Three years ago, Riley Parkinson was training kids on outdoor courts in Melbourne for $10 an hour. He collected payment over Facebook Messenger, tracked sessions in an Excel spreadsheet, and rented half-court space for $5 casual entry.
Today he runs Next Level Hoops, a 48-member training facility north of Melbourne. He has staff coaches, two membership tiers, and kids coming in for trials who don’t even know he owns the place. He’s 22.
Building a basketball training business comes down to three moves: treat it like a real business from session one, shift from private sessions to groups as fast as you can, and use social media as your storefront before you have a building. Riley did all three. Here’s how.
Who is Riley Parkinson?
Riley grew up in Melbourne dreaming about America. He played college basketball at Bethel College in Wichita, Kansas, interned under NBA trainer Ryan Rizuki in San Diego, and flew home to build something of his own.
He stopped playing competitively when the math stopped making sense. His knees hurt from coaching all day and practicing at night. He was turning down paying clients to go to team practice.
“You can make a whole lot more money training than playing on some pro team,” he said on the show. “I still get to play. I just don’t have to go through the whole team system.”
He built Next Level Hoops into a real basketball training business in three years. He started on outdoor courts and YMCA half-courts, paying $5 casual entry at 6 a.m., before finding a permanent facility 25 minutes from his house.
What Ryan Razookytaught him about building a basketball training business
Riley arrived in San Diego knowing basketball. He left knowing business.
The two things he brought back to Australia weren’t about training methodology.
First: collect every athlete’s email before you do anything else. Riley’s reaction was the same as most coaches hearing this for the first time: why do I need emails if I can just text them? The answer is that an email list is a compounding asset. Every athlete you’ve ever trained stays in your marketing reach, whether you’re posting content or not. Launch a camp three years from now and the people who trained with you at $10 an hour are still in your database.
Second: take payment before you put a session on the calendar. Riley had been burned by no-shows and late payments. Once he required upfront payment through an automated scheduling system, that friction mostly disappeared. You pay, you’re booked. You don’t pay, you’re not on the calendar.
Both moves were about converting a hobby into infrastructure. Neither one is complicated. Most coaches just never make them.
Why do groups develop athletes faster than private sessions?
Riley caps his groups at six athletes and runs four group classes every weeknight plus one on weekends. His two membership tiers: a flexible credit-based plan and an unlimited option for athletes training up to five days a week. Group sessions run $300 a month for weekly attendance. Private sessions run $100 each.
If you’re still working out your own pricing structure, this breakdown of how to price private training sessions walks through the math behind both formats.
Riley still offers privates. He just doesn’t push them.
“From a business point of view, it’s just not worth the time. But in terms of development, groups are actually way better. You will develop so much quicker through a group training session than a private session.”
The parent instinct is to pay more for one-on-one attention. In a group, athletes compete, calibrate against each other, and lift their intensity because other kids are in the room. In a private session, none of that happens.
There’s one exception: isolated form work. Slow, controlled reps in a focused setting have real value for fixing mechanics. But even then, the change doesn’t happen in the hour. It happens during thousands of reps at home after the coach shows them what to fix.
> “Parents think the one-on-one is better simply because it’s one-on-one and all the attention is on the one player. But you can’t do everything you need to do for that development.”
The athletes who improve fastest are in groups where they’re pushed, where they lose sometimes, and where there’s contact and chaos in the room. For more on how coaches build this model at scale, see how other trainers have built their academy membership models.
How do you get your first basketball training clients?
Riley’s answer: social media, and specifically, being willing to post before you’re any good at it.
He started at Ryan’s gyms in San Diego posting clips about three moves to attack the basket. He got clowned on. He posted anyway. Back in Melbourne, he got his girlfriend to film 6 a.m. sessions on outdoor courts, mic’d up. Posts pulled 2,000 to 3,000 views. Good ones hit 5,000.
Then he tested skits. They took off.
The insight was specific: nobody in Australia was making skits for Australian basketball families. Parents and players recognized themselves in the content. A Melbourne trainer talking directly to Melbourne parents about Melbourne basketball had no competition.
“My more popular videos are where I’m talking specifically to Australian parents and players. That’s how I found my little pocket.”
Your version of that pocket exists in your market. The question is whether you’ll post long enough to find it. By the time Riley opened his facility, he had 30,000 followers on both Instagram and TikTok. That didn’t make him successful, but it meant people trusted him when they found him.
Think of your Instagram as a direct window into your business. When a parent finds you, they scroll your content before they ever reach out. The posts from two years ago that make you cringe now are the reason someone booked a trial last week. Post them anyway.
Should you brand under your name or a business name?
Riley trained under “Parko Ball Training” until he opened Next Level Hoops. Hard transition. Right call.
> “If I put my name on it, people are going to come there and expect to train with me. But if I call it Next Level Hoops, now all these new clients come in and they don’t even know I’m the owner.”
He has coaches on staff now. Kids come in for trials, train with another coach, and may not know Riley owns the place. That’s the goal.
Brandon made the same shift with Pro Standard. He’s at his desk on the backend while sessions run without him. Coaches who start with a personal brand aren’t doing it wrong. But at some point, the name on the door determines the ceiling of the business.
How CoachIQ replaced his spreadsheet, three payment apps, and personal phone
Riley started using CoachIQ a few months before he opened his facility, while he was still training on outdoor courts.
Before that: Google Calendar for scheduling, Excel for attendance, and PayPal, bank transfer, and cash in hand for payment. Three systems for three things that should be one.
> “CoachIQ just helped me simplify everything. I don’t need that Excel spreadsheet anymore. I don’t need to be refreshing my bank account to see if that money’s come through. I don’t need to be texting the clients. Everything’s just done through this.”
Brandon pointed out one feature Riley hadn’t set up yet: the dedicated business SMS number. Every parent text routes through CoachIQ’s client communication tools instead of your personal phone.
Riley’s response: “I need to change that.”
If your personal number is still on your website and parents are texting you at 10 p.m., that’s the place to start.
The bottom line
Riley Parkinson started training kids for $10 an hour on outdoor courts with no plan for how to run a business. Three years later he has a facility, a staff, 48 members, and a membership model that runs without him when he travels.
The framework: start collecting emails from athlete one, require payment before booking, build toward group training, and put a business name on the door. Four moves. Three years of showing up consistently.
If you’re building a basketball training business and want the infrastructure to run it without living in your inbox, book a free CoachIQ demo and see how it works for your business.
Full transcript
Pre-recording chat
Brandon Evans (00:00.762)
Good man, how are you?
Let me finish getting this set up here.
Brandon Evans (00:13.734)
How’s the gym doing right now? I know we just talked, but.
Riley Parkinson (00:16.302)
Yeah, it’s good. It’s good. Last day today before I come to the US, so closing it for three weeks.
Brandon Evans (00:22.99)
Yeah. Are you just like, like, what are you doing with your, your memberships at that point? Are you just pausing everybody for a month?
Riley Parkinson (00:30.412)
Yeah, pausing everyone, three weeks.
Brandon Evans (00:32.666)
Yeah, OK. People upset about that.
Riley Parkinson (00:37.346)
Well yeah, people want someone to train in the meantime, so… which is annoying. But I get it.
Brandon Evans (00:40.858)
Yeah.
Yeah, how many members are you at right now? I know mine’s super small compared to busy times.
Riley Parkinson (00:48.525)
All in.
