Evan Kuterbach Is Finding Purpose Through Play: How He Built Canyon Pickleball

In this episode of "The Behind the Scene Stories of Busy Professionals," host Rob Pene interviews Evan Kuterbach, co-founder of Canyon Pickleball. The conversation explores Evan's journey from corporate life to entrepreneurship, centered around his passion for pickleball and the outdoors.

Evan shares how he discovered pickleball during a difficult period after moving from Colorado to Florida and becoming a new parent. The sport helped him overcome depression by combining his lifelong love of outdoor activity with a welcoming community. What started as a personal interest evolved into a business opportunity when he met his future co-founder through a marketing mastermind group.

Despite having no manufacturing experience, Evan and his co-founder launched Canyon Pickleball in July 2023. The brand distinguishes itself through its National Parks-inspired designs and commitment to sustainability, including eco-friendly packaging and donations to the National Parks. While the business is still young, it has reached operational sustainability within eight months.

Key insights from the episode include:

• The importance of finding the right business partner based on aligned interests rather than pre-existing friendship
• How childhood creativity and willingness to fail can translate into entrepreneurial success
• The value of being vulnerable and sharing ideas to find like-minded collaborators
• The benefits of starting small and learning through trial and error

Looking ahead, Canyon Pickleball aims to expand beyond paddles into a broader outdoor lifestyle brand, with plans for new products including athletic wear and accessories. Evan also maintains a newsletter called "The Honest Hustle" where he shares insights about building purposeful businesses.

The episode concludes with both host and guest emphasizing the importance of community and content creation in encouraging aspiring entrepreneurs to pursue their ideas.

Transcript

Rob Pene (00:00.94)
Yo, Talofalava, welcome. It's nice to meet you. The behind the scene stories of busy professionals. That literally is the name of the podcast. It's nice to meet you. I am your podcast host. Let's see if we can get this.

Yeah, you can even spell it out. There's more letters in my name than the alphabet. I'm excited because we've got somebody that's pretty cutting edge in his approach to business with what he's doing now, coming from a business background. But before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by Get Ghosted. It's a LinkedIn ghost writing and profile management service, oftentimes coaches, consultants.

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digitalwritingfirm.com. Now, let's see what's up with Pickleball. So, Evan has done a bunch of different things from e-commerce to just marketing in general. And then now he's got some really, really cool things happening on the Pickleball side. But I want to start from the beginning, right? Where all this creativity came from, his business acumen that led him to the cutting edge things that he's doing right now. So, man, appreciate you, Evan.

Evan Kuterbach (01:51.596)
Yeah, Rob, thanks so much. I'm super excited to be here, super excited to be on the pod. So yeah, just excited to dig in.

Rob Pene (01:58.274)
Yeah, yeah. So the first question I want to kickstart this with might be a left field type of question, but let's just dive right in. It's in the last 12 months, if you were to take that 12 month period of your life and turn it into a Netflix special, what would that movie be and what would the title be?

Evan Kuterbach (02:18.796)
That's a great question. That's such a great kickoff question. and, you know, let me, let me think. So man, 12 months, so 12 months ago was literally when we launched the brand Canyon pickleball. launched Canyon pickleball 12 months ago. well, officially launched it. So, yeah. So let's see. I, I would say the, if I could turn into a Netflix documentary, I would say would be called maybe just Canyon.

Honestly, just Canyon, we'll keep it clean as Canyon. I think the premise would be around just building, but also I think it would be about the connection to the outdoors, the connection to just being part of nature. So I think it would be a little bit about business. It would be a little bit about the outdoors and that connection. So yeah, it would be called Canyon. Humble plug.

Rob Pene (02:45.572)
Rob Pene (03:10.36)
Yes, I like that. No, Canyon's good. Where did the outdoors and nature interest come from? Did it start when you were young or?

Evan Kuterbach (03:12.567)
Yeah.

Evan Kuterbach (03:18.636)
Yeah, sure. So I've man, I've always been like that, that kid that was like outside playing with my brother, right? I mean, we were, you know, my, we were pretty fortunate to, kind of grow up on a couple acres. And so we had just an outdoor kind of oasis of a field where my brother and I would just like make up games and just play. so outdoors is always a big piece of me, but it wasn't until really that I moved to Colorado, which was in.

