becomes just as terrible as the field.
Or it can go in the other direction. An awesome owner can not only put out a good field, but also drive positive experiences for players that visit. It helps convert new players to regulars, and responds to the suggestions and ideas that those players bring in. That reflects on game days as well, leading to better experiences, bigger crowds, bigger and better events, and hopefully makes the field sustainable.
This is the part where I introduce you to Tommy Sellers. You may know his team, Brawl, from when a video of them went paintball viral in 2019 for making it rain at the end of a match. You may also know him as the field owner of Southern Maryland Paintball, and for more recently opening a second field, Central Avenue Paintball. I spoke with him about his paintball journey, how he got into owning a field, and what it's like to own and operate a place for other people to have fun.
Tommy, being the very best trophy husband he can be
When did you start playing paintball? Where? How did you get into the game?
I started playing paintball in 2010-ish when I opened Southern Maryland Paintball (Editor's Note: Holy Balls! Didn't see that answer coming!). But really didn’t play paintball competitively until 2012 when SMP held a formal tournament, an APPA sanctioned event.
Prior to that, I sort of played one time with 7 people, in the woods at a friends house, over many, many acres in 2001/2002. I say sort of because I spent most of the time either hunting people and never finding them or the reverse---hiding and never being found.
What were your first jobs in the sport? How long were you in those roles?
My first job in the sport was owner/operator in 2009 (Editor's Note: Again, road less traveled!) and I’m still in that position to this day, lol!
But as owner operator I’ve down it all as far as reffing, coordinating, receptionist, gun tech, you name a job title at a paintball field, I’ve done it.
I started playing paintball in 2010-ish when I opened Southern Maryland Paintball (Editor's Note: Holy Balls! Didn't see that answer coming!). But really didn’t play paintball competitively until 2012 when SMP held a formal tournament, an APPA sanctioned event.
Prior to that, I sort of played one time with 7 people, in the woods at a friends house, over many, many acres in 2001/2002. I say sort of because I spent most of the time either hunting people and never finding them or the reverse---hiding and never being found.
What were your first jobs in the sport? How long were you in those roles?
My first job in the sport was owner/operator in 2009 (Editor's Note: Again, road less traveled!) and I’m still in that position to this day, lol!
But as owner operator I’ve down it all as far as reffing, coordinating, receptionist, gun tech, you name a job title at a paintball field, I’ve done it.
Tommy's field
How did you decide to open a field? Why did you feel like it would work? How did you decide to open in the location that your field is in?
I never set out to become a paintball field owner, I had a partner whose dream it was to open a field, and I had saved up a small amount of money to get it started. So we put the two together and voilà, SMP was born.
But before I decided to go along with it, when my partner at the time pitched the idea, he gave me some sites to check out about how it’s a great idea/business opportunity to open a paintball field. They showed how it was the second fastest growing extreme sport in America. It was a can't-miss business! They made it sound like, build it and they would come. Hype.
So to me that sounded like low risk, high reward, but man was I wrong! Lol!
The location was decided purely by first place to come available and allow us to get the business started. We looked in my tri-county area around Washington DC, which are Charles, Prince George’s and St Mary’s counties. With PG and St. Mary’s Counties being only raw land, there wasn't much ready. Charles county just so happened to have an abandoned driving range as its previous business for sale. And Charles county was the first to say yes. In hindsight was definitely the best location of the three.
How long did it take to come up with a business plan prior to opening? How much research did you do on competition in the area, and potential market for you to work within? What were your biggest fears or concerns prior to opening? How did you overcome those?
Once we scouted the three locations and not knowing which one would work out, we made a generic business models, i.e. staffing, pricing, parking, flow of customers, where we would get paint, where we get rental equipment, how we would come about getting the money for it, etc. And once Charles County said yes, we kind of filled in a small gaps that fit that the place as far as a business plan would work.
As far as competition, the biggest competitor in the tri-county area was OA Bowie in PG County, with Southern Maryland Paintball being just over an hour away. We didn’t think they would be too much competition that would actually affect us. Kind of fortunate for us, and unfortunate for OA Bowie, the year we opened was the last year OA would be open. They closed down business for good.
We kind of looked at demographics in the area for income per household and our area is one of the highest in the country. So again, we thought can’t miss. A lot of extra income. No parks in the area. So the biggest fear was opening as quickly as possible as the county would allow. The county has a tendency to drag its feet or at least it sure seemed that way from the start of the process in 2007 until we opened in 2009.
We were kind of living and staying afloat on credit that was quickly running out because, even though the county had said yes, there were still permits that need to be processed, state inspections, county inspections, health department inspections, fire department inspections, etc. before we could actually open our doors to the public.
I never set out to become a paintball field owner, I had a partner whose dream it was to open a field, and I had saved up a small amount of money to get it started. So we put the two together and voilà, SMP was born.
But before I decided to go along with it, when my partner at the time pitched the idea, he gave me some sites to check out about how it’s a great idea/business opportunity to open a paintball field. They showed how it was the second fastest growing extreme sport in America. It was a can't-miss business! They made it sound like, build it and they would come. Hype.
So to me that sounded like low risk, high reward, but man was I wrong! Lol!
The location was decided purely by first place to come available and allow us to get the business started. We looked in my tri-county area around Washington DC, which are Charles, Prince George’s and St Mary’s counties. With PG and St. Mary’s Counties being only raw land, there wasn't much ready. Charles county just so happened to have an abandoned driving range as its previous business for sale. And Charles county was the first to say yes. In hindsight was definitely the best location of the three.