We’re at 48 and then over Christmas dropped down to 41. I think we’re at 43 now.
Brandon Evans (01:00.27)
It’s not that bad for holidays in this time of the year. It’s not terrible.
Riley Parkinson (01:03.726)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (01:12.216)
Dude, your camera quality is so good.
Brandon Evans (01:14.47)
Yeah, I have used my normal camera that I use for my other stuff and I just put it in USB.
Riley Parkinson (01:21.538)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (01:28.014)
Okay, yeah, we’ll go like 30, 45 minutes. It may go longer. Typically with basketball, guess it goes a little bit longer because we started talking about other stuff, but we’ll see. I don’t want to go super long, but I don’t have anything the rest of evening. So as far as time constraints go, cool.
Riley Parkinson (01:31.96)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (01:40.248)
Hey.
Riley Parkinson (01:48.546)
Yeah, it’s fine.
Brandon Evans (01:51.462)
Just to make sure I have all this stuff correct. I know we’ve talked a bunch, as I was researching, I just want to make sure it’s correct. You play college ball here in the States? Cool. Melbourne is where you’re at right now? Cool.
Okay, cool. All right. Well, I’ll do the intro here. And I’ll end it with welcome to the show and then you can introduce yourself and then we’ll go from there. Let’s see, don’t, we have editors for this. So don’t worry if you say something you don’t want on here or anything like that, we’ll edit it out if you do. So no worries on that. It doesn’t have to be a perfect shot, but.
Riley Parkinson (02:35.596)
Yeah, cool.
Brandon Evans (02:40.966)
Cool, all right. Recording, yes, all right. Start in three, two, one.
Riley’s background and intro
Welcome back to the Coach IQ podcast. I am your host Brandon Evans, a fellow training business and facility owner. Today we have Riley Parkinson, the founder of Next Level Hoops out of Melbourne, Australia. This is actually my first international guest on the show, which is pretty cool. played college basketball here in the States. He got mentored by NBA trainer Ryan Rizuki like I did. So we’ll definitely get into that. Then went back to Australia to build his own training business and facility. He’s trained over a thousand athletes at this point, including a bunch of pro and college
guys. Riley, welcome to the show.
Riley Parkinson (03:20.568)
Thank very much for having me. Yeah, you pretty much summarized it all perfectly. College bowl for a year, came back, started training, worked with Ryan or worked under Ryan for a little bit. And then, yeah, came back and I’ve been training for about three years now.
Brandon Evans (03:34.182)
Cool, awesome, awesome. We’re at pretty similar points and we’ve had pretty similar journeys aside from being in different countries. So I wanna get into your experience with Ryan because I mean, obviously I did it like I said, and I think what he does is really cool and something that people should take advantage of.
For people who don’t know, he has a gym out, three gyms now, out in California. He’s trained a bunch of NBA guys, but he has a mentorship or internship program, whatever you want to call it. And you can pretty much just shadow under him for three months, or I think he still does three months. But how did you connect with him and what was your experience like? I’d like to compare it to mine as well.
Connecting with Ryan Rizuki
Riley Parkinson (04:17.868)
Yeah, so as soon as I came back from college I was trying to transfer or just get back out to the states however I could. But while I was waiting, you know, and reaching out to coaches and stuff I started training some kids and then just randomly Ryan’s video came up on my Instagram just saying that he was looking for interns blah blah blah for May. And then I just…
sent through my application. didn’t think for a minute that I would get it. But then probably 30 minutes later, he’s calling me and telling me to get here for next week. So it all happened pretty quick. But yeah, because I had my car out there and connections out there, was pretty easy. I flew out there, flew out to Kansas, drove my car from Kansas to San Diego, and then started the next day.
Brandon Evans (04:54.32)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (05:05.175)
shoot. that, is that where you were at? Where did you play college in Kansas? Which talk? Okay. Cool. What college was that? Okay. Cool. What was that? So you had a pretty quick change of I’m playing time training. Was that hard to get used to?
Riley Parkinson (05:09.215)
in Wichita.
Bethel College.
The internship experience and wanting to stay
Riley Parkinson (05:27.082)
It was in a sense of like, I’m running these workouts and all I want mentally is to just be the one that’s doing the workout and not running the work out. And, it was good from a sense of like learning stuff from Ryan that I could then implement into my game because I still had the idea or the vision that I would leave San Diego, go back home, train and play at the same time, which didn’t last long.
Brandon Evans (05:35.013)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (05:51.936)
when I was that was going to be my next question when did that when did that go through your head we were like all right never mind I’m just let me just train
Riley Parkinson (06:00.086)
It was, so I came back from being with Ryan in August and by March the following year was when I was like, no, I can’t manage this. I need to go full time as trainer. But yeah, it’s hard decision to make.
The decision to stop playing and go all-in on coaching
Brandon Evans (06:12.73)
Was it, yeah, was it just because you were doing so well or was it just too much? What was the reasoning?
Riley Parkinson (06:21.076)
It got to couple of things. I got to the point where like my knees were killing from standing up and coaching all day to then going to practice and to the point like it hurt to sit down and stand up. And then I was having to turn down clients and money to go and practice and play myself.
where was like I can either go and be like a development player for, you know, this semi pro team, or I can actually train, which I really love and enjoy make money while doing it. So yeah, it was a hard decision to make.
Brandon Evans (06:54.776)
Yeah, I think like, because I personally, didn’t play college or anything. And my thought was always like, you know, I probably could have played at like some super small schools and whatever and still enjoyed it. But.
what am I going to do long term? Like, what am I going to be involved in long term? It’s, mean, ultimately, like I got into coaching when I was like 15 or 16. So it’s just like, I wanted to get started on what I was, what I thought I would do long term. I mean, for me ended up being training, but at the time I I was coaching, but kind of the same thing ish. but
Riley Parkinson (07:33.006)
Mm.
Brandon Evans (07:35.239)
There’s just so many people that go through that like, I still want to play, I still want to play, I still want to play when I think people’s focus could be better used on maybe training, coaching, analyst, whatever you want to be involved in basketball wise or soccer wise or whatever sport you do. It’s not wrong to just let it go.
Riley Parkinson (07:54.286)
Okay.
Riley Parkinson (07:59.806)
Yeah, I still get like, because it’s the feeling of still wanting to play and wanting to hoop, but I still get that. Like even with the older guys that I train, like sometimes I’ll hop in or some of the guys like I’ll play one-on-one with them, all that kind of stuff. So I’m still a part of it. I just don’t have to go through the whole team system. But you know, as a trainer, as you know yourself, you can make a whole lot more money training than playing on, you know, some pro team.
Brandon Evans (08:10.32)
course.
Brandon Evans (08:15.334)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Evans (08:26.352)
Yes, and to your point, you can still be involved in basketball. The amount of people whose the dream it is to be in basketball for a living and you just do it a different way.
Riley Parkinson (08:32.813)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (08:37.752)
Yeah.
Business lessons from Ryan: emails and upfront payment
Brandon Evans (08:42.574)
touching on your experience with Ryan again, what if you had to pick maybe one or two things, whether it be business or training lies, what were the things that you brought back to Australia with you and like, okay, these are the biggest things he told me and I have to do these.
