The local squash club was my first target for marketing the new squash centre and they agreed to use our facilities for their weekly squash club-night but unfortunately were not keen to pay much for the pleasure.
The squash club members on squash club night even liked to bring their own drinks and snacks and meticulously avoided the vending machines I placed next to the squash courts in the hope of accessing some small additional revenue.
When I tried to talk about growing the size of their squash club to get more people playing squash at the squash centre, they were not interested because they preferred the squash club to stay small and intimate.
Leaflet drops with the local free newspaper yielded hardly any interest at all in squash coaching, squash playing or the squash centre as a fitness venue.
When I carried out a survey, through the local newspaper, to assess local people’s interest in playing squash and getting more exercise, most who responded to the survey admitted that their interest in sport was only as an onlooker and not as a participator.
Within several months of becoming the chief squash coach and manager of the squash centre, the initial budget that I was allocated had all been used up and the directors of the Sport, Sports and Sporting Activities Centre became increasingly unwilling to pay out in the absence of any evidence of significant revenues coming in.
Even obtaining a plumber to limit water damage from a burst pipe was like climbing a financial mountain, however potentially damaging was the water that was escaping.
Instead of the squash centre and my squash coaching activities flourishing with the possibility of an improved salary and the opportunity of buying a house locally, six months later I still found myself living at the local hotel bed and breakfast.
The only benefit from staying in the local hotel bed and breakfast was that few others were staying there. After a few weeks, the proprietor of the hotel bed and breakfast became a good friend and we would spend many afternoons and evenings, consoling each other and complaining about the lack of markets for our individual commercial endeavours.
Meanwhile, although it was small consolation, the management of the Sport, Sports and Sporting Activities Centre had no more idea about how to bring in people to the squash centre than I had.
Occasionally, they would call me to a meeting and ask what progress had been made. We would all then sit around the table wondering what could be done to improve matters but nothing was ever decided. Usually, we would finish the meeting with the optimistic hope but little expectation that things would improve and the squash centre would soon start attracting more business.
Sadly, hope alone continued to prove insufficient to bring an increased supply of paying customers to the squash centre.
So when Teresa the tennis coach mentioned to me in the canteen that she was writing a blog about her tennis centre as a sort of marketing tool, I thought why not give it a try which is how this small journal came into existence.