How long did it take to come up with a business plan prior to opening? How much research did you do on competition in the area, and potential market for you to work within? What were your biggest fears or concerns prior to opening? How did you overcome those?
Once we scouted the three locations and not knowing which one would work out, we made a generic business models, i.e. staffing, pricing, parking, flow of customers, where we would get paint, where we get rental equipment, how we would come about getting the money for it, etc. And once Charles County said yes, we kind of filled in a small gaps that fit that the place as far as a business plan would work.
As far as competition, the biggest competitor in the tri-county area was OA Bowie in PG County, with Southern Maryland Paintball being just over an hour away. We didn’t think they would be too much competition that would actually affect us. Kind of fortunate for us, and unfortunate for OA Bowie, the year we opened was the last year OA would be open. They closed down business for good.
We kind of looked at demographics in the area for income per household and our area is one of the highest in the country. So again, we thought can’t miss. A lot of extra income. No parks in the area. So the biggest fear was opening as quickly as possible as the county would allow. The county has a tendency to drag its feet or at least it sure seemed that way from the start of the process in 2007 until we opened in 2009.
We were kind of living and staying afloat on credit that was quickly running out because, even though the county had said yes, there were still permits that need to be processed, state inspections, county inspections, health department inspections, fire department inspections, etc. before we could actually open our doors to the public.
SMP's majestic castle
When did you know that the field would be successful? What rules do you have in place to make sure that you can keep being successful?
I can tell you for three years, I didn’t think it was gonna be successful.
As bills would come, credit was gone, and I was working my full-time job trying to support my household. Juggling in SMP was not very fun. Smp was basically living month-to-month for three years.
Because both me and my partner at the time had never run a business and only worked for companies, they were just a lot of things we didn’t know that we didn’t know. We had a horrible website that wasn’t interactive at all. We had little-to-no social media presence, as it was newer at the time.
We basically survived on word-of-mouth and regulars, one of them being a speedball team named Mayhem. Mayham would do GPL's and EPL‘s, trying to get teams to practice down here and trying to get a tournament series run out of SMP.
So one of the EPL‘s they spoke to Chad Rotella about doing speedball events here. Chad came by one day during the week and we surveyed the land. He looked at speedball field and looked at the at the maps we had up (I know they aren’t maps, but every walk-on player asks, "What map are we playing next?" And we used to correct them and said it’s a field but quickly stopped correcting them because if our customers want to call the maps---fine, we'll call the maps too) and said, "Why not run scenarios out of here and hold the tournaments off for now?"
Now, we had run a few scenarios in our short time open and they were successful, but Chad had a system that would help make it a regular thing. So year three of SMP, we had scenarios every 6 to 8 weeks and people really enjoyed them, as it broke up the normal walk-on play every weekend and excited scenario players to have a place to play regular scenario style games. For the next eight years, he along with Big E, ran our scenario games.
I mention all that just set up the relationship I’ve had with Chad over the years. He was someone in the industry that's seen all sides---X field owner, big game and scenario runner, tournament series runner---he's been all up and down the East Coast and seeing how a lot of different Paintball parks run. He's kind of showed me the things I didn’t know that I didn’t know, along with changing my mindset on how I looked at customers experiences, staffing, products, and helped me get the field to where it is today.
So after all that, about year three, I knew SMP was a sustainable business. Rules wise---to make sure we stayed successful, it was basically putting all the information that we learned muddling around for three years, i.e. consistency, equipment, cleanliness, staffing, uniforms, paint consistency, and giving a great experience, whether it’s the first time or 17th time here. Signage. All of those little things add up and make a huge difference.
Also at Smp Having indoor plumbing is a huge commodity at a paintball field! LOL! (Editor's Note: Damn right it is)
I can tell you for three years, I didn’t think it was gonna be successful.
As bills would come, credit was gone, and I was working my full-time job trying to support my household. Juggling in SMP was not very fun. Smp was basically living month-to-month for three years.
Because both me and my partner at the time had never run a business and only worked for companies, they were just a lot of things we didn’t know that we didn’t know. We had a horrible website that wasn’t interactive at all. We had little-to-no social media presence, as it was newer at the time.
We basically survived on word-of-mouth and regulars, one of them being a speedball team named Mayhem. Mayham would do GPL's and EPL‘s, trying to get teams to practice down here and trying to get a tournament series run out of SMP.
So one of the EPL‘s they spoke to Chad Rotella about doing speedball events here. Chad came by one day during the week and we surveyed the land. He looked at speedball field and looked at the at the maps we had up (I know they aren’t maps, but every walk-on player asks, "What map are we playing next?" And we used to correct them and said it’s a field but quickly stopped correcting them because if our customers want to call the maps---fine, we'll call the maps too) and said, "Why not run scenarios out of here and hold the tournaments off for now?"
Now, we had run a few scenarios in our short time open and they were successful, but Chad had a system that would help make it a regular thing. So year three of SMP, we had scenarios every 6 to 8 weeks and people really enjoyed them, as it broke up the normal walk-on play every weekend and excited scenario players to have a place to play regular scenario style games. For the next eight years, he along with Big E, ran our scenario games.
I mention all that just set up the relationship I’ve had with Chad over the years. He was someone in the industry that's seen all sides---X field owner, big game and scenario runner, tournament series runner---he's been all up and down the East Coast and seeing how a lot of different Paintball parks run. He's kind of showed me the things I didn’t know that I didn’t know, along with changing my mindset on how I looked at customers experiences, staffing, products, and helped me get the field to where it is today.