Riley Parkinson (08:59.726)
Well, that sounded a little bit dumb, but yeah, I really had no idea about actually running a training business. I was just training kids for like a couple of weeks and it was just $10 an hour. Pay me cash. We’ll talk through Facebook messenger. Like it wasn’t, it wasn’t a business. So the main, the main takeaways for me, because I’d already played like the, the basketball side of things, like I knew a lot of it already.
Brandon Evans (09:15.622)
$10.
Riley Parkinson (09:26.616)
but it was the business, was making sure I’m collecting emails. I’m like, why do I need to collect emails if I can just text them? That was my thought process. So yeah, I think a lot of the business stuff, like getting them to submit their email and their details so then I can follow up and I’ve got them on my email list. And then taking payment before I put their session in my calendar, before I schedule it in.
Things like that because there are plenty of times where you get no shows or people who don’t want to pay you on time or whatever it may be So I think it’s just things like that that actually helped me Turn it into a business rather than just a side gig or a little hobby
But in terms of basketball, was, you know, kids need to be moving around the whole time. They need to, you know, finish with both hands, dribble with both hands, deal with a lot of contact, shoot the ball, all that kind of stuff. So trying to structure workouts around all of those things.
Brandon Evans (10:25.016)
Mm-hmm, yeah.
Brandon Evans (10:29.51)
Yeah, was the reason I asked that is like he was always on me about like emails, emails, emails, collect their emails. I’m like, dude, why? Like, I was like, no, I didn’t click their emails. He was like, wow, you just messed up. I’m like, but now, obviously, I understand now because you have their email, you can market to them, you can let them know about your future events. And eventually those people might become members that are on your email list for so long. So being able to
Collect somebody’s email and contact information is so important because it keeps them in your marketing just always. Every mass email you send out, all that little stuff is so important. And then to the basketball point, the biggest thing, and you said it too, so clearly we were under the same thing and he didn’t change anything. Just keep the kids moving. Absolutely no lines.
Riley Parkinson (11:17.832)
you
Brandon Evans (11:23.694)
Every now, like the ideal flow, like whenever we have a new trainer come on, the ideal flow, I’m like, they can maybe jog back in line, have a second to collect themselves and boom, next rep starts. Cause I mean, I’ve talked about this with soccer coaches, sports performance coaches, as soon as there’s a line, especially if you have kids eighth grade and below, they’re going to just start like, I don’t know, doing somersaults and throwing the ball at each other.
Riley Parkinson (11:48.814)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (11:50.7)
literally, you’ll turn around and just see something you’ve never seen before and you’re just like, okay, all right. Yeah, so I mean, that’s and from the parents perspective, too, that’s something they appreciate a lot is like, the kids are always moving, they got a great workout in which
Riley Parkinson (11:56.162)
Yep. Yeah, it can be rough.
Riley Parkinson (12:09.038)
Hmm.
Groups vs privates: parent pushback
Brandon Evans (12:10.878)
Is that the point to get them super tired and everything? Sometimes maybe, but from the parent perspective, they see their kids tired and they’re moving and everything. And cause you see like, I’m sure you get this a lot. Do you get pushed back at all because of you do mainly groups now, right? Yeah. Do you ever get pushed back at all? Like, we have to do private sessions. Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (12:22.338)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (12:34.764)
lot of the time yeah and there’s kids that I’ve been doing private for pretty much the whole time I’ve been training them and they will refuse to go into groups
Brandon Evans (12:44.71)
Yeah, it’s, and I think it’s just because of the, like the stereotype of how typical groups are ran at like mass academies. Like most of them, yeah, there’s a huge line. There’s a couple of basketballs, kids aren’t really doing anything. And it’s more just like a social thing, which fine, whatever. If you want to be at a big camp, cool, it’s fine. So I think when people hear groups, they just automatically think.
Oh, my kid’s not going to get paid attention to. He’s not going to get better and just going to be a waste of time because I mean, truthfully, that’s what how a lot of group sessions are ran. Unfortunately, but in.
I’m sure in my gym and obviously in your gym, because you have your own gym now, it’s just a different experience. Like keeping kids moving is actually like one of the biggest things Ryan and the other trainers at his gyms told me was like teach it like a like an actual classroom setting. Like you are a teacher, how you would sit down in school and the teacher would teach you things and you do them like treat it like that. And that was a huge thing to switch my perspective on it.
Riley Parkinson (13:48.642)
Yep. Yeah.
Growing up in Melbourne and why he wanted to come to America
Brandon Evans (13:53.798)
Okay, so take me back here. You grew up in Melbourne, played junior ball there. Then you went to the US for college basketball. What made you want to leave Australia and come to America?
Riley Parkinson (14:10.228)
It was funny because like ever since I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was go to America and live there too. I don’t know why. I think it was probably just, you know, the movies I watched, the music I listened to, like America just seemed bright and shiny and everything cool was there and I was stuck in Australia. So I always wanted to go there, not necessarily for basketball, but then once I started playing basketball, I was like, okay, well.
here’s actually a pathway that I can go to get to America and play basketball. And then college basketball became the goal for me. So then, yeah, I just started reaching out to coaches and marketing myself, putting my highlights on Twitter, all that kind of stuff. Anything I could do really to just get over there.
Why he came back to Australia after the internship
Brandon Evans (14:54.424)
Yeah. And when you finished your college, you said you were trying to find ways to get back in the United States. After your time with Ryan, why did you, apologies if you answered this already, but why did you go back to Australia?
Riley Parkinson (15:09.454)
So the visa that I was on is only a visiting tourist visa. So I was only allowed to be there for three months. So after that I could then, you know…
Ryan could hire me and I could get a working visa and go through that process. But Ryan had said to me like, cause it got to the end of my internship and like there’d be nights where like I was crying cause I didn’t want to leave these kids after three months of training some of these kids every day. Like these kids were amazing. I didn’t want to leave. And obviously in my head, I’m like, I don’t want to go back to Australia. But he was like, I could hire you, but you’re going to make more money if you run your own business. And yeah.
Brandon Evans (15:41.86)
Mm-hmm.
Riley Parkinson (15:48.95)
essentially try to dominate Australia.
Building from scratch: outdoor courts and YMCA entry fees
Brandon Evans (15:51.484)
Mm-hmm, yeah, and I mean, he wasn’t wrong. So you come back to Australia with this US experience and your time with Ryan. Walk me through starting the business. You touched on it a little bit about you were training kids and playing at the same time, but after you decided to stop, okay, I’m gonna stop playing. And what was the beginning like of everything?
Riley Parkinson (16:18.412)
So when I came back from Ryan, was, because I had three clients, I was just running private. It got to the point like I started getting a little bit of popularity, especially just in my area for being the trainer and the trainer that posts on social media. So that obviously helped getting clients. It got to the point like throughout the school holidays or whatever, I was training like 10 to 12 hours a day, just back to back to back private.
Which I mean, I was making the most money I’ve ever made, but not at that point, but I was burnt out like crazy doing, you private after private and then, you know, training and playing on top of that. So then when I got to the point where I was like, okay, I’m going to go all in on this training. I’m going to stop playing at least for now, put that aside, put all my efforts into, into coaching.
That’s when I started switching over to groups as well. So the way I was doing it is I would train privately from 6 a.m. when like this leisure center opened till about 9 10 a.m. and then people would be at school. I’d train some pros or some older guys throughout the day and then
four o’clock in the afternoon in Australia, it’s very hard to get any court access. So I was training on an outdoor outdoor quarter of the school. So I was doing groups, two or three groups with two or three kids, four kids. So they weren’t big groups or anything.