What was that? 2017 is when I moved to Colorado and that was really what just like opened my eyes to not just like my love of nature and the outdoors, but like how important it is to be outside, to be in nature, to be connected to the outdoors. And so when I lived there for about five and a half years, that was what really kind of cemented that like this, I,

It really is like an obsession with the outdoors and that connectivity to it. So yeah, it started as a kid, kind of moved into being in Colorado and yeah, then it's just kind of continued to grow from there.

Rob Pene (04:20.588)
Now, did your earlier businesses have anything to do with the nature and outdoors?

Evan Kuterbach (04:26.976)
No, no. And it's funny because I think when I look back at things that I've created and my path has been kind of all over the place. I went down a lot of corporate positions for about 10 years and then didn't really go down the entrepreneurial lens until about two years ago. But none of my businesses had that kind of aesthetic to it or that mission driven piece of it. And so really Canyon is kind of like me in

Rob Pene (04:49.625)
Mm.

Evan Kuterbach (04:55.022)
like physical product form, honestly. It's kind of the perfect combination of my love of pickleball, which we'll get into, I'm sure, my love of the outdoors, my love of just giving back to nature. So yeah, so I had never had anything really like this until now.

Rob Pene (05:10.05)
Where did the, how did it start? Like where was it birthed? Pickleball and this and all that,

Evan Kuterbach (05:13.698)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, sure. So I got into pickleball really from a best friend of mine who lived in Colorado when I was there. So let's kind of backtrack about two and a half years ago. So I live in Florida right now. I'm actually moving back to Colorado in May, but when I was living in Colorado, I learned about this thing called pickleball. A buddy of mine, he was like, Hey, go try pickleball. You know, you played tennis, you played other sports. Like this thing is, is a lot of fun. And was like, sure.

like begrudgingly I went even though I thought it was gonna be a joke. And I started playing and I just had an absolute blast, man, it was so much fun. And then fast forward about two, three months, we are moving to Florida because my wife's family's from here, we are about to have our first child. And so we were like, let's get some help. Let's make sure we kind of know what we're doing to keep this child alive. And so we moved to Florida and I was in like a really, really dark place, right? I had a newborn baby.

I didn't know anyone in Florida. I was just like, I don't really know like, kind of what to do to get out of this dark place. And so I thought back to when I was living in Colorado, I learned about pickleball and I was like, you know what, like, what if I just, had this cheap paddle that my buddy gave me. I was like, what if I just show up to the pickleball court and just see what happens? And so I just went down to the court. started playing and literally it just kind of continued to build this obsession. So at that point,

the idea for Canon hadn't really hit or the idea to build a brand in pickleball hadn't hit. was just, I'm depressed. I'm really anxious. have a newborn baby. I feel locked in the house. What can I do to get some energy out and be able to get my body moving? So that's kind of like the inception of my pickleball journey. And yeah, so I'll pause there, but.

Rob Pene (07:05.602)
The, I wanna kind of dig a little deeper on the depression side. That's a really interesting next step in terms of like pickleball, you know? I imagine you tried other things.

Evan Kuterbach (07:17.198)
Mm-hmm.

Evan Kuterbach (07:21.72)
Totally, yeah. And I think honestly, so I'm a musician, I play guitar, I also, I write and so, but I hadn't really at the time, especially when, and I'm not sure if you have kids, it looks like you might with some of the pictures in the background, but when you have a kid, right, like your whole world kind of changes, obviously, right? It's a major, major life change. And so I think coupling...

the major move right halfway across the country from Colorado to Florida and a major life change like having now a young child. And as a first time parent, you're just like, what am I doing? And so for me, it was like, I, I always knew again, going back to my childhood that when I'm, when my body's moving, I feel great when I'm outside, I feel great when I'm in nature in some capacity, just with the sun beating down on me, I feel so much better. That's how I get energized. And so for me,

Rob Pene (08:15.716)
Hey.

Evan Kuterbach (08:17.42)
when I started, honestly, again, was just thinking back to the like two times I played pickleball in Colorado. I was like, man, that was, that was a great feeling. I felt really good. and it just was like kind of a risk, right? It was like, if I go, if I hate it, if people are mean to me and then whatever, I'll just go home and it's fine. Like no, no harm, no foul. but it didn't work that way. And it was obviously the, one of the best things I tried. So, yeah, I, mean, I've, I will preach it from the mountain tops for people to try pickleball.