So after all that, about year three, I knew SMP was a sustainable business. Rules wise---to make sure we stayed successful, it was basically putting all the information that we learned muddling around for three years, i.e. consistency, equipment, cleanliness, staffing, uniforms, paint consistency, and giving a great experience, whether it’s the first time or 17th time here. Signage. All of those little things add up and make a huge difference.
Also at Smp Having indoor plumbing is a huge commodity at a paintball field! LOL! (Editor's Note: Damn right it is)
In the pits at SMP
How did you decide on what gear you would be using as a rental fleet? What vendors that you wanted to work with?
When we first opened, we couldn’t get a loan, so we had to finance all of our equipment through e-money Paintball. We knew we wanted Tippmann 98’s as a rental guns, but compressors, tanks, bulk tanks, netting, air stations, airlines---all just the Industry standards for the most part---e-money carried. So we were eager to open and said, "Whatever you can get us on our list of things we need, we will take that."
Like I said, there were a lot of things we didn’t know and would learn along the way. We got our paint from Dick’s or the local hardware store for the first three months. Before long, we reached out to G.I. sports to get paint. Shortly after that, Valken came along and wanted us to carry their paint. They gave it to us cheaper than G.I., so we went with them. But there wasn’t a certain vendor we wanted to work with in particular.
When we first opened, we couldn’t get a loan, so we had to finance all of our equipment through e-money Paintball. We knew we wanted Tippmann 98’s as a rental guns, but compressors, tanks, bulk tanks, netting, air stations, airlines---all just the Industry standards for the most part---e-money carried. So we were eager to open and said, "Whatever you can get us on our list of things we need, we will take that."
Like I said, there were a lot of things we didn’t know and would learn along the way. We got our paint from Dick’s or the local hardware store for the first three months. Before long, we reached out to G.I. sports to get paint. Shortly after that, Valken came along and wanted us to carry their paint. They gave it to us cheaper than G.I., so we went with them. But there wasn’t a certain vendor we wanted to work with in particular.
Tommy has come a long way since 2012
How has staffing affected you and the business? How has working with a younger workforce than most businesses been a challenge? How have you overcome this?
When we first opened up, it was me, my partner, and my partner's son that were the staff. As the months went on, we would get regulars by pure luck who would ask if they could volunteer work for paint to play later in the week. I would say this is pretty common in the Paintball industry for fields that don’t know what they’re doing LOL.
I say that because when you volunteer, you do work when you wanna work. And as a business, you need workers on certain days and times, so we quickly abandoned the volunteer-for-paint-to-play model and hired people outright.
The next problem we faced was that all of the refs were paintball players. The pro was that they had ideas and insights on gameplay and field building. But the huge con was that they always wanted to take off to actually play paintball when we needed them to REF paintball. And since they’re paintball players they like to use the rules that best fit what they think would work out and not the plan we have set up for them. So you get a lot of inconsistency from Ref to Ref.
Now I hire or try to hire people with very little Paintball knowledge so there aren’t any bad habits I have to try to correct when teaching them. And the double edge sword on that is sometimes they don’t realize how important some rules are over others i.e. keeping your mask down at all times while playing. So to combat that, problem, we pair with one of our head refs and have them shadow them for a few weeks. We start them off small with six person party to ten person parties, and slowly move them up to reffing walk-on games.
When we first opened up, it was me, my partner, and my partner's son that were the staff. As the months went on, we would get regulars by pure luck who would ask if they could volunteer work for paint to play later in the week. I would say this is pretty common in the Paintball industry for fields that don’t know what they’re doing LOL.
I say that because when you volunteer, you do work when you wanna work. And as a business, you need workers on certain days and times, so we quickly abandoned the volunteer-for-paint-to-play model and hired people outright.
The next problem we faced was that all of the refs were paintball players. The pro was that they had ideas and insights on gameplay and field building. But the huge con was that they always wanted to take off to actually play paintball when we needed them to REF paintball. And since they’re paintball players they like to use the rules that best fit what they think would work out and not the plan we have set up for them. So you get a lot of inconsistency from Ref to Ref.
Now I hire or try to hire people with very little Paintball knowledge so there aren’t any bad habits I have to try to correct when teaching them. And the double edge sword on that is sometimes they don’t realize how important some rules are over others i.e. keeping your mask down at all times while playing. So to combat that, problem, we pair with one of our head refs and have them shadow them for a few weeks. We start them off small with six person party to ten person parties, and slowly move them up to reffing walk-on games.
We got us a break out
How hands-on are you with the day to day operation of the field? How much can you delegate and feel comfortable? How do you handle bringing in paint and deciding how much to order, and how do you feel about First Strike Rounds?
When I first opened, of course, I was very hands-on, more so on the accounting-side and maintenance-side. Making sure that bills were paid, getting fields built, making bunkers...the not so pretty side of a business, although I like building new fields and bunkers. But it’s very time consuming and hard labor.
Then I slowly took over scheduling, marketing, ordering, running the registration, and checking in and setting up parties. Then, as you’re hiring for refs, you start looking at what else is this person capable of. Or what can I trust them with. So far, every person that has been hired at SMP has reffed at some point. Then they get moved up to head ref, coordinator, outside manger, inside manager etc. And now I have a second me, that’s capable of everything I do, if not more, in Luke Glass. But along the way, I would delegate tasks to people I thought could handle it, which would help on making my decision on promoting people to higher positions.
When ordering paint....oh boy.
When you’re first starting out, at least for me, it was tough. We were operating on such low capital that we would order like half a pallet of paint (60 cases) and it would take us a few weeks to go through it. Then we’d look at the books, see what we have coming up, and try to forecast how much to order. There have been times where we would run out of paint and it was kind of embarrassing. So I would have to run out to Walmart (when they still sold paint) buy all their cases and sell that to get through the weekend.
