Building in Public, Part 4: The First Time I Realized Engagement Matters More Than Revenue

But after spending more time talking with operators, I started noticing something interesting. The best conversations weren’t actually about revenue. They were about engagement.

One director told me something along the lines of, “If people consistently show up and feel connected here, the revenue takes care of itself.”

That stuck with me.

Because when you really look at what makes a club successful long term, it usually comes back to the same thing. Are members actually participating? Are they building routines? Are they finding people they enjoy playing with? Are they becoming part of the community instead of just paying for access?

You can have beautiful facilities and full membership numbers, but if people aren’t actively engaged, things start to erode underneath the surface. People stop showing up as often. Programs become inconsistent. Cliques form. New members struggle to integrate. Eventually retention becomes harder, and revenue starts getting impacted anyway.

What surprised me is how much of this clubs are still managing manually. A lot of engagement depends on directors and staff constantly making introductions, organizing groups, balancing personalities, and trying to create positive experiences over and over again. The really good operators are honestly incredible at this. They know their members personally and can almost predict which pairings or groups will work before they happen.

But it also creates a scaling problem.

The larger the community gets, the harder it becomes to maintain that same level of connection manually. And most software today isn’t really designed to help with that part. It’s designed to manage transactions and operations.

That conversation shifted how I started thinking about CourtMatch.

Instead of asking, “How do we help clubs operate more efficiently?” the better question became, “How do we help clubs create more engagement with less manual effort?”

That’s a very different problem.

And honestly, I think it’s the more important one.

Because when people feel connected to a club, they don’t just stay members. They participate more, invite friends, join programs, and become part of the culture that makes the club valuable in the first place.

I’m curious how others think about this. If you run a club, what’s the strongest signal that tells you members are truly engaged, not just paying for access?