Brandon Evans (17:44.423)
Mm-hmm.
Riley Parkinson (17:57.76)
And then, you know, obviously the challenges with an outdoor court is that, you know, it’s dark at 5pm or it’s dark at 6pm. It’s raining one day. It’s super windy. You’ve got other people on the other courts throwing balls and screaming and so yeah, that’s pretty much how it went.
Brandon Evans (18:08.679)
Thanks
Brandon Evans (18:15.375)
Yeah, I remember you posting about that. What was it like a rec center? How did you even get connected with that facility? Did you just, was it just purely a, I rent this course space for X dollars an hour or was there some other partnership with that?
Riley Parkinson (18:31.15)
No, picture it like, just picture it like a YMCA. there was, think there’s eight courts at that facility. And especially at the time that I was going in at 6 a.m. it’s just $5 casual entry. So, and then in the afternoons all the courts were booked out anyway with team trainings and stuff. On the weekends and stuff when I would train, yeah, I’d have to pay the $25 an hour for a half court and book the half court. But.
Brandon Evans (18:39.843)
It was huge.
Brandon Evans (18:50.661)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (18:59.158)
Yeah, so that’s what I do on the weekends. So on the weekends, I run some group classes there as well.
Brandon Evans (19:03.455)
They didn’t have any issue with you just bringing people in and training them. Interesting. A lot of places here, they would have an issue with that. Yeah, like there’s the YMCA near my house. There’s been some people that host trainings and stuff on the half courts and they get shut down because people are making money out of their facility without renting. So like…
Riley Parkinson (19:07.885)
Nah.
Riley Parkinson (19:13.774)
Really?
Riley Parkinson (19:30.328)
Fair enough.
Brandon Evans (19:31.579)
But even then, like $25 for a half court, it’s not really not bad. Like, it’s not bad at all. But yeah, that was interesting. At what point did, I know you have your facility now and we’ll get into that a little bit more. At what point was it just a matter of you needing to hit like a certain amount per month or were you always on the search for a facility from the moment you stopped playing?
Searching for a facility
Riley Parkinson (20:02.358)
I always knew that was the goal, right? Especially after my time with Ryan, like I knew that was, that was where I needed to be in order to actually see some real money and, you know, take advantage of being a trainer. And I think for myself as well, just feeling like an actual trainer and not this guy who just travels from this place to this place to train on an outdoor court. Like it actually, I don’t know. I think the mentality of having a gym is that, okay, now this is actually a career.
But I was looking just to get ideas, especially early on. But once I was consistently making at least what the rent would be, that’s when I was looking everywhere. And I was looking all over the place. Now for me, I guess the best way to picture where I live is if you think Melbourne is San Diego and then where my gym is is where Ryan’s gym is in San Marcos.
I’m still another 30 minutes north, like almost in the country. So I’m very up north and for me to try and find a gym that’s close enough to my clients, but not an hour away from where I live, but has an open floor plan and doesn’t have mezzanine upstairs or anything like that, it’s pretty difficult. So I was kind of just going through
Kind of just going through the motions of like I’d look every couple of weeks, wouldn’t really find anything that was suitable, keep training, just keep hoping that something will pop up. And then eventually something did. Eventually something came up, perfect location, right near that leisure center that I used to train at, 25 minutes from my house, right near a bunch of big clubs. So once I found that, I emailed the real estate agent straight away.
Brandon Evans (21:55.167)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s it was fun to see you get all that situated. I feel like it came about super fast. Like we were talking to DMs and you were like, oh, I’m looking for a place. And then all of a sudden I see you post like Jim coming soon. I was like, OK, something I want to circle back here. I forgot to ask this. You mentioned, you know, you’re
Riley Parkinson (22:03.128)
Good.
Growing to 30K followers on Instagram and TikTok
Brandon Evans (22:23.041)
You have what, many followers on social media now? Like 30k ish around there. Yeah, you just, you just recently surpassed me. We have very similar experiences when it started to this was being that like quote unquote Instagram trainer.
Riley Parkinson (22:26.444)
Yeah, just not just under 30 K on both Instagram and TikTok.
Riley Parkinson (22:33.23)
you
Brandon Evans (22:44.399)
Was that ever a detriment to you? Because I know at least when I started, you know, there was always a few people that were like, just, you know, Instagram guy, Instagram trainer. He just does this for content. I’m interested to hear your thought on that.
Riley Parkinson (22:58.69)
I don’t think I got that necessarily. Like I don’t think people thought I wasn’t a good trainer because I did social media or anything, but I definitely got hated on by people who didn’t know me or whatever. And who just saw what I was doing from the outside because I mean, there are a couple other trainers in Australia, like bigger trainers who post their workouts and stuff, but.
as a new guy, you know, when you’re just starting out and you’re posting on social media, like, yeah, you get clowned on, get people that hate from the sidelines, all that. And then as soon as it starts paying off, that’s when people take it seriously.
Why you should post anyway
Brandon Evans (23:35.461)
Yep, 100%. That is, if anybody, if there’s any trainers listening that are like hesitant about posting content, just, it doesn’t matter. Just, just post the content. Like it’s not even, it’s not even about like, yeah, you can get to 30,000 followers. Cool, that’s great. But.
Riley Parkinson (23:49.45)
I’ll look back at them all. Sorry you go.
Brandon Evans (23:58.843)
which you know it does help. Like obviously like people see the followers and probably the verified badge and they’re like, wow, who’s this guy? But.
is more about just building that authority. Like I’m in the gym every single day. This is an inside look of what I do. These are my opinions, my thoughts, and this is why you should come to me. Like I always say to people that like your Instagram is, is your website now pretty much. Like it’s a more personal website almost. Like when somebody comes to your Instagram, they see you and all your opinions, all your thoughts. And if it’s apparent, they’re like, I like this guy. It seems legit. And now I want to go to him. like versus
just coming to, I mean, you know, like a big, like big rec center page, like, they have a camp at this time and that’s it. have no, they have no other reference of like, who is there, you know? So it’s just, just post content, like just post it. You, you will get made fun of, you will get made fun of. It’s gonna, you’re going to look back on it and be like, I, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but just post it. Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (24:52.15)
Yeah, you gotta get it out.
Riley Parkinson (25:01.294)
That’s what I was gonna say. I look back at all my old videos and they are terrible and I don’t know why I even posted them and I’m probably gonna look back in a couple years at the ones I’m posting now thinking they’re terrible too.
Brandon Evans (25:08.443)
Yep.
Brandon Evans (25:12.793)
Yeah, and it just, mean, you just get better every day as you do something like just that’s just natural. Like you’re posting content every day is naturally going to get better. But yeah, you’ll definitely have those people that make fun of you for this or that. But and then the moment you get a gym, all of a sudden it’s just it’s quiet or they’re coming to you like, but supporting you from day one is it’s just the same same process. But just don’t don’t be afraid to post content. It’s.
Riley Parkinson (25:35.828)
Thank you.
Brandon Evans (25:41.921)
It’s it’s huge. We’ll dive into that a little bit more later. But I want to talk about you have a very, very similar story journey as I did. I started my business as Brandon Evans basketball. You started yours as your name. It was Parko ball training, right? Yeah.
Rebranding from Parko Ball Training to Next Level Hoops
Riley Parkinson (26:02.274)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (26:05.965)
and now you’ve got a gym and it’s next level hoops. I got a gym, it’s pro standard. What was your thought process behind that?