From then to now we order multiple pallets at a time, usually 5,and when we get down to two pallets we order another 5. It’s still not an exact science for me, but I’ll always sell paint so there’s no over ordering worry.
First Strike Rounds have been a boon in our area since we started allowing them and mag fed community has started growing. I have to say I’m not a big fan of FSR players shooting with the walk-ons after a decent amount of email complaints saying they hurt too much (even when they are chrono’d to the right velocity). So we’ve had to separate FSR players from general walk-ons, and have made it FSR players vs FSR players.
When I first opened, of course, I was very hands-on, more so on the accounting-side and maintenance-side. Making sure that bills were paid, getting fields built, making bunkers...the not so pretty side of a business, although I like building new fields and bunkers. But it’s very time consuming and hard labor.
Then I slowly took over scheduling, marketing, ordering, running the registration, and checking in and setting up parties. Then, as you’re hiring for refs, you start looking at what else is this person capable of. Or what can I trust them with. So far, every person that has been hired at SMP has reffed at some point. Then they get moved up to head ref, coordinator, outside manger, inside manager etc. And now I have a second me, that’s capable of everything I do, if not more, in Luke Glass. But along the way, I would delegate tasks to people I thought could handle it, which would help on making my decision on promoting people to higher positions.
When ordering paint....oh boy.
When you’re first starting out, at least for me, it was tough. We were operating on such low capital that we would order like half a pallet of paint (60 cases) and it would take us a few weeks to go through it. Then we’d look at the books, see what we have coming up, and try to forecast how much to order. There have been times where we would run out of paint and it was kind of embarrassing. So I would have to run out to Walmart (when they still sold paint) buy all their cases and sell that to get through the weekend.
From then to now we order multiple pallets at a time, usually 5,and when we get down to two pallets we order another 5. It’s still not an exact science for me, but I’ll always sell paint so there’s no over ordering worry.
First Strike Rounds have been a boon in our area since we started allowing them and mag fed community has started growing. I have to say I’m not a big fan of FSR players shooting with the walk-ons after a decent amount of email complaints saying they hurt too much (even when they are chrono’d to the right velocity). So we’ve had to separate FSR players from general walk-ons, and have made it FSR players vs FSR players.
Walk-ons doing Walk-on things
When did you decide to expand to the second location? What drove that decision? How did you decide on that area for a second location?
This is where having someone you trust with basically every aspect of the business comes into play. It was always a goal to have a second location. So with SMP doing really well, things fell into place to where I didn’t have to be so hands-on and had money saved up. Luke Glass really pushed for a second location, so in early 2019 we started looking. And what really, really pushed it---we changed website handlers to a guy who owns Get Splat, Larry Dague.
He had three locations in Texas, maybe 45 minutes apart from each other. In 2018, Luke and I went to Paintball Extravaganza, and he was having a class where he did everything indoors and ran the same amount of people through the field as we did on 54 acres, and all he had was maybe 2000 square-foot. And on super hot, sunny days and rainy cold days, Luke and I said it be great if we had an indoor field---it would do great business-wise. So we looked into building our own pole barn. We looked at abandoned warehouses. We looked at buying raw land and then building that on top of it.
For the most part, all of that just wasn’t feasible monetarily. Either way too expensive or just not the right locations. And I had heard about a place called Torrid Paintball and they had two locations, one about two hours Northwest of me, and one kind of in my backyard in Bowie, Maryland. And I had seen and heard that the Bowie location was closed.
So in mid-2019, we took a trip up there and to see that it was closed and part of a 6 Flags property. So Luke wrote, emailed, and called 6 flags got us an appointment with the land manager. In early 2020, the president gave us the go ahead to open Central Ave. Paintball Park
This is where having someone you trust with basically every aspect of the business comes into play. It was always a goal to have a second location. So with SMP doing really well, things fell into place to where I didn’t have to be so hands-on and had money saved up. Luke Glass really pushed for a second location, so in early 2019 we started looking. And what really, really pushed it---we changed website handlers to a guy who owns Get Splat, Larry Dague.
He had three locations in Texas, maybe 45 minutes apart from each other. In 2018, Luke and I went to Paintball Extravaganza, and he was having a class where he did everything indoors and ran the same amount of people through the field as we did on 54 acres, and all he had was maybe 2000 square-foot. And on super hot, sunny days and rainy cold days, Luke and I said it be great if we had an indoor field---it would do great business-wise. So we looked into building our own pole barn. We looked at abandoned warehouses. We looked at buying raw land and then building that on top of it.
For the most part, all of that just wasn’t feasible monetarily. Either way too expensive or just not the right locations. And I had heard about a place called Torrid Paintball and they had two locations, one about two hours Northwest of me, and one kind of in my backyard in Bowie, Maryland. And I had seen and heard that the Bowie location was closed.
So in mid-2019, we took a trip up there and to see that it was closed and part of a 6 Flags property. So Luke wrote, emailed, and called 6 flags got us an appointment with the land manager. In early 2020, the president gave us the go ahead to open Central Ave. Paintball Park
Spools and City part of SMP
What challenges have presented themselves in having two locations? How have you handled the splits in time between the two? What unique challenges have you seen at one location that may be different than the other location?
Well Covid hit and kind of shut everything down for about 2 to 3 months, which was kind of a blessing for us because it allowed us to soley focus on opening the second location and doing much needed maintenance on the SMP location. So for 2 to 3 months, Luke and I and a handful of friends and team members set up field layouts, put poles in the ground, laid turf, made bunkers, bought an all new rental fleet, compressors, bulk tanks, and set up a school trailer for processing. I forgot how much time and effort really went into it since it had been so long since I did that for SMP.