Rob Pene (08:47.064)
What specifically do you like about it?

Evan Kuterbach (08:49.4)
think it's the community. Have you played it before? you tried? Once. Okay. What were your thoughts?

Rob Pene (08:53.525)
once, once.

it was fun. It wasn't intimidating like tennis, but the rules are confusing. Yeah.

Evan Kuterbach (09:03.886)
The rules take some time. The rules take some time. Yeah. But for me, yeah, so it's the community aspect. And what I really think is really awesome about it. And for someone who, like myself, was going through some depression, some anxiety, was trying to kind of find my place in a new city, it was this really low barrier to entry, right? You know, it was easy to get a paddle. It was easy to go to a court because there's likely people there.

Rob Pene (09:07.192)
It was fun.

Evan Kuterbach (09:33.842)
and never, and I've played a lot of sports. sounds like maybe you've played some sports too, growing up. I have never played a sport where on one court playing field, whatever you want to call the sport you're playing, you can find someone that is 75 years old. You can find someone who's 12 years old. You can find someone who's 33 and you can find like a, you know, a war veteran with a prosthetic leg. And I've literally, I'm using this as an, as an exact example of a pickleball game I've played before. And, and it's, and it's a fun, fair match.

I have never seen a sport where you can have so many different personalities come together. And so when you go to the pickleball court, it's just such a welcoming place. It's such a freeing place where to be honest with you, a lot of the people I see at the pickleball courts, I don't even know anything about them. I just know that we're all there to have a good time to kind of escape and to relax and to unwind. So yeah, it's the community, man.

Rob Pene (10:11.961)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (10:25.602)
Yeah, I think what's really encouraging is you knew yourself enough to align that sport with who you are and your interests growing up. think a lot of people fail to find that connection, which prolongs the depression. But because you are so in sync with yourself, you're like, I'm just going to do this. No embarrassment, no shame was going to stop you because you knew I liked the outdoors.

Evan Kuterbach (10:39.662)
Mm-hmm.

Rob Pene (10:55.448)
this is interesting and it should get me out of this funk. So I think, well, that's a testament to you, which should lead into the success of your business, regardless of the ups and the lows, know what I mean? Yeah. So how has business been?

Evan Kuterbach (11:08.45)
Totally.

Evan Kuterbach (11:13.102)
It's been crazy. I'd be lying if I didn't say that it's been the absolute craziest roller coaster. We officially launched selling paddles on 4th July of last year. So we've kind of launched the brand on Instagram, that kind of stuff, like January, February. But we didn't officially start selling paddles until July. So we've really only been selling for, what, seven, eight months? Or eight months, I guess. And it's been going really well.

We're at a point where we're not making any money that we're taking out for ourselves, but we are able to sustain the business, our ad spend on Facebook, Google, all that stuff. We're able to sustain our inventory spend based off the sales we get. So I would say that's a huge win, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that it's been extremely challenging. And I think we'll kind of dig into that just in general. I think, like you said, the idea of just going into pickleball and just trying it because I wanted to see even if I failed.

It's kind of the same thing with the business side, right? It's like, I am fully well aware. And I think as an entrepreneur, kind of have to be fully well aware that what you're building, it's possible. The whole thing could blow up, right? Who knows, right? But like, I'm going to keep going day after day. I'm going to do the little steps day after day. And I know it can succeed, but at the end of the day, like things happen. So it's a lot of that kind of vulnerability. I think you have to build up over time.

Rob Pene (12:31.916)
Yeah. How did you find like the manufacturing and the design? How did all that ideation come about?

Evan Kuterbach (12:38.892)
Yeah, so I have a co-founder. He's based up in New York. I like to joke that I'm kind of like the face of the brand because he doesn't like being on camera, which is fine, you know, to each their own. I'm much more of the outgoing kind of talkative guy. So I'm happy to be on. But when I found him, which I found him through like a marketing mastermind, we were just both basically in a position where as marketers, we were both freelance marketers at the time. We were kind of

tired of making money for other people. And we were like, you know what? I want to make money for myself. And so we decided like, let's just start spit balling some ideas. Let's start spit balling some stuff. so to answer your question, almost all of those pieces, right? Finding the manufacturing, you know, the design going through Upwork and finding, you know, freelancers for crack designers, right? A lot of those pieces were because I had a co-founder to just bounce ideas off of. And so I tell that to people all the time, like whether you're trying to start a business,

You don't need a co-founder, but having people in your corner to just bounce ideas off of, because like we were both looking, right? Like how to find a manufacturer. We're literally Googling, like how to find a manufacturer in Pickleball. Like we're just like literally Googling things. mean, I would say Google and YouTube have been our our biggest help, honestly, right? It's like knowing that we're just trying to figure these things out as we go. But again, when you have someone that's in your corner that you can just spitball ideas with, it makes the process so much easier.