Riley Parkinson (26:14.774)
So, I mean, because I wanna build a business and eventually my goal is to really not step foot in there. And at the end of the day, in years to come, you know, back away and people who come to that gym don’t even know who I am or know that I’m affiliated with it. And I knew if I put Parker Ball Training or put my name on it, like the Parker Ball Training facility or whatever.
people are gonna go there and expect to train with me or expect to see me, whatever it may be. But if I can start from essentially zero and call it next level hoops, sure everyone that trains with me now knows that that’s my thing. But now all these new clients, they come in and it’s gotten to the point now, like I’ve had the gym for, what I’ve had it since May last year and…
I’ve got other coaches that work for me and kids will come in for their trial sessions and train with another coach. I may not even be there or I might just be sitting at the desk and they don’t even know that I’m a trainer. That’s why I did it so that eventually I can step away. Other trainers can run it, grow next level hoops and…
I myself, I’m still parkour ball training. That’s my name on Instagram and everything like that. But if you come to the gym, you’re, you’re training at it at a next level hoops facility with a next level hoops trainer.
Brandon Evans (27:33.959)
Was it, because I know it was for me, was it hard to let go of that original name? Like people were coming for the next level hoops now, not parkour ball training. Was it hard to let go of that?
Riley Parkinson (27:44.792)
Yeah. Yeah.
Definitely, definitely. Yeah. Cause I still get questions like, you know, what happened to Parker ball training? you next level hoops now? Did you change? And it’s, it’s a whole thing to get into, but yeah, I mean, it definitely was hard. And I think eventually like I’ll end up changing my name on Instagram, just to, you know, my name, like Riley Parkinson or something, because eventually Parker ball training will, will fade out and next level hoops will grow. And then I’ll grow myself and my name.
Why the business name matters for scaling
Brandon Evans (28:18.343)
Yeah, and I mean, that’s the thing you nailed it 100 % with your reasoning behind it. And it was the same thought process for me. Having it just be you, your name limits, it doesn’t limit the growth to just you like you can have other trainers and everything for sure. But my thought always was
I want to build something that’s so much bigger than just myself. I want to have trainers on board. I want to be able to have them all run it so I can step back and focus on all the backend stuff, opening up a second facility if I want to, and really multiply the impact of my gym and my program. And like you said, I’m at the point now where some of these kids don’t even know I just hang out in the corner
and I’m on my computer and working and I’ll come up and say hi to them and they have no idea who I am. They have no idea that I own the place. They’re just like, I don’t know who this guy is talking to me. And that’s fine. I’ve released all of the ego from that.
Riley Parkinson (29:16.428)
Yes.
Thanks.
Brandon Evans (29:28.713)
I’m more than happy to own the gym and it does well and it makes a really good impact on people and I spend my time on the back end. Like I’ll train every now and then still but exactly like you said, you 100 % nailed that. So let’s talk about the gym where it’s at today. I looked a little bit through your website. Walk me through the business model now that you have a gym. How does it all work if somebody wants to come train
The current business model: memberships and credits
Riley Parkinson (30:03.246)
Okay, so in terms of groups, like groups is the main thing that we run. Four group classes every weeknight. So, and then one on the weekends as well. Got two different options. We’ve got deluxe membership where kids can train five days a week. Two days a week, five days a week, whatever they want. And we have another option where it’s one time a week.
So they get a certain amount of credits in a month. They can use those credits for sessions. So for example, if they’re on the four credit a month membership, they can come once a week, they can come twice in one week and then skip a week, however they want to structure it. So we have those two memberships. We were offering a free trial session. I’ve now changed that to a paid trial session just due to a lot of no shows and people filling it in and then forgetting about it or whatever.
still offer privates, but try and stay away from it as much as possible. Not only from a business point of view, it’s just not worth the time, but in terms of development as well, I’m sure you see that the groups are actually way better than private sessions. You will develop so much quicker through a group training session than a private session.
The development argument for group training
Brandon Evans (31:18.579)
Yes, 100 % speaking on that point, like there’s so many benefits to being in a group setting versus a private setting. Like you can’t play against somebody in a private setting. You can’t watch others do whatever we’re doing in a private setting. There’s just so like no community is built in a private setting.
Like there’s just so many things that are missed out in the individual set in the individual setting. So like, that’s a thing that’s so hard to convince parents of is that it’s actually worse for them. They’re paying more and it’s worse. They naturally, mean, naturally you think like, if you pay a hundred dollars, how much are your private sessions? Yeah. You pay a hundred dollars in how many are your groups?
Riley Parkinson (32:07.759)
$100.
Riley Parkinson (32:12.271)
60.
Brandon Evans (32:12.495)
Say you did your one time a week membership. How much is that?
Riley Parkinson (32:19.038)
Yep. If you’re the one time a week, price has just gone up. So it’s $300 a month.
Brandon Evans (32:24.905)
Okay, so $300 for three private sessions. You think like, oh, I’m spending $300 for these three private sessions and it is going to be so much better than coming to groups because you’re spending more technically, but.
It’s just because of the person’s time you have to pay for, the gym space you have to pay for when they could be doing something else. It’s not because it’s more valuable. It’s just simply not. And we could get super into the development aspect of stuff, but just having a group setting is 100 % superior.
Riley Parkinson (33:07.631)
I think they think the one-on-one is better simply because it’s one-on-one and all the attention is on the one play up, but you can’t do everything you need to do for that development. sure, like a one-on-one session every now and then can be good to touch up a few things, you know, whether it’s like I say one-on-one, if you’re going to do a one-on-one session, it’s probably best if it’s focused around like developing your form, like your shop form.
Cause that’s easier to do in a one-on-one setting, at least for me. If I can focus all my attention, we can get just slow, easy reps in, develop your form. All right, now you go and practice that at home now that I’ve shown you. And now we’ve got to get into the groups where you can compete. Like you said, see others do what you might not be able to do. Others are going to lift the intensity, push the pace.
Brandon Evans (33:59.315)
Yeah. And even, even to that point, if we are doing shot training or shot form, like the large majority of the changes that are going to be made are spent outside of the hour with you. Like whenever somebody, because we get this all the time and I’m sure you do too, like, my son or daughter needs help with his shooting form. And like, okay, we’ll show them a few things to do and they can do it. And it, takes me no more than five minutes.
most of the time it’s just shoot with one hand and shoot with one hand and then don’t flick your thumb with the other hand and then all their problems are solved pretty much. like, that’s why I try to…
people ask they want it so bad and it’s like or or another thing I always offer which people almost never ever take advantage of I’m like if you just send us a video through I know you use Coach IQ if you send me a video through Coach IQ I’ll give it to you back and I’ll tell you what to do and then they say okay that’s great and then they never do it so it’s like like I’ll even offer it for free I’m like yeah you just send it to us and we’ll do it real quick
and then the kid does it like, and then nobody ever does it. But yeah, it’s just, so something to you position your groups as small groups, what is your maximum? Six, okay. Is that because of your gym size or is that because you think six is optimal?
Riley Parkinson (35:10.223)
100%.
Riley Parkinson (35:23.458)
six plays.
