Meet Elandas Miller of Kicking It Sports in East Atlanta

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elandas Miller.

Elandas, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My business is a startup located in Atlanta, GA. We focus on providing a place where adults can tap into their inner child. We do this by hosting team sporting events that include field day games, musical performances, and food cooks/vendors.

I founded this business through my love of spending time with family/friends and playing sports. As a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player, but as I grew older into my high school years, I started to notice that my passion for playing baseball began to fade away. Throughout college, I wanted to continue my love for being active by playing Intramural Sports. I loved how it felt to be on a team and each of us having fun while also trying to accomplish the same goal. I enjoyed the laughs during the game, the great plays that my teammates were involved in, and even the thrill of competition.

After college, I noticed that my friends were not playing as much and we were not spending as much time with each other. I decided to combine the two things that I loved in hopes of solving a problem. I tried joining an adult league but realized the difficulties of committing to a 6 – 10 game season. As adults, we have many responsibilities and I understood that it would be hard for anyone to make that commitment. As a result, I thought about hosting events that use the “come and play” model where people can sign-up with no commitments and play until their hearts were fulfilled.

Today, we have hosted nine events in the last two years. We have been leveraging the use of social media and word of mouth to get people to attend our events.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The first year of business was extremely difficult. I hosted my first event in June hoping that at least 30 people would show up. I tweeted about it, posted it on Instagram, Facebook, and sent my friends a message to invite them to my new venture. One of my friends was working on graphic designing, so I had her create a flyer and everything. To my surprise, only eight people showed up. Two of them were my roommates. It was a little embarrassing.

Clearly, my idea did not resonate with enough people to entice them to come out and enjoy a day filled with fun games. We had to use a “ghostman” for when we were playing kickball. If you don’t understand the concept of “ghostman,” it is when you don’t have enough players and if you get on base, then the “ghostman” stays on the base while you go back and kick the ball again.

I ended up spending about $300 on equipment, food, refreshments, and snacks. Luckily, I did not have to rent the park because that would have been $180/hour. It was a low-cost event and helped me learn what I did wrong.

Our biggest mistake was definitely due to a lack of marketing. Marketing is the key to all businesses. For a business like mine, it is essential to understand who the target market is, where does the target market spend their time, and how you can be continuously engaged with your market and build relationships with them. We still are learning how to market ourselves in the most effective way.

These days we are pursuing Ambassadors to help promote the brand in the community, being featured on radio shows, and establishing an omnipresence within the market. Now, as the founder, I spend my time volunteering for local events to spread the word and I am even playing in a sports league to promote my business to my teammates.

Please tell us about Kicking It Sports.
Kicking It Sports was founded for the purpose of providing a safe and fun environment where adults can be a kid again. We focus on playing team sports such as kickball, ultimate frisbee, and capture the flag so our players build and foster relationships with one another. In addition to our sports, we offer smaller activities and board games for people to have even more fun before or after our main attractions. We simply want to bring people together, provide a way for them to be active, and give them a break from the everyday stresses of life.

Imagine playing games with your favorite people, sharing laughs, getting excited after a score, and dancing to some great music.  Our favorite aspect of our events is when we see people look at us and say, “This was a lot of fun.” Those few words keep us moving and keep us hosting more and more events. This is what Kicking It Sports is all about.

We are most proud of the laughs that are generated from our events. The feeling of people simply being themselves without having to worry about being judged is heart-whelming. I love to see people engaged in the games and dancing to the music.

What makes us different from other companies is our “Festival” like tone of the events. In addition, the way we leverage team sports to bring people together without having to worry about a commitment. We have live performances, food, and activities. Most companies like ours are league based, but we use the “come and play” or the “pickup game” model.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I could start over, I would try to focus a little more on marketing and planning. Our events have been growing, but there is a lot more room for improvement when it comes to attendance. I would have done more research on which type of marketing techniques could be leveraged to increase attendance.

Planning and organizing our events is another thing I would have done a little differently. We could have started with a better logistical plan of our events so that it could have been executed better. We could have started with a better logistical plan of our events so that it could have been executed more effectively and efficiently.

Pricing:

• $25 per event for players. It includes food from vendors and cooks, all you can play games, parking, live performances, and a chance to win prizes like concert tickets, sports events, and more.

Contact Info:

• Address: 1530 Woodbine Avenue SE Atlanta, GA
• Website: www.thekickingitsports.com
• Phone: 404-751-6249
• Email: emiller@thekickingitsports.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/kickingitsports_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekickingitsports/
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1713451465377076/

Image Credit:
Nick Belson

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