Rob Pene (14:05.038)
So you both had no experience in manufacturing and production. Wow.

Evan Kuterbach (14:07.892)
No, no experience. No experience. Zero experience, yeah. Yeah, zero experience manufacturing, no experience in like logistics, shipping, anything. None of that. None of that. Both of us. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Pene (14:15.832)
La la la. And to both of you.

Okay, yeah, we need to dig into that because a lot of people try to find someone with experience as a co-founder so that they move quicker. But this is a much better story because you guys launched it and have a product. So you guys just Googled it and I'm sure you had other ideas before that or was this the idea?

Evan Kuterbach (14:28.792)
Yeah.

Evan Kuterbach (14:35.255)
Yeah.

Evan Kuterbach (14:41.282)
We had some smaller ideas. We knew we wanted to dabble in a physical product because we had done as marketers, we had done services and that kind of stuff. We're both copywriters, right? So we write emails, we write, we're messaging experts. So we had that going for us from a business side, not having outsourced some of that stuff, but from design, all that kind of stuff, we knew we wanted a physical product. And so it was like, okay, let's think about a physical product. And then as we got...

Kind of our shared interest of the outdoors and pickleball. It started to form from there. But yeah, I mean, it was a lot of Googling. It's a lot of YouTube. I would say it's also it's a big piece of reaching out to people in our network. Like, you know, I'm posting on LinkedIn and saying like, Hey, does anybody know someone who is a graphic designer? Hey, does anyone know someone who has, you know, actually shipped a physical product before? Right. My wife was doing digging on trying to find sustainable packaging material because we ship all of our stuff in sustainable packaging.

It's kind part of our mission and everything. so it was just like, I mean, literally, it was just taking those little steps and honestly, not even knowing like we, as we're going through, I mean, it's funny, like, I'm kind of getting nostalgic thinking about this. Because last year, when we were going through this process, there was times when I literally was like, maybe we just wanted up doing this, right? Like until I actually had a physical product, it's behind me right now on the wall until I had physical products, I was like,

Rob Pene (15:51.598)
You

Evan Kuterbach (16:03.628)
Maybe we won't actually do this, but it's a fun project. We're just kind of learning. We're just trying to see where this goes. And then once we like actually ordered a sample from a manufacturer, we were like, shit, this is real. Like we actually have a product now. You know, like it's crazy. It was absolutely crazy, man.

Rob Pene (16:21.112)
How far do you guys wanna take it?

Evan Kuterbach (16:24.281)
It's great question. It's a little bit of a loaded question because we're at a really pivotal point in the business now where we are growing and we're trying to decide the right path because there's a couple paths we could go. We are finding a lot of success with our paddles. We're coming out with four new designs, with four new national parks we're super excited about. We're also coming out with a more pro level paddle, which is going to be kind of a higher quality for people that are looking to do more tournaments, that kind of stuff.

But we really see Canyon as becoming this outdoor lifestyle brand. So it's not just pickleball. maybe it's like, we get into hiking, we get into camping, we get into some other things. I see pickleball as the jumping off point because at its core, Canyon's mission is about inclusivity. It's about community. It's about the outdoors is for everyone. Everybody deserves to be able to get outside, get their body moving.

Rob Pene (16:58.628)
Hmm.

Rob Pene (17:13.508)
We will see.

Evan Kuterbach (17:20.202)
I see pickleball as kind of a jumping off point. we're at a kind of an interesting period of Canyon to see how it's going to shift throughout this year. to answer your question, like, I don't know. mean, it could, it could go no bigger. could go massive. We still telling. Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? You know, maybe we'll be the first pickleball brand on Shark Tank. I don't know.

Rob Pene (17:34.326)
You can go shark tank.