Group size and the Ryan Rizuki gym
Riley Parkinson (35:32.897)
Mainly gym size, like if I had a bigger space, I would probably push it to eight, but yeah, no more than eight. Just because, especially if there’s only one coach in there at a time, whether it’s me or another coach, any more than that can get too difficult to manage. Lines can start to form if you, or you have to adjust the drills accordingly. So I find six is usually the sweet spot, at least for me.
Brandon Evans (35:58.121)
Yeah, yeah, I mine is 10 I believe but we do have a bigger space in here. We have two hoops so we kind of could just roll through but I was I was just yeah, I was just curious if it was a space thing or not just because I mean, we both were at Ryan’s gym that you were in. You were up in San Marcos, right?
Riley Parkinson (36:09.133)
Yeah, so that’s how.
Riley Parkinson (36:22.999)
Yeah, I was at the bigger gym,
Brandon Evans (36:24.955)
Okay, I was I was in Oklahoma and they somehow fit like 12 kids in that gym. And yeah, I just couldn’t do it.
Riley Parkinson (36:29.709)
Yeah, props to them.
Brandon Evans (36:36.489)
But Ryan always did a really good job of having multiple trainers in the hour. So that did make it easier. There was always two or three with me there, two or three guys that were running the workout. So you could make it work, which that was probably the absolute craziest thing. I saw that whole summer was having that many kids in that gym. I was like, what is happening?
Riley Parkinson (36:41.07)
Hmm.
Riley Parkinson (36:55.438)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (37:00.703)
I remember like training at San Marcos for probably like two months straight and you probably have a maximum of five kids per basket and a coach would eat each basket. But then there was a couple of days where I went down to Alcajon to help out. And yeah, like you said, there’s like 12 kids down there. There’s these hoops, tiny gym and it’s just chaotic. But there’s so many trainers in there. And then one of the trainers said to me, he’s like, all right, you’ve got the next drill. I’m like,
How am I supposed to run this without them running into each other? I figured it out the end of day, but there’s definitely an art to that.
Brandon Evans (37:33.321)
Who was it?
Brandon Evans (37:37.795)
Who said that? trainer? Clay? Yeah, Clay. I miss that guy. He did the same thing to me. I was like, I don’t know what to do, man. Are you kidding me?
Riley Parkinson (37:39.599)
play.
Riley Parkinson (37:49.539)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (37:50.891)
It’s it’s such a small it’s like for people who don’t know her haven’t seen if you somehow haven’t seen that gym it’s that small gym that has the The Kobe and Gianna painting on the back the one that Mikey Williams was dunking in for five years straight all the time It’s like there’s not even a three-point line or there is a three-point line But it gets cut off like just above the free throw line, and there’s maybe
It’s a full width, right? Full width, yeah, full width and you have your top of the key on the far side. Look, it’s just wild. I remember walking in there and I was like, how?
Riley Parkinson (38:21.901)
Yeah. High school. Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (38:34.127)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (38:34.566)
And it’s crazy once you see it, because then I’m sure you had the same experience when, well, I guess you didn’t train in there the whole summer. But like when I got back to here and I had a full court, was like, I don’t know what to do with all this space. Like, I have no idea. Like I have too much space here. I don’t know what to do with it.
And which, I mean, it made me get out of my comfort zone and learn how to do different things. But yeah, that gym is wild. But moving on here, you’re my first international guest. We’ve had Mitch have some international guys on. But what is the basketball training scene like in Australia? Is it as massive as it is here in the United States?
The basketball training scene in Australia vs the US
Riley Parkinson (39:20.559)
No, no, it’s not it’s growing. It’s definitely growing I’m sure you probably experienced the same in the US but right now it’s In Australia, it’s very much players wanting to make money on the side will just become a trainer and I mean essentially that that’s what I did so I can’t knock it like I did that too that was my startup but
Yeah, a lot of it is that. So you can throw a rock and hit a trainer here in Australia now. But in terms of full-time actual trainer trainers, there’s not many. There’s not many at all.
Brandon Evans (39:57.864)
Yeah, yeah, that’s pretty similar to here. Like some of the people might have bigger operations than others, but as far as like established businesses, there’s only a few. But like you said, there are a million trainers. Everybody’s a trainer. Everybody has their own little training thing. So to that point, you’ve seen US, you’ve seen Australia.
Riley Parkinson (40:14.073)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (40:23.484)
Is there anything different about the two markets as far as how your target customer views skill development? Like here it’s very play, play, play, play. And then if you have time, we can train. Is it the same way there or is it opposite?
Individual skill development: Australia vs the US
Riley Parkinson (40:42.383)
It’s actually the opposite. So it’s funny because like I was having a conversation with someone about this yesterday, the day before, about like, we will structure it about 40 minutes of training, know, hitting the pad, shooting, all that kind of stuff. And then 15, 20 minutes of like, we’re playing three on three, two on two, one on one small side of games. And for me, I know that…
the development would probably be better if I split it differently, if I did more playing, because that’s what a lot of these kids, they just need to play more in an environment where they feel okay to mess up. But I’m well aware of the parent perspective that they play on the weekends, play, you they might play three or four games on the weekend, they don’t go and shoot at home like they need.
They need skill development. They need bumping the pad. They need more shooting and more left-hand layups. So it’s trying to balance that. And I know that the kids, the kids obviously enjoy the playing the most. They like competing. That’s their favorite thing. So in Australia, think of team basketball. It’s very…
Brandon Evans (41:43.295)
Right.
Riley Parkinson (41:52.363)
very team orientated. There’s not a lot of individual skill development. There’s not a lot of one-on-one or anything like that. Whereas in America, there’s a big one-on-one culture. There’s a lot more ISO ball and things like that. So I’m trying to bring that, I guess, US style to Australia in a sense with making kids. I don’t want to say work harder because Australians do work hard, but
Brandon Evans (41:54.484)
course.
Riley Parkinson (42:22.519)
It’s a different breed. Like US, the standard of working hard is a lot higher than the standard in Australia. Running back every rep, going 100 % with almost everything you do. That’s what I want to try and bring and instill into these kids here. And creating dogs as well by competing. And talking some smack and having a little bit of ego and a little bit of being a show pony.
Brandon Evans (42:29.235)
Mm-hmm.
Riley Parkinson (42:50.913)
I know there’s a point where it gets toxic, but I don’t, I don’t like, I shouldn’t say I don’t like, but there’s a lot of, you know, block a shot. They fall over. you okay? Help you up. You know, I’m sorry. You know? And it’s like, you’re not going to survive. Like I get it as a person, great job, but on the basketball court, nah.
Training culture: competing hard and calling fouls
Brandon Evans (42:54.079)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (43:13.938)
Yeah, 100%. I mean, to your point, there’s a lot of that here. Like, that’s like, I’ll always, I don’t know if you do the same, but whenever we go live in my gym, where all of me and all of our trainers, I’m always like, listen, we’re not going to call fouls, unless it’s like unbelievably blatant, then we’ll call it. But you guys got to figure it out.
Riley Parkinson (43:21.369)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (43:41.261)
Yeah, that’s what I do too.
Brandon Evans (43:41.61)
just figured out. Yeah, I really don’t. I’ll call fouls every now and then, but really, really, it’s rare. Yes.
Riley Parkinson (43:53.071)
Just go play through it. It’s going to make you better at end of the day.