The biggest challenges we’ve come across have been there’s no electricity and no indoor plumbing available at this field and that’s one of the huge things I take for granted at SMP. Indoor plumbing is huge. Covered staging area running water and electricity is huge. It also doesn’t have any woods at the moment, and that’s one of the biggest questions we get when people call. They ask if what we have---what’s courses we have. And unfortunately, we have to say no. But just down the road, SMP does! LOL!
With the new location, Luke now spends most of his time there and I spend most of my time at SMP. And when I need to go up to CAP, I have no problem getting up there.
How do you split the fields’ ability to cater to different crowds, between walk-ons, birthday parties, tourney players, your home team (Brawl—an up-and-coming team that’s rising at the national level), magfed groups, and scenario players? How do each affect the field’s bottom line? How does each make their own positive impact for the fields? What groups are the lifeblood of the fields?
With CAP not having a woodsball course, that’s the biggest difference when people are booking and asking questions, and they end up usually going to SMP. Tournament players still go to SMP because we’re not really set up for tournament players. Y,es we have turf. Yes, we have air bunkers.
But John Adkins at NR Paintball (Editor's Note: Another great field owner who knows what he's doing and runs a great operation) is an hour right down the street, and gets most of the tournament players, which is perfectly fine with me. With being in such a highly dense population of people, we get plenty of walk-on’s and tons of groups booking birthday parties that more than make up not having tournament players.
We get a decent amount of mag-fed players and will be hosting our first scenario event February 13 of the year. so we’ll see how that goes too. The goal is basically just to expand the scenario seen farther north using the same model we have at SMP.
Brawl, the team I run/play on, just bumped up to Semi-Pro at the beginning of 2020, played one event and came in seventh, which isn’t too bad. Then Covid hit and basically canceled the whole season. But Brawl is just one of the teams that play out of SMP. There is Wasted Potential, Venom, District 11, and Baby Brawl that still play out of SMP, and doing the local tournament events. So while The Brawl season was basically put on hold, we were still practicing with the teams doing local events.
I don’t really look at it as I’m catering to one group or another, because I can only work with what I have. Both fields are unique but the process to booking playing rules are the same. And field sizes (based on available space I have) and location dictate more or which style of player I get. Where CAP has well over a million people to pull from in the area, and SMP has just over 250k ppl. So CAP, just on shear numbers will have a better bottom line. But having both has helped SMP’s bottom line too, as we get a lot of ppl that play at both and wouldn’t have otherwise if they didn’t know about CAP.
Well Covid hit and kind of shut everything down for about 2 to 3 months, which was kind of a blessing for us because it allowed us to soley focus on opening the second location and doing much needed maintenance on the SMP location. So for 2 to 3 months, Luke and I and a handful of friends and team members set up field layouts, put poles in the ground, laid turf, made bunkers, bought an all new rental fleet, compressors, bulk tanks, and set up a school trailer for processing. I forgot how much time and effort really went into it since it had been so long since I did that for SMP.
The biggest challenges we’ve come across have been there’s no electricity and no indoor plumbing available at this field and that’s one of the huge things I take for granted at SMP. Indoor plumbing is huge. Covered staging area running water and electricity is huge. It also doesn’t have any woods at the moment, and that’s one of the biggest questions we get when people call. They ask if what we have---what’s courses we have. And unfortunately, we have to say no. But just down the road, SMP does! LOL!
With the new location, Luke now spends most of his time there and I spend most of my time at SMP. And when I need to go up to CAP, I have no problem getting up there.
How do you split the fields’ ability to cater to different crowds, between walk-ons, birthday parties, tourney players, your home team (Brawl—an up-and-coming team that’s rising at the national level), magfed groups, and scenario players? How do each affect the field’s bottom line? How does each make their own positive impact for the fields? What groups are the lifeblood of the fields?
With CAP not having a woodsball course, that’s the biggest difference when people are booking and asking questions, and they end up usually going to SMP. Tournament players still go to SMP because we’re not really set up for tournament players. Y,es we have turf. Yes, we have air bunkers.
But John Adkins at NR Paintball (Editor's Note: Another great field owner who knows what he's doing and runs a great operation) is an hour right down the street, and gets most of the tournament players, which is perfectly fine with me. With being in such a highly dense population of people, we get plenty of walk-on’s and tons of groups booking birthday parties that more than make up not having tournament players.
We get a decent amount of mag-fed players and will be hosting our first scenario event February 13 of the year. so we’ll see how that goes too. The goal is basically just to expand the scenario seen farther north using the same model we have at SMP.
Brawl, the team I run/play on, just bumped up to Semi-Pro at the beginning of 2020, played one event and came in seventh, which isn’t too bad. Then Covid hit and basically canceled the whole season. But Brawl is just one of the teams that play out of SMP. There is Wasted Potential, Venom, District 11, and Baby Brawl that still play out of SMP, and doing the local tournament events. So while The Brawl season was basically put on hold, we were still practicing with the teams doing local events.
I don’t really look at it as I’m catering to one group or another, because I can only work with what I have. Both fields are unique but the process to booking playing rules are the same. And field sizes (based on available space I have) and location dictate more or which style of player I get. Where CAP has well over a million people to pull from in the area, and SMP has just over 250k ppl. So CAP, just on shear numbers will have a better bottom line. But having both has helped SMP’s bottom line too, as we get a lot of ppl that play at both and wouldn’t have otherwise if they didn’t know about CAP.