Rob Pene (17:39.96)
Yeah. And then there's other shows too, like on Amazon, the entrepreneur shows. Yeah. I can definitely see you guys on there.

Evan Kuterbach (17:43.724)
Yeah. Yeah.

Totally, totally, but yeah.

Rob Pene (17:50.146)
So how are you guys, so they're finding you on like with your ads and.

Evan Kuterbach (17:53.966)
Yeah, so most people find us through ads. We do lot of organic stuff too, so it's a little bit of both.

Rob Pene (17:59.3)
Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about the organic and who you're reaching out to? I know you said national parks. That's pretty interesting.

Evan Kuterbach (18:06.754)
Yeah, yeah. the whole, so all for the listeners, so all of, all of our designs are based off National Parks. You know, that's, that's really been kind of a big piece for our brand is, is all the designs are based off National Parks. We donate a portion of our sales to the National Parks as well. And then we give back, you know, by using sustainable packaging. So it's really a mission driven brand. And so that's really been, if I'm honest, like it's been a little bit of a challenge trying to figure out our right audience because

Rob Pene (18:14.308)
Evan Kuterbach (18:35.596)
You know, we are some of the people that are like pickleball players, but we're also our audience is people who just like, you know, sustainable, you know, companies that are trying to do their part, trying to give back that are trying to do a little bit of a different, you know, thing for the planet. And so we've been really trying to hone in that audience. And even in eight months, we're still, you know, I would say like we're, pretty much there, but we're still growing that organic content strategy and that organic social strategy because.

We're trying different stuff. And I think that's probably the biggest piece is like, and honestly, like a tip I always tell people is like, just try just different stuff to see what lands, right? You got to try different stuff. I it's probably the same thing with you, with the podcast, with everything else. It's like, you try and see what lands and if it doesn't, no harm, no foul. You try something different. Yeah.

Rob Pene (19:19.874)
Yeah, you guys should try to get into Olympic teams.

Evan Kuterbach (19:24.174)
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, it's funny because the pickleball got denied for the next Olympics, which was really frustrating. But they added in, it was crazy. I forget what they added in. They added in a couple of sports for the next Olympics. And I was just like, what the heck, man? Like you didn't add pickleball, but apparently they're making the bid again for 2032. we'll see.

Rob Pene (19:32.472)
no!

Rob Pene (19:46.882)
I guess you still could do nationals and world championships and different countries and their national teams.

Evan Kuterbach (19:52.802)
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're definitely looking at doing national parks and stuff to outside of the U.S. Like we're looking to do is like Canadian national parks. We're looking at doing, you know, some other national parks outside of the U.S. The hardest part. And this goes back to just running the business like the logistics and shipping of like shipping internationally are obviously a big piece that, you know, I mean, right now I'm still shipping out of my garage. Right. Like I can handle the volume out of shipping out of my garage for now. But

Rob Pene (19:55.908)
you

Evan Kuterbach (20:20.994)
We're going to be at a point pretty soon where we're going to have to find a third party manufacturer or I mean, third party logistics company where they're actually shipping the paddles because, you know, I've got a kid. I mean, I've got other jobs I work to. I'm not going to be able to just be packing up orders in my garage much longer.

Rob Pene (20:37.186)
Yeah. What would be the next product line there? Because this is a lifestyle brand that you guys are trying to build. Have you started thinking about those like merchants?

Evan Kuterbach (20:42.508)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, we're starting to think that. mean, like we know we want to do hats like we haven't done hats yet. You know, I don't know if you are, but I'm like a big hat guy. I will buy a cool hat from whatever brand. it's a cool hat and it's got a good mission, like I'll buy a hat. But we want to do hats. We want to do some more shirts and stuff. We also really want to do like because we're an outdoor lifestyle brand, like we want to do more like athletic wear, right? Like not I'm not trying to compete with like the big guys. I'm not trying to like Under Armour style stuff, but I want like

Rob Pene (20:54.948)
Hmm.

Evan Kuterbach (21:14.466)
Breathable outdoor stuff that you could wear on the pickleball court. could wear for a hike You could wear for you know, just a day at the park, right? So just kind of more like loungewear type stuff, too So yeah, I mean I see us going down that path again, you know the the the physical product side and just like all the logistics like, know Make me cringe a little bit trying to think about how to navigate that but as with anything, you know, we'll we'll take it step by step Yeah

Rob Pene (21:40.418)
Yeah, that's exciting. Obviously on the marketing side, your skills transferred from the past. What other kind of soft skills would you say transferred from, you know, as you're growing up and then maybe from your other gigs in the past?

