Today we’d like to introduce you to Charles Allen.
Hi Charles, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I had one of those childhoods like many did in the ’70s with a broken family and an absent father. From a very young age, I wanted to be a father. I was interested in the process of the transfer of knowledge: how do you bring someone into the world? How do you orient them to that world? And even though there were strong male figures in my life, I felt a lack of guidance from a specific father figure. Books were my solace and a significant obsession. I would get dizzy walking through large bookstores, because I wanted to consume them all.
I went to an Ivy League school because I was told I couldn’t do it. Literally, I had a college counselor who said that. and then because of financial lack I had to find a way through, which meant I had to work many jobs during school and have a non-traditional educational experience; I was very critical of what would be considered the most prestigious education.
During my college years I exposed myself to as much as I could, but never graduated. And in the end, graduating was just not important to me.
My high school drama/english teacher made an indelible impression on me. He prompted us to always ask: “Who am I? Where do I come from? What do I really do?” That, combined with my early exposure to programming computers and artificial intelligence (I thought I would go to MIT) got me involved with systems-based thinking; when you zoom out and look at the whole systems you learn to ask, where can I meaningfully intervene, where can I do something that will have a systemic effect. I’ve always found myself in search of activities that can create meaning and connection and conversation.
I’m from Savannah, Georgia, and our parents and family were distributed in North Florida, the coastal Carolinas and Savannah. Our children were born in Western North Carolina when we were living remotely, entirely off grid. When they were out of the toddler phase we decided they needed community, and we wanted to give them broad perspectives, so we spent 15 years overseas, raising them in Australia, Southern Chile and Croatia.
Our return to the U.S. coincided with a number of things. First, COVID hit and it became more and more difficult to maintain our visas overseas, not being employed by a company, meaning we were responsible for our own visa process. It was at that same moment where our oldest child was beginning to look toward college. And it was also the time when our parents were passing to the next stage of life.
We had made a very significant investment as a family in tennis. So, triangulating everything, Atlanta became a very obvious choice for us as a family. Atlanta has an incredibly large population that plays tennis and is exposed to tennis. And there are some unique opportunities to take this foundation of extensive infrastructure that is here for tennis and elevate it even further because we believe that what we’re doing organizationally will create connections and opportunities in a way that has not been possible in this area before.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Many people have non-traditional paths. Mine is one, perhaps with some surprising moments of punctuation. I did grow up on Easy Street! It was at that time a washboard dirt road, and sport for me was avoiding pinecones when running barefoot through the woods, and avoiding oyster shells when wading through the adjacent marshes.
I never intended to be in professional sports; I was barely even exposed to sports growing up. My entry into the world of pro sports came through many years of conversations about being a parent of junior athletes and ultimately exploring how technology might contribute to positive changes within the sport of tennis.
My journey has taken many unexpected turns, yet there is a thread of curiosity and pursuit of ideas. My goal has always been to get to the peak of the conversation of whatever the current topic was, to get access to the people who were having the conversations that were consequential. It certainly wasn’t a straight road, or a smooth road; but I was never really much concerned about the bumps… I take them all as gifts.
As you know, we’re big fans of INTENNSE. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
The thing that I want people to see is how INTENNSE can bring people together and give people a sense that they belong. They contribute to the energy of what happens on the court as a fan because you are in fact a participant in creating that energy. So, I want them to feel that sense of belonging as a participant, that sense of authentic connection.
This is a professional team tennis league. We’re bringing 80 high-level players into this community. And those 80 players will be training on local courts adjacent to the communities that they’re embedded in, building relationships with those communities, even drawing the ball kids who are part of each team, who will wear jerseys and have numbers, into the arena with those teams.
We have alongside the pro league, every week, an open-entry prize money event which means there’s an opportunity for players that are not drafted or high-performance juniors or collegiate players that have the summer off to actually be on our courts and to experience the same thing: the same environment, the same level of technology, the same level of camaraderie with the teams that get formed. It is a reactor that produces more energy within the community and it is actually also knitting together the tennis community in a way that has not been possible before.
INTENNSE deeply resonates with people.
Early in this journey we felt that we needed a brash and disruptive voice. And what we discovered is that there’s deep hunger, on the part of many people who are either in tennis or have brushed up against tennis, to see the sport embodied in a way that feels more fulfilling. We didn’t need to be oppositional; we just needed to invite people in.
What I would have to say, being in the arena during our first season was the most exciting thing I’ve ever experienced. It felt like a joy factory to me. And to hear numerous players say it’s the most fun they’ve had in their life playing tennis, to see people showing up who never thought they wanted to go see live tennis and then to see the organic word of mouth bringing unexpected people into the space. We were iterating, refining, and so I see our brand as recognizing the hunger and embracing that hunger on the part of people who were validating our assertions about what was possible.
Atlanta is very important to INTENNSE. If you think about a town, a city, a metropolitan area that only has a pro event once a year, you are unable to create a lasting affinity to the sport, other than being a fan at that event. We’re actually building something that stretches out over a league season. You have local rivalries and engagements. Your amateur leagues, your adult leagues, they can also play in the arena in this format. You’re creating conversations over something that’s longer than just a week during a pro tournament. You’re doing it over months. And so, you’re raising the level of engagement of everyone in the community. As we expand beyond this initial hub, we really believe we’re creating an engagement model and a development model, which tennis lacks.”
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I don’t view anything that I do as risky because it just is. I was told, when my wife and I moved our family overseas, ‘That was really bold of you to do that. To go and change from one culture to a totally different language and environment.’ We never viewed it as risky ourselves. Not getting a college degree wasn’t risky to me. But I definitely had people say along the way, the moneyed people who wanted to invest in me, ‘Well, you’re going to go back and finish that degree, right?’ It was important to them to have their credentials. It wasn’t important to me.”
Pricing:
- Season Ticket Deposits:
- https://www.gofevo.com/event/Intennse202627
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.INTENNSE.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intennsetennis/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/intennse/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intennse
- Twitter: https://x.com/intennsetennis?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Intennse
Image Credits
Ted Pio Roda/INTENNSE