Brawl, after winning Chicago NXL D2 Xball
How do you decide when to make changes in the field? How do you decide when to invest more in your field’s infrastructure, like new bunkers, upgrading the pro-shop, new netting, or giving the place a fresh coat of paint?
LOL, again, this is where Luke comes into play. I have a problem of where to spend money. I think of all those questions---like new bunkers, new fields, new nets, upgrading the pro-shop, upgrading staging, new rental equipment---are like attributes in a video game, i.e. strength, speed, intelligence, dexterity, agility, charisma etc. and money has attribute points. And some things are easy as where to put the attribute points. Fixing nets and building new bunkers are easy decisions. Because the results are easily seen better gameplay and safer environment.
But replacing the floors, having high-end rental,s having a concrete staging area, and I recently put ceiling fans in every bay of the staging area---those are harder decisions because you’re not sure if the customer cares or would add to their experience at the field. And sometimes I overthink the decision and Luke’s been a great sounding board on where to spend my attribute points.
Making a new field is easy. When I get tired of looking at the same old bunkers, it’s time for a change LOL! Spools field at SMP will be getting changed soon. And a mounds field will be coming to CAP. Fields themselves are usually good for 2 to 3 years if built right the first time before you need to do an overhaul on it.
What do you do to advertise and be successful? How do you like to draw players in?
I’ve been kinda of lucky With SMP being around for over a decade. Word of mouth was our biggest success in the beginning, and after a few years with Chad helping set up a digital email list and that continuing to grow every weekend, email blasts became successful.
But the big game changer was when Facebook allowed paid promotion boosts. With SMP being around so long, our Facebook friends group was pretty large. Then you could pay to have Facebook promote in certain ZIP Codes, which made it even easier and cheaper to market to whatever demographic and area you wanted.
So the waiver/email list has a ZIP Code in it that asks players to put down in completing the waiver. The program will tell us our top five ZIP Codes that has visited SMP and we target those ZIP Codes and the surrounding area.
Facebook has, within the past two years, made it tougher to promote and boost paintball ads because of certain wording, like if shooting was used in the ad, so they’ll take them down.
LOL, again, this is where Luke comes into play. I have a problem of where to spend money. I think of all those questions---like new bunkers, new fields, new nets, upgrading the pro-shop, upgrading staging, new rental equipment---are like attributes in a video game, i.e. strength, speed, intelligence, dexterity, agility, charisma etc. and money has attribute points. And some things are easy as where to put the attribute points. Fixing nets and building new bunkers are easy decisions. Because the results are easily seen better gameplay and safer environment.
But replacing the floors, having high-end rental,s having a concrete staging area, and I recently put ceiling fans in every bay of the staging area---those are harder decisions because you’re not sure if the customer cares or would add to their experience at the field. And sometimes I overthink the decision and Luke’s been a great sounding board on where to spend my attribute points.
Making a new field is easy. When I get tired of looking at the same old bunkers, it’s time for a change LOL! Spools field at SMP will be getting changed soon. And a mounds field will be coming to CAP. Fields themselves are usually good for 2 to 3 years if built right the first time before you need to do an overhaul on it.
What do you do to advertise and be successful? How do you like to draw players in?
I’ve been kinda of lucky With SMP being around for over a decade. Word of mouth was our biggest success in the beginning, and after a few years with Chad helping set up a digital email list and that continuing to grow every weekend, email blasts became successful.
But the big game changer was when Facebook allowed paid promotion boosts. With SMP being around so long, our Facebook friends group was pretty large. Then you could pay to have Facebook promote in certain ZIP Codes, which made it even easier and cheaper to market to whatever demographic and area you wanted.
So the waiver/email list has a ZIP Code in it that asks players to put down in completing the waiver. The program will tell us our top five ZIP Codes that has visited SMP and we target those ZIP Codes and the surrounding area.
Facebook has, within the past two years, made it tougher to promote and boost paintball ads because of certain wording, like if shooting was used in the ad, so they’ll take them down.
Tommy, winning stuff
What keeps you up at night? What do you see as the biggest challenges as a field owner? What are the hardest problems to deal with?
The first three years, it was how was I going to pay the bills LOL!
But now with things seemingly in the right place, not much keeps me up at night. The biggest challenges are balancing business and family time and I for sure don’t have it figured out just yet. vI spend way too much time at the field and not nearly enough time with my family. I’ve gotten a little better as the years have gone on, but not much. Since most of Paintball takes place on weekends, I’ve missed my fair share of soccer games but my oldest son does come play scenarios and my two youngest girls not quite ready to play paintball.
Now that there’s online learning for school it, has been a little easier to take a little family trips during the week since they can do remote learning anywhere really. The hardest problems are what most fields have in staffing. With staffing being young, and me being young once, it’s easy for work to become secondary. Which is fine if one person calls out the night before but two or three unexpectedly call out and you have to start calling in the back up with your team players, scenario players, or sometimes a regular just a fill gap for an hour or two of a scheduled party. But somehow we make it happen LOL!
How do you decide who to sponsor? How can teams act as a partner for fields? How do you find value in sponsorship? What do you look for in teams to form relationships with? What programs do you offer, or is it on an individual basis?
Those are good question that I don’t have a good answer for. When you put the label sponsor on a team, I feel like the team has to say good things about the field that sponsors them. I never want to force someone to have to say they like something even if they don’t out of fear of losing the label sponsor. So for teams that regularly play out of SMP, there’s no demands that they have to do a certain amount of cleaning or building or promoting or anything they don’t want.