Evan Kuterbach (21:46.958)
Mm-hmm.

Evan Kuterbach (21:56.984)
Yeah, I think one of the biggest soft skills was kind what I mentioned earlier, which was like my brother and I, mean, like when we would grow up, you know, like when we were growing up, we would literally just, I mean, we would make up games in our garage, right? And again, it was like, kind of like this, like this childhood, you know, creativity that we all had at one point. And honestly, it wasn't until I left like an actual true eight to five that I got that creativity back that I was

Rob Pene (22:26.466)
Hmm.

Evan Kuterbach (22:26.51)
playing guitar more, that I was able to think more about businesses I could start. so I would say the idea of just wanting to try and knowing I could fail is a soft skill that I'm really proud of that I've developed over time. And it's still hard. I'm still terrified many days of what I'm building and what I'm doing. But that's definitely a soft skill that I always encourage people to explore is that childhood creativity of like...

Who knows like you're going to make this tower and the tower falls down. Okay. Well, then you build a different tower, right? And it's kind of the same thing that I think we're always like, we're growing up to be put in this box a little bit in a lot of times. And, you know, I'm trying to break more people out of that because I know once I broke out of that box a little bit, and I'm not telling people to quit the rate to fives. just mean like exploring that childhood level of creativity and curiosity of the world and things that are interesting to you because.

It's a really fun place to be.

Rob Pene (23:26.052)
How long when you found the co-founder you guys met did Canyon launch? What was the time frame?

Evan Kuterbach (23:32.302)
Yeah, that's a question. We met, I think officially we met like October of 20. What year am I in October of 23 and then we like officially started like conversations around businesses like January of last year. So a year ago and then it was, I actually had the text message. I think it was March 1st that we officially decided on the name Canyon. So pretty much from like

Rob Pene (24:00.558)
And the-

Evan Kuterbach (24:01.974)
Say again. And the, the name and we knew we were going to be like pickleball, like we knew it was going to be like pickleball. We knew it was going to be kind of outdoor inspired. We knew those kinds of pieces. So I guess we met in October. We officially launched ish the name March 1st. So in a period of about five or six months, and then we officially like got a bank account together and we had an LLC together like two weeks later after that. And then. Yeah, it started to kind of grow. So really, I mean, this relationship, even with him.

Rob Pene (24:02.85)
and the product or just the name.

Evan Kuterbach (24:31.468)
I think the reason it's worked so well is because we kind went into it as like co-founders first and friends second. Like we became friends because we were aligned on our business interests and because we were aligned on where we saw ourselves. like, I mean, I'll be honest, like we first met, like it's not like we both thought like, we're going to be best friends. We're going to be, you know, like we were just like, let's talk about ideas. Let's try to figure out something to make money to get out of the rut we're in. so

Rob Pene (24:41.476)
Mmmmm

Evan Kuterbach (24:59.96)
Then we developed that friendship because we were like, wow, we're so similar.

Rob Pene (25:03.266)
Hmm. So an encouragement to people that's looking to start a business would be find somebody to bounce ideas off of that's competent, right? They can hold their own with you.

Evan Kuterbach (25:14.445)
Yeah.

Totally. Yeah. And I tell people like one of the best ways to do that, to just find people is like starting to get more vulnerable, like posting, whether it's LinkedIn, whether it's Instagram, whether it's TikTok, whatever you want, like just like being vulnerable about the fact that you are building something, that you are working on something, that you're like, that you have ideas to work on something. And I tell people this all the time. I've got a newsletter that I share and I talked about this last week, like,

Rob Pene (25:37.732)
What's the name of it?

Evan Kuterbach (25:45.678)
Even if you just tell, like you make a post that says, I would like to do something. I have no idea what that would be. Anyone else think like that? Like you would be surprised how many people would reach out and say, oh my gosh, I've also been thinking about something like, do you ever would just want to brainstorm and just spitball? Even if you're not trying to be a business partner with them, it's just like, it's great to be around that. So the more you put that into the, you know, algorithm of life, the more you're going to get that back. And you'd be surprised how many people that you know are in the exact same mindset as you.