Brandon Evans (43:56.564)
Yeah, like it’s supposed to be messy and rough in this gym. So when you get to the game and you get fouled, it’s like, that was whatever. Like, cause I mean, in games here, sometimes maybe not so much on the AU side, but on the school side, any little tap on the shoulder is a foul. which let me rub by the rule book probably. but if you train in a way where you’re used to going through and getting bullied, like it’s going to be nothing.
right? So we have similar, similar perspectives on that for sure. And it’s, trust me, it’s not just it’s not just Australia that has kids that are too nice. It happens here too. Like it’s okay to be. It’s okay to be a little, a little mean. It’s all right. Everybody’s gonna be okay. Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (44:27.215)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (44:33.742)
BLEH
Riley Parkinson (44:42.679)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (44:47.951)
It is. Yeah, be friends after all. can be nice to each other as soon as the session is over. But while you’re competing, you’ve got to compete.
Brandon Evans (44:59.027)
Yeah, like I actually just got a text from a parent the other day. We have a pretty skilled and competitive group of fifth grade kids here. And the parent was like, they played there in their school league in the weekend. He’s like, dude, they were going at each other. were talking crap the whole game and then just competing. And then after the game, shook hands. It was all love. That is just how it should be.
Riley Parkinson (45:22.287)
Brandon Evans (45:25.959)
no friends in between the lines. It’s, again, it’s up to us who don’t have any bias when it comes to that to try to instill that. So you work mainly with youth, right? For the most part.
Riley Parkinson (45:28.143)
I’m yourself.
Training NBL and NBL1 professional athletes
Brandon Evans (45:44.905)
But I’ve seen you post a bunch. You’ve trained NBL and NBL1 athletes. You post Robbie Heath. Is that who you post a lot? Him. And who’s the women’s player that you post a lot?
Brandon Evans (46:04.113)
Recently I’ve been checking
Riley Parkinson (46:10.094)
I’ve lost, I don’t know, I’m trying to think of who I trained. I try and stick away from the pros now. Jaden Mullen? Yes.
Brandon Evans (46:16.683)
I was about to ask, yes, that’s who it is. Yep. couldn’t, it was, I, thought I remembered and then I just blanked her. Uh, what’s it like training professional Australian league players? Cause you know, pros in the U S have their, have their stereotypes. I’m curious about what it’s like over there.
Riley Parkinson (46:34.317)
Yeah. Well, funny you brought up those two because Robbie played high school, like grew up in America, like high school and college in America. Jaden is American as well. She only came over for one season. Yeah. So they’re both, mean, Robbie is Australian, but yeah, very American. but in terms of like training Australian pros, it’s definitely different to training American pros a hundred percent.
Riley Parkinson (47:17.967)
in the nicest way possible saying it, they don’t care about you all your time. And that’s not speaking about individuals I’ve trained. It’s just like an overall generalization.
Brandon Evans (47:27.051)
Yeah. Saying of course there there are I don’t mean to interrupt you there are exceptions to this like of course if you spend your time and train somebody they’re not going to be of that that group just want to make that clear there are exceptions to that rule. Continue continue.
Riley Parkinson (47:34.317)
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (47:41.231)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, and Americans very similar to what I was talking about, comparing Americans and Australians, you know, like a lot of the bag work and a lot of the ISO stuff. Whereas the Australian pros I’ve trained where we’re working out of your team’s action, where some of them I’m trying to, there’s one guy I work with Ryan Philippi who
is very, very like team orientated. So when we first started training, he didn’t really have a bag as such. know, he spot up shooting, coming off screens, passing the ball, like just pure point guard. Now I’m like, he’s at the point where you could put him in a one-on-one event or take him over to American basketball and he’d fit in. Cause I’m trying to, trying to do the opposite. I’m trying to make him more Americanized.
by handling the ball more, shooting the ball, shooting off the dribble, you know, getting confident so that he can be cocky and talk some smack. So I think it just depends on the player, but for a large part, Australians are very team orientated, not a lot of bag work. You know, usually pretty good shooters, know, catch and shoot and Americans like to get downhill, have a bag.
Brandon Evans (49:06.697)
Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty accurate. But as far as the narrative of basketball nowadays, at least from everything I’ve seen, it’s accurate. So you’ve done a lot in just a few years.
thousands of athletes, know, your pros and your college guys that you’ve worked with and girls have your own facility now, but you’re still really early in your career. You’re younger than me. You’re I’m 26. You’re 20, 20. Yeah, you’re 22. Okay. So how have you established credibility when you’re closer in age to some of your athletes than to their parents?
Building credibility as a 22-year-old trainer
Riley Parkinson (49:35.073)
Any two.
Riley Parkinson (49:49.569)
It’s hard, but it also makes it easier because I can connect with the kids very, very quickly and easily because I still remember being their age because it wasn’t that long ago. It’s been a learning curve trying to, I guess, establish credibility and trying to think of the word, but I guess…
you know, put my foot down and be, be firm with parents who are my parents age. That’s, that’s definitely been a learning curve and I’m definitely getting better with that over time. But I was very easy going at the start and very like you’re the boss cause you’re older than me. You know, and I’ve started to realize over time that this is my business and what I say goes and you’re, you’re my client, which is
Brandon Evans (50:45.225)
Yeah.
Riley Parkinson (50:46.475)
scary when I’m 22 and they’re 50. But yeah, it’s definitely been a curve.
How CoachIQ replaced his spreadsheet and multiple payment apps
Brandon Evans (50:54.623)
Yeah, it’s all, I said I went through the same thing. It’s all just how you approach it, right? Like you’re, and this kind of leads me naturally into talking about Coach IQ. I know you use Coach IQ too, but.
as much as Coach IQ is, you know, your management platform and all that stuff. It helped me with that. It helped me with, you know, holding my ground on things like, like a cancellation policy. If somebody wanted to show up and they haven’t paid yet, it’s like, no, you have to book through Coach IQ. Just book here and then it automatically is like, oh, you have to pay. So it was never like, it was never me being like, Hey, I have to click. I have to get this payment. Yeah, you can come, but it’s $20.
Riley Parkinson (51:18.127)
Hmm.
Brandon Evans (51:37.933)
like it removed it helped me it helped me become more firm in what I was doing right running it like a business like you have to book before you come in and to book you have to pay it’s that simple like there’s no there’s no other way around it it’s not like
I’m not saying I was like dodging it, but it’s the system I set up, right? It’s the system I set up and you have to follow the rules if you want to come to the gym. It’s like, it’s that simple. And I think people respect that instead of, instead of just you texting them like, you have to Venmo me $15, right? Like they have a legitimate, a legitimate payment portal and they see that. Um, so, you know, you are a Coach IQ user.
Riley Parkinson (52:16.652)
Yeah.
Brandon Evans (52:26.537)
Do how do you use it? Cause you know, every coach uses it a little bit differently. I personally use it for pretty much everything when it comes to scheduling, booking, same, that’s the same thing. Scheduling communication, my website, all that. How do you use it?
Riley Parkinson (52:41.507)
Well, I’ll tell you the reason I started. I first hopped onto Coach IQ because I was following them on Instagram and would, like Russell would post a lot of just good information, just good tips about how groups are better than privates. I’m like, okay, yeah, that could work. And then, yeah.
Right before, it was actually a couple months before I got my facility, I got in touch with them, set myself up on Coach IQ because I knew that that was one of the key steps to actually take myself from a trainer who trains randomly to a business owner, regardless of having it like a gym or not. But yeah, I use it.