I want them to do or say nice things because they want to do those things. I’d like it to be a reflection of who I am and what SMP does instead of, "Tommy or SMP gave money to us so we have to do this." So if someone says something good about SMP, just know that it’s a genuine comment. And it also works for teams will come to me and say there’s things they don’t like without having the fear of me getting mad or pulling a sponsorship label because they told me something I disagree with on how I do things. So I get plenty of constructive criticism!
The first three years, it was how was I going to pay the bills LOL!
But now with things seemingly in the right place, not much keeps me up at night. The biggest challenges are balancing business and family time and I for sure don’t have it figured out just yet. vI spend way too much time at the field and not nearly enough time with my family. I’ve gotten a little better as the years have gone on, but not much. Since most of Paintball takes place on weekends, I’ve missed my fair share of soccer games but my oldest son does come play scenarios and my two youngest girls not quite ready to play paintball.
Now that there’s online learning for school it, has been a little easier to take a little family trips during the week since they can do remote learning anywhere really. The hardest problems are what most fields have in staffing. With staffing being young, and me being young once, it’s easy for work to become secondary. Which is fine if one person calls out the night before but two or three unexpectedly call out and you have to start calling in the back up with your team players, scenario players, or sometimes a regular just a fill gap for an hour or two of a scheduled party. But somehow we make it happen LOL!
How do you decide who to sponsor? How can teams act as a partner for fields? How do you find value in sponsorship? What do you look for in teams to form relationships with? What programs do you offer, or is it on an individual basis?
Those are good question that I don’t have a good answer for. When you put the label sponsor on a team, I feel like the team has to say good things about the field that sponsors them. I never want to force someone to have to say they like something even if they don’t out of fear of losing the label sponsor. So for teams that regularly play out of SMP, there’s no demands that they have to do a certain amount of cleaning or building or promoting or anything they don’t want.
I want them to do or say nice things because they want to do those things. I’d like it to be a reflection of who I am and what SMP does instead of, "Tommy or SMP gave money to us so we have to do this." So if someone says something good about SMP, just know that it’s a genuine comment. And it also works for teams will come to me and say there’s things they don’t like without having the fear of me getting mad or pulling a sponsorship label because they told me something I disagree with on how I do things. So I get plenty of constructive criticism!
Pew Pew.....PEW PEW PEW
How has Covid affected you and the fields? How have you been able to work under the stress of the pandemic?
Covid has been interesting (None of what I say is to down play or make light of about a half million Americans and just over 2 million worldwide who have died.). Before Gov Hogan in March shutdown all none essential work, nothing had changed.
Walk-ons were up. Party booking were up. Everything was up. Then for 3 months---nothing. Which for us was a blessing, like I said earlier. We got some much needed maintenance work done and opened a new park.
When Hogan opened outdoor activities, I think late may early June, people were looking for something--- anything---to do and paintball, being outdoor activity, business skyrocketed. We went from being open Friday through Sunday to basically being open seven days a week because of how many people were either home, because of layoffs or virtual schooling. We had to spread groups over 7 days otherwise we’d be way over capacity if we were only doing Friday to Sunday.
We did have to answer a lot of “Do you clean your equipment?” questions. And for us nothing cleaning-wise changed, as we always disinfected masks before renting them out. The only new thing was we were spaying the guns down with chlorine water or Lysol and the same for air station. We could keep the doors open at SMP and everything at CAP was outside anyways.
Do you still get to play often? How do you feel about paintball now versus when you were a wide-eyed newbie? How has your change in perspective changed who you are as a player and who you are as a businessperson?
Being on Brawl and running it, I still practice with the team most Sundays. A little less now with the second field and spending more time with the family, but enough to keep the rust off. There’s more to paintball than just speedball LOL!
I love playing scenarios. I love playing with new walk-ons and showing them real small things, like how to properly fill pods all the way up. That make huge difference. Playing and owning a field has helped me understand some of the customers complaints and understand why they do some of the things they do. I understand why people try to sneak outside paint in. I understand why people call it a map (Editor's Note: It still drives me nuts. Now get off my lawn!) and not a field. I understand why people cheat. And those are just something things I address with the customers on a weekly basis no matter how many times the refs and I have said it before. And when those customers become regulars ,they end up being some of the best ambassadors for the game and some are just lost causes (Editor's Note: Ain't that the truth).
Covid has been interesting (None of what I say is to down play or make light of about a half million Americans and just over 2 million worldwide who have died.). Before Gov Hogan in March shutdown all none essential work, nothing had changed.
Walk-ons were up. Party booking were up. Everything was up. Then for 3 months---nothing. Which for us was a blessing, like I said earlier. We got some much needed maintenance work done and opened a new park.
When Hogan opened outdoor activities, I think late may early June, people were looking for something--- anything---to do and paintball, being outdoor activity, business skyrocketed. We went from being open Friday through Sunday to basically being open seven days a week because of how many people were either home, because of layoffs or virtual schooling. We had to spread groups over 7 days otherwise we’d be way over capacity if we were only doing Friday to Sunday.
We did have to answer a lot of “Do you clean your equipment?” questions. And for us nothing cleaning-wise changed, as we always disinfected masks before renting them out. The only new thing was we were spaying the guns down with chlorine water or Lysol and the same for air station. We could keep the doors open at SMP and everything at CAP was outside anyways.
Do you still get to play often? How do you feel about paintball now versus when you were a wide-eyed newbie? How has your change in perspective changed who you are as a player and who you are as a businessperson?
Being on Brawl and running it, I still practice with the team most Sundays. A little less now with the second field and spending more time with the family, but enough to keep the rust off. There’s more to paintball than just speedball LOL!