Rob Pene (26:08.782)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (26:14.474)
Yeah, that's interesting because you're talking about like a vulnerable post. And as a copywriter and marketer, what would be that balance of spilling the tea and education kind of leadership type of material?

Evan Kuterbach (26:25.262)
You

Evan Kuterbach (26:31.212)
Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think it's like, it's knowing that like, there's people in your life that are going to serve different purposes, right? Like maybe there's like relationships and connections that you have that are to brainstorm to spitball ideas. Maybe there's people in your life that you legitimately think this could be a person I could maybe go into business with. Maybe there's a person that you know that just wants to invest in your ideas. Maybe there's

you know, people that you want to invest in their ideas. So I think it's starting to just understand like as you're building that network, knowing that there's different types of people that are going to be in your life. But as far as like getting the word out there, I mean, I think again, it goes down to like, it's I mean, it's hard. Like I it's easier said than done because I'm even even like the first time that I posted on LinkedIn saying that I was like leaving my eight to five. I mean, I was terrified. I was like, you know, people are going to be saying I'm an idiot. People are going to be like pushing me down and

you know, all this stuff, but at end of the day, like 99 % of the response has been supportive. And again, most of us, I think have ideas, right? There's very few of us that put those ideas into motion. And so I have found that most of the time in order to get an idea from an idea to action, it really is about having people surrounded around you, right? Doing it by yourself is so hard. It's so, so hard. It's such a mental struggle. So,

Rob Pene (27:32.675)
me.

Evan Kuterbach (27:55.114)
whether it's posting, whether that's just hitting up your friends and your contact list to just like talk things, talk about things. Like, yeah, I, you know, I say it's pretty necessary to start something.

Rob Pene (28:05.57)
Yeah, yeah, How can people find you? How can people find Canyon?

Evan Kuterbach (28:11.82)
Yeah, sure. So you can find us at kandanpickleball.com. You can find us on Instagram. Same thing, kandanpickleball. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I'm always sharing stuff about kind of building just businesses, right? Like kandanpickleball is a small piece of what I do. Well, it's a big piece of what I do. It's a small piece of revenue for what I bring in. So I'm always sharing stuff on LinkedIn about being a solopreneur, you know, being an entrepreneur and really just like...

exploring ideas and passions. yeah, follow me on LinkedIn. You can subscribe to my newsletter on there as well. It's called the Honest Hustle. So it's all about building businesses and ideas with intention and purpose. you can check me out on all those.

Rob Pene (28:50.848)
nice yeah is there a url for the honest hustle

Evan Kuterbach (28:55.959)
Yeah, I can send it to you. Yeah. If you want to add to the show notes or anything like that, but yeah, yeah, it's on my LinkedIn, but I can definitely send it to you. I just started it about five weeks ago. So we're about six weeks into the newsletter. It's been going great. been getting a lot of great responses. So, yeah.

Rob Pene (29:10.028)
Nice, nice, nice work. Yeah, thank you, man, for hanging out and chatting through. think there's a lot of valuable insight that people can get just from your progress. But also, I think even the timeline, right? Learning from the resilience and knowing who you are to try this thing, then finding somebody and knowing that it's not going to be instant where, OK, I like this person, we're going to do it. No, there's going to be a little bit of time. But once it hits, it hits. So I think that's great lessons from you.

Evan Kuterbach (29:36.142)
Totally. Totally, man. Yeah. And honestly, thank you so much for what you're doing because again, like, you know, for me, kind of like the initial point of wanting to do something was consuming content like what you're doing right now, right? Like consuming content from podcasts, consuming content from, you know, people on LinkedIn or wherever. So thank you for doing what you're doing because you are encouraging more and more people to become, you know, business owners, turn their ideas into something. So yeah, thank you for what you're doing.

Rob Pene (29:50.05)
Yay!

Rob Pene (30:05.796)
Yeah, and it doesn't have to be my idea. It's you guys the ones that are encouraging. So I'm just the... Which is great. Yeah. Perfect. All right. Well, appreciate everybody. Make sure to check out Evan on LinkedIn and then also Canyon as well. The information should be in the show notes. All right. God bless you guys. Thanks.

Evan Kuterbach (30:08.938)
Exactly.