Mainly yeah for scheduling for my website all of that I haven’t really touched too much on like the online program side of things which is something I definitely want to dive into this year but for the most part like Before I was using coach IQ. I was scheduling everything on Google calendar I had an Excel spreadsheet of who had paid and who showed up to what group class and I was getting PayPal I was getting bank transfer. I was getting cash in hand and
Brandon Evans (53:41.842)
yeah.
Brandon Evans (53:51.25)
transfer.
Riley Parkinson (53:52.311)
Yeah, everything. Yeah, it was a lot. So Coach IQ just helped me simplify everything and have, you know, especially having the one portal for everything that you need. That’s been the best part about it. Like I don’t need, I don’t need that Excel spreadsheet anymore. I don’t need to be refreshing my bank account to see if that money’s come through. I don’t need to be texting the clients. everything’s just done through this.
Brandon Evans (54:21.183)
Yeah, speaking of texting part two, the thing that I use a lot as well is the, you know, can get a number through Coach IQ and text clients from there. I use that so much because I’m sure for you too, I don’t know if you use that or not, but I don’t get any text on my personal phone anymore.
Riley Parkinson (54:39.599)
Well, I need to change that then.
Brandon Evans (54:41.859)
yeah, you do. 100%. I will, I do not get any texts to my personal phone. I just, cause it was so hard to, to deal with, you know, business stuff and personal stuff and my same, once it got to a point at the beginning, like, yeah, okay, you gotta go through that. But once it gets to a certain point, you can set up a, like a SMS through Coach IQ and you can text and go back and forth in between.
Riley Parkinson (54:58.351)
Alright.
Brandon Evans (55:08.341)
parents there so that way nobody gets my personal phone. It’s great. If you haven’t looked into that,
Riley Parkinson (55:12.26)
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s good. I was actually just on the phone with Ryan about a week ago and he was like, get rid of your personal lumber off your website. Like don’t let anyone have that. And I was like, yeah, I want to, but I don’t know what the solution is.
Brandon Evans (55:25.299)
Yeah, that’s…
Yeah, no, you could set it. you go into your settings, you’ll find it. If people call it, it’ll just route to your normal phone. So yeah, you need to do that. I don’t know how you still have your personal on there. That’s funny. So okay, last couple questions here for you. What is next for the gym and your personal brand? Where do you want to be in a year or two? Where do you want the gym to be?
What’s next for Next Level Hoops and his personal brand
Riley Parkinson (55:57.293)
So I’ll start off with the gym. The plan for the gym is to obviously grow and get a lot of members in. But then for, I want to hire another coach, someone who can come on a little bit.
Little bit more full time, know, three to five days a week who can oversee and run a lot of the group classes. I still have two other people that I have on staff as well who run one to two group classes a week, but get to a point where I’m not the one running majority of it. I don’t have to be there every day. I don’t have to think about.
the gym as much. I’m still right now I’m still there for the most part five to seven days a week and you know and that’s opening up that’s locking up that’s you know doing emails whatever it may be running sessions so I want to get to the point where the gym can at least
Manage without me because like we talked about like I’m coming to the US in a couple of days and I’m having to shut the gym for three weeks when they get to the point where That’s that’s not even thought. I don’t have to think about shutting the gym because it’s just gonna run itself Yeah, when it when it needs to be so that’s it for the the gym side of things and you know Just keep developing coaches to build and run better and better workouts for me I want to be
traveling hosting camps connecting with athletes all over Australia and all over the world and I want to diversify my income so it’s not just from the gym, but it’s through online programs. It’s through camps through events and you know, especially with like recently I’ve been having a lot more success on social media and You know 30,000 followers in Australia is a lot
Riley Parkinson (57:56.259)
bigger than 30,000 followers in America just due to the population size. So now I’m getting to a point where I go out and I get recognized. Well, I’m trying to turn that into money where I can go all over the country, whether it’s events, camps, whatever it may be, just so can, you know, I can meet more people. More people can meet me. I can not just work with a small select.
small select area where my gym is at and I can work with kids all over the country.
Social media advice for coaches who haven’t started yet
Brandon Evans (58:27.552)
Yeah. Yeah. And then my last question here, we touched on this a little bit through it and you just mentioned it. What would your advice be to the private sports coach, whether it be basketball, soccer, football that wants to grow their social media?
Riley Parkinson (58:46.361)
How much time do we have?
Brandon Evans (58:47.692)
Plenty of time, but I told you there’s no rush.
Riley Parkinson (58:51.725)
Well, I think it just starts off with, with like you said, just post just doesn’t matter how bad it is. Just post post something. Cause over time you’re to get better. Then it’s a matter of staying consistent and also trying, trying different things. So when I started at Ryan’s gym, I was posting videos, talking to the camera and saying, here are three moves that you need to do to get to the basket. And looking back, they were terrible, but at the time I thought they were, they were awesome.
I’d be excited if I got a thousand views. Then I came back to Australia and I started getting my girlfriend to film the workouts at 6 a.m. with me mic’d up. And then I would chop up little bits from that. Me saying to do the drill, they do it wrong. I correct them. They do it right. Posting that. I started getting like two or 3000 views. Like a really, really good one would get 5,000 views.
And I did that for ages without, without trying many new things. Cause I thought that was just, that was the way everyone else was doing it in Australia. So that’s the way you have to go. And then I tested a couple of skits and I was like, Ooh, they do, they do really well, but I’m not interested in getting changed in and out of clothes at a public leisure center for one video, 10,000 views. So then when I, when I got my gym,
Brandon Evans (01:00:09.996)
You
Riley Parkinson (01:00:15.799)
I was like, I’m going to try skits again. And they took off. They did really well. So I think it’s just about trying different things while staying consistent. Cause now, you know, once I tried skits, I realized that they were the thing that worked for me. And then within that I’m testing at different niches. So my more popular videos are where I’m talking specifically to Australian parents and players because not only are there no trainers or not many trainers posting content,
No one else is posting skits in Australia and no one else is posting skits directly talking to Australian basketball families and athletes. So that’s how I found my little pocket, my little niche and that’s working well for me so far. But you know, in the future, I’m sure I’m going to have to change. I’m going to have to try something else and figure it out. But in the long run, it’s just staying consistent and trying to make micro improvements along the way.
Brandon Evans (01:01:14.314)
Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. That’s with social media. If you have a facility, whatever, you just consistency, which is my problem is consistency, consistency, and then just figuring out what works. Like you did a really good job noticing that.
Nobody did skits directed towards Australian parents and it’s worked out for you. Maybe people are gonna, I mean, not maybe, people will probably start copying that and you’re gonna have to find the next big thing. And with the gym, my gym, we continue to change up how we do things, not change up, but refine. You’re gonna do the same thing. It’s just how it works. Like…
growing anything, whether it be social media or a facility or a program, whatever, consistency and just improving every day. 100%. So I agree with you 100%. I think you nailed that. So we’ll close out here. Riley, thank you for coming on. It was really cool to talk about your journey from Melbourne to US College to getting mentored by Ryan to building your own facility in Australia. There’s a lot here for any private sports coach to learn from, regardless of
sport or country now, where can people find you and the gym?
Close
Brandon Evans (01:02:47.24)
Awesome. We’ll make sure to put all of those links down in the description and on the screen here. But everybody go follow Riley and Next Level Hoops. If you’re in the Melbourne area, now you know where to go for basketball training. Riley’s your guy. Thank you guys for listening. Riley was awesome to have you on. Absolutely.