I love playing scenarios. I love playing with new walk-ons and showing them real small things, like how to properly fill pods all the way up. That make huge difference. Playing and owning a field has helped me understand some of the customers complaints and understand why they do some of the things they do. I understand why people try to sneak outside paint in. I understand why people call it a map (Editor's Note: It still drives me nuts. Now get off my lawn!) and not a field. I understand why people cheat. And those are just something things I address with the customers on a weekly basis no matter how many times the refs and I have said it before. And when those customers become regulars ,they end up being some of the best ambassadors for the game and some are just lost causes (Editor's Note: Ain't that the truth).
So then I started blastin'
If you could tell the players something to understand the field owners’ perspectives, what do you wish that they knew or understood?
I think good field owners are always trying to balance good times, price, and park growth. I’m always trying to upgrade the facility. Good Field owners listen to all types of input whether it’s good or bad. And just because we didn’t implement the idea didn’t mean we didn’t like it. I mean I had a customer tell me to put a zipline through the middle of the park so they can shoot down on people. As awesome as that sounds, it’s just not feasible or safe lol!
Listen to how and where they think bunkers should go help the flow of scenario game play. That's always good feed back. Most field owners wear all the hats at their park, so sometimes they just physically can’t address all issues or an item gets moved to the back burner when something more pressing comes up and they never circle back to it. Good field owners find a way to delegate and balance time money and growth.
The normal quote that you hear when talking about business and paintball is, ‘The best way to make a small mountain of cash is to start with a large mountain.’ What advice would you give to people who are thinking of starting a field to avoid that fate? What advice do you wish you would have gotten, or a lesson that you wished you have learned sooner?
Lol, Well, first off that’s not true. And I’m living proof of that.
Even though I was month-to-month basically in the beginning, if I had bad spending habits I would have been sunk after year one. I hear stories of owners who spend it as quick as they make it on themselves and not the business, which in turns makes the business suffer. And that just snowballs out of control once you get too far behind.
Owning a paintball field for sure isn’t a get rich quick scheme. I thought it was at first, I learned quickly it most definitely is not. It’s literally a grind, like every business. And once you get burned out or break mentally it’s basically over.
I got into paintball at first for a stable financial future for my family, so that keeps me really motivated. Then, I grew to love the game of paintball and see all the good things it brings out in people. Sure, there are bad things, but the good always outweighs the bad in my opinion. And for me, I think if I did it the other way, love paintball and then try to make money off it, I might have quit when things were going not so well.
Things I wished I’ve done or mistakes I wished I hadn’t made? Don’t be afraid of changing things. Chad Rotella changed my way of thinking and if all field owners did/do this, which I’m sure most do, it would be better. Realize you’re selling an experience and not paintballs. And when I did that is when I really started to be successful. And read “E myth revisited” it’s a great book for any business owner not just paintball owner to read.
If someone wanted to get more information on your fields, to go play or to book a party, where should they find you?
On all the socials lol!
Southernmdpaintball.com
@southernmdpaintball for IG
Southern Maryland Paintball for Facebook
CentralAvenuePaintballpark.com
Central Avenue Paintball Park for Facebook
Email at [email protected] or [email protected]
I think good field owners are always trying to balance good times, price, and park growth. I’m always trying to upgrade the facility. Good Field owners listen to all types of input whether it’s good or bad. And just because we didn’t implement the idea didn’t mean we didn’t like it. I mean I had a customer tell me to put a zipline through the middle of the park so they can shoot down on people. As awesome as that sounds, it’s just not feasible or safe lol!
Listen to how and where they think bunkers should go help the flow of scenario game play. That's always good feed back. Most field owners wear all the hats at their park, so sometimes they just physically can’t address all issues or an item gets moved to the back burner when something more pressing comes up and they never circle back to it. Good field owners find a way to delegate and balance time money and growth.
The normal quote that you hear when talking about business and paintball is, ‘The best way to make a small mountain of cash is to start with a large mountain.’ What advice would you give to people who are thinking of starting a field to avoid that fate? What advice do you wish you would have gotten, or a lesson that you wished you have learned sooner?
Lol, Well, first off that’s not true. And I’m living proof of that.
Even though I was month-to-month basically in the beginning, if I had bad spending habits I would have been sunk after year one. I hear stories of owners who spend it as quick as they make it on themselves and not the business, which in turns makes the business suffer. And that just snowballs out of control once you get too far behind.
Owning a paintball field for sure isn’t a get rich quick scheme. I thought it was at first, I learned quickly it most definitely is not. It’s literally a grind, like every business. And once you get burned out or break mentally it’s basically over.
I got into paintball at first for a stable financial future for my family, so that keeps me really motivated. Then, I grew to love the game of paintball and see all the good things it brings out in people. Sure, there are bad things, but the good always outweighs the bad in my opinion. And for me, I think if I did it the other way, love paintball and then try to make money off it, I might have quit when things were going not so well.
Things I wished I’ve done or mistakes I wished I hadn’t made? Don’t be afraid of changing things. Chad Rotella changed my way of thinking and if all field owners did/do this, which I’m sure most do, it would be better. Realize you’re selling an experience and not paintballs. And when I did that is when I really started to be successful. And read “E myth revisited” it’s a great book for any business owner not just paintball owner to read.
If someone wanted to get more information on your fields, to go play or to book a party, where should they find you?
On all the socials lol!
Southernmdpaintball.com
@southernmdpaintball for IG
Southern Maryland Paintball for Facebook
CentralAvenuePaintballpark.com
Central Avenue Paintball Park for Facebook
Email at [email protected] or [email protected]
Come Out and